The “Golden Hits Of The 70s”
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RONNIE MCDOWELL
“THE KING IS GONE”
(RONNIE MCDOWELL, Lee Morgan)
Scorpion 135
No. 13 October 22, 1977
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Ronnie McDowell’s unique talent in the world of Top 40 pop is that he is–or was–an Elvis impersonator,
and one of the best. Ronnie told Country Music’s Kip Kirby that following a session, Presley producer
Felton Jarvis told him, “Lord, son, I only wish Elvis had been able to sing that good.” McDowell’s ability to
reproduce the sounds of the legendary one brought him overnight success, screaming hordes, a healthy
hit, and a STIGMA.
He was born in Fountain Head, Tennessee, 30 miles outside of Nashville. While in the Navy in 1968,
Ronnie started writing songs and singing “sound-alikes”; his Elvis medley always brought the house down.
On his return to civilian life, McDowell headed to Nashville in hopes of peddling his songs and finding his
fortune. ROY DRUSKY, Jean Sheppard, Billy Walker, and others would record his tunes, but Ronnie
continued working as a commercial sign painter.
In the mid-’70s, McDowell wrangled a job as a clean-up boy at the Chart and Scorpion labels. He cut a
sound-alike record of Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely” in 1976, but the disk stiffed.
When Elvis died, Ronnie and a friend, Lee Morgan, quickly penned a homage to the King. At first, no one
was interested in doing a tribute single, so McDowell bankrolled a recording session himself and shopped
the acetate around to Nashville radio stations. Within hours, phone lines were lighting up; within weeks,
Ronnie was appearing at Los Angeles’s Palomino Club and on “American Bandstand,” “Midnight Special,”
and “Solid Gold.”
“It was frightening,” McDowell recalled to Kirby. “People were coming to my concerts in droves, but they
were really comin’ to see Elvis…. Sometimes I could not hear a note I was singing.” A few more ersatz-
Elvis platters made the country listings, but Ronnie soon wearied of the gimmick. “I was losing my
identity. I wanted to sound like myself… but everyone else wanted to hear another Elvis. I felt like I was
beating a dead horse. I knew I had to get away from it or it would destroy my career.”
Ronnie has broken free of what he has called “the Elvis thing,” and gone on to some major C & W success.
More than 30 of his singles have made the country listings. In the late ’80s, Ronnie teamed up with
Conway Twitty for a remake of “It’s Only Make Believe” and Jerry Lee Lewis to cut his tune “Never too Old
to Rock’n’Roll.”
And while he occasionally reaches into his sound-alike tool kit–as he did for the short-lived “Elvis” TV
series in 1989–McDowell feels that he is finally his own man.
In the mid-’90s, Ronnie has slowed down, turning the limelight over to his son, Ronnie Dean McDowell, a
member of Six Shooter.