8.22.2017

ORION! 'LONE RANGER OF ROCK 'N' ROLL': HIS DEATH, HIS LEGEND, HIS SECRET IDENTITY

Elvis Instamatic Worshipers

(MASKED MAN MURDERS MASKED MAN)

ORION VIDEO JUKEBOX

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(JIMMY ELLIS, WE'LL MISS YOU TENDER)

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IT WILL BE EXACTLY DECEMBER 15th

THAT
JIMMY ELLIS WAS BRUTALLY GUNNED DOWN IN HIS PAWNSHOP IN ALABAMA.

THAT MIGHT BE BAD ENOUGH HAD JIMMY ELLIS, THE PAWNBROKER, NOT ALSO SECRETLY BEEN THE WORLD'S MOST BARELY FAMOUS MASKED IMPERSONATOR.
I WAS PRIVILEGED TO SEE
ORION IN A SMALL VOA CLUB IN SOUTH LOUISIANA IN 1981, AND WHAT I SAW CAN NEVER BE DESCRIBED, UNLESS YOU HAPPEN TO UNDERSTAND WOLF CALLS OR DOLPHIN SQUEAKS.

SO...WITHOUT FURTHER ADIOS, I AM PROUD TO REPUBLISH A POSTING ON THE GREAT 'LONE RANGER OF ROCK 'N' ROLL', HIS DEATH, HIS LEGEND AND HIS NOT-SO-SECRET IDENTITY.

ALTHOUGH THIS MAY SEEM LIKE IRONY TO SOME (SOME ABOVE A DEMARCATION CALLED THE MASON-DIXON LINE),
THIS OCCUPATION,
APPARITION,
FACT,
THAT IS ORION,
IS AN IRONYLESS AND WALKER PERCY-TYPE EVERYDAY
BENEFIT OF INHABITING THE SOUTHLANDS--AS COMMONPLACE AS BEING INSULTED BY A SHOPKEEPER IN YOUR PART OF THE WORLD, OR EATING GOOD CHINESE FOOD, PERHAPS.

WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR, LET'S GET TO GETTIN' WITH IT!
O R I O N
"as long as they spell my name right publicity is okay I guess...
thank you, thank you very much".


*The History of
ORION...

begins with invention anointed; a true Historasy that unrolls until its decisive end, or rather, its indentation.

This is its lashed dissection.
In the city of harsh-hardeners with Titanic dreams, vacant or heisted--Orion was anecdote, cued from emulators, ordinators, Instamatic-worshipers...
Orion was inalienable of Elvis' excess; his supernatural excrescence; his incorporeality--his America.



From the Troy of music superstructures came the name Orion--and it was Mammon's, in the loot of HIS velour blousing, muscles and SHOULDERS retooled; in the foul, mean language of Elvis--that was Orion.





Top

Elvis
Impersonator


Killed
Gunned Down
in His
Alabama
Pawn Shop

Dec. 15, 1998
By Todd Venezuela

REVEILLE, Ala. (APB) --
One of the world's most famous Elvis impersonators was killed when a robber with a sawed-off shotgun stormed into a pawn shop he owned and blasted him and his ex-wife at close range, authorities said.

Jimmy Ellis, who for years used his remarkably Elvis-like voice in a masked stage persona he called Orion, was standing before the display counter in his Jimmy's Pawn and Package Store just after noon Saturday when the gunman burst in and, in seconds, turned the quiet shop into a slaughterhouse.


"Mr. Ellis never had time to do nothing or say nothing," Dallas County Sheriff Harris Huffman Jr. told APB News. "He just opened fire in seconds and hit Mr. Ellis in the side."


After the first blast, which left the 53-year-old Ellis mortally wounded and crawling for safety, the gunman turned his weapon on the singer's 44-year-old ex-wife, Elaine Thompson, who was on a stool behind the counter. He fired once into her face, killing her instantly and hitting another worker, Helen King, in the hand.


Wounded victim shot at again..


The gunman, who police believe is Plantersville resident Jeffery James Lee, then fired twice more in an attempt to blast Ellis a second time as he struggled to find a haven behind a computer desk,
Huffman said.
The shot missed, and then Lee allegedly turned his attention to the cash register, which he knocked off the counter after he could not open it, Huffman said. He then dropped the gun, fled the store and drove off in a car with two accomplices,
authorities said.
Huffman said King, who played dead, was treated and released from a hospital for her hand wound. Ellis died in his store about 10 minutes after the attack, Huffman said.

Later that day, sheriff's deputies caught up with the two alleged accomplices, Andre Darren Lee, 19, who is the alleged gunman's brother, and Jerry Dewayne Johnson, 17, who is his cousin. Police later found Lee holed up in a motel about 30 miles outside Atlanta. All three are being held without bail and are facing the possibility of the death penalty on two counts of capital murder, authorities said.


Fans mourn star's death..

Word quickly spread through this town about 20 minutes west of Selma that one of its most popular residents was killed. Soon, Ellis fans around the country were mourning.

"I was just devastated," said Kathy Hoffman, a Maryland woman who is the president of the Jimmy Ellis fan club. "It's just a very sad thing. He was just the sweetest guy."

Ellis' career took off after Elvis Presley's death in the late 1970s when producers at Presley's former record label, Sun Records, discovered that his voice sounded hauntingly like the King's.

They suggested that he don a mask and perform under the name "Orion," doing a mix of old Presley standard and his own work. He stood out among the many Elvis impersonators partly because of his voice and partly because he only performed as Orion, never claiming publicly to be copying Elvis.


Broke from Presley image..

He enjoyed several years of popularity and worked with many of the top performers in Nashville such as Jerry Lee Lewis and Loretta Lynn. According to Hoffman, his fan club once numbered in the thousands. However, in the mid-1980s, the novelty of his act wore off, and he removed his mask in an attempt to be taken more seriously.

It wasn't an easy move for the Orrville native. In a 1997 interview, he said that his attempt to be a star in his own right was stifled by his voice's natural likeness to Presley. "It's been both a blessing and a curse," he said. "The Nashville establishment won't accept anyone who sounds that close to Presley."

In the '90s he went back to his Orion persona and played the U.S. earlier this year. He also stayed closed to his core fans.

"He was a friend," Hoffman said. "He was a very easygoing person. His career was important to him, and he was sometimes discouraged because he had so many ups and downs."

Todd Venezuela is an APB News staff writer - toddv@apbnews.com







*written in the style of Nick Tosches... stay tuned for full article, either serialized through this site or on the perfect American site