Orion Jimmy Ellis Views
With or without the famous mask, the voice was the same. Jimmy Ellis was one of the super-talented, like Elvis, Tom Jones, or Engelbert Humperdinck. Jimmy used different names in his career to try and break the connection between him and the voice of Elvis Presley - names such as Orion, Ellis James, Steven Silver, and others. These attempts were futile because the voice was his voice no matter what label was put on it.
Now, the music industry is filled with many strange tales of artists whose lives took unexpected turns on the winding road to success, but the saga of singer Jimmy Ellis is perhaps one of the weirdest of them all. He was professionally known as Orion, and his double-edged claim to fame was that his natural speaking and singing voice sounded almost exactly like that of Elvis Presley. Ellis hailed from Orrville, Alabama and began his recording career in 1964.
In 1979 Jimmy Ellis finally merged with an identity, but it still wasn't himself. He appeared as Orion Eckley Darnell, the character created August 16, 1977, by a Marietta [Georgia], housewife Gail Brewer-Giorgo. Her 1978 novel Orion told the story of a rock and roll singer, very much like Elvis, who faked his own death.
Ellis's Orion character claimed to have been managed by one Colonel Mac Weiman, and have been born in Ribbonsville, Tennessee on December 31, 1931. Listeners of Orion were initially split into two camps: those who knew that Orion was Jimmy Ellis just having some fun sounding like Elvis , and others who sincerely believed or wanted to believe that he was truly Elvis coming back on the scene after faking his own death. As Orion, Ellis reached Billboard's country chart with nine singles.
Orion Jimmy Ellis Images
