Clendening's Irish hips are swiveling

Eddie Clendening, who played Elvis in Broadway's "Million Dollar Quartet,"... — Eddie Clendening, who played Elvis in Broadway's "Million Dollar Quartet," brings his Blue Ribbon Boys band, to Buckley's for a St. Patrick's Day show in Valley Stream. Credit: Jim Marchese

By STEVE PARKSsteve.parks@newsday.comMarch 16, 2012

If, as they say, everybody's Irish on St. Patrick's Day, why not Elvis O'Presley?

Eddie Clendening, who played Presley on Broadway in the Tony-winning "Million Dollar Quartet" (2010-11) and continues to sing and swivel-hip the role Off-Broadway, brings his Blue Ribbon Boys to Buckley's in Valley Stream for a roots-oriented St. Patty's concert Saturday night.

"We're working up a few Celtic things" for the occasion, Clendening promised by phone from his Manhattan apartment. " 'Danny Boy' and some Irish drinking songs." It won't be a stretch: Clendening is of Scots-Irish heritage and his favorite drink, he says, is Jameson's Irish whiskey.

Buckley's, a honky-tonk catering to rockabilly and Western swing musical tastes, bills the evening as a "Sham-Rock-A-Billy" party, which also features Greenport's Gene Casey, namesake of Gene Casey and the Lone Sharks, by his bad self, and Caroline Doctorow, the Bridgehampton folk singer-songwriter.

The musical's title refers to the legendary Memphis session at Sun Records when Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Presley recorded an impromptu jam under the auspices of Sam Phillips. It was Dec. 4, 1956. Presley, then the biggest name on the Top 40 music charts, if not all of show business, happened to drop by.

The "Million Dollar" producers knew Clendening, then in his early 20s (Presley was 21 in 1956), had the chops. He had opened for Lewis back home in Denver and played with survivors of Presley's band -- drummer DJ Fontana and guitarists Scotty Moore and James Burton -- at New Orleans' Ponderosa Stomp and an Elvis convention in Wisconsin.

His biggest showbiz thrill, says Clendening, occurred the night Lewis joined him onstage at Broadway's Nederlander Theatre for an encore ("A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On"). Bill Clinton was in the audience with his daughter, Chelsea, and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, applauding.

The Elvis understudy will go onstage for Clendening Saturday night at Off-Broadway's New World Stages so he can go green for the Buckley's gig.

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