Heart of the Nation: Parkes 2870
From a dirt poor childhood on an Aboriginal mission to fame as an Elvis tribute artist, Len Connolly’s life is anything but ordinary.
Len Connolly grew up dirt poor at Brungle Mission in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains, the sixth of 12 children, in a tin hut with no electricity and often no food. He was six years old when he first heard Elvis on the radio, and felt an instant connection. “I loved his soulful sound,” he says. Pretty soon, little Len was channelling The King around the mission and at school – the teacher would ask him to do a turn for the class and he’d launch into a rendition of Teddy Bear, complete with dance moves. “Just a little Aboriginal kid shakin’ his leg,” he chuckles. The way he sees it, the connection he felt wasn’t so strange: Elvis had native American heritage – his mother was part-Cherokee – and was deeply influenced by the spirituals, gospel and blues of black America. “I’ve always lived in different worlds, too – the Aboriginal and the white world,” Connolly says.
Since graduating in his mid-thirties with a diploma in health science, he’s been a front-line health worker. Performing as an Elvis tribute artist is partly an escape from that, an antidote to all the suffering he witnesses. “I love to sing for people, make them happy,” says the 60-year-old Wiradjuri man. He performed at the World Expo in Dubai this year, and is a regular at the Parkes Elvis Festival. This image – shot for a Guardian picture essay on the festival, and a finalist in the Australian Life photo competition – shows him emerging from the dressing room at the Parkes Railway Bowling Club at the start of a show. “Just out of frame, people were going wild,” says photographer Stuart Miller. “He has a lot of fans.”
As for that fabulous early ’70s, Aloha-era get-up, the jumpsuit is from America, the rings purchased from local shops, and the hair and sideburns? “All my own!” Connolly says proudly. “But I dye it, of course.” Then he divulges a juicy little secret about his rivals on the Elvis tribute artist circuit: “Most of ’em wear wigs because they’re actually bald.”
To cast your vote for the Australian Life competition’s People’s Choice award, see the gallery of finalists at city.sydney/australian-life