ELVIS STOPPED THE ENTIRE SHOW — THEN TURNED AND LOOKED STRAIGHT AT LARRY STRICKLAND
There are thousands of stories about Elvis Presley performing on stage. Stories about the screaming fans, the legendary jumpsuits, the incredible voice, the wild energy, and the moments that became part of music history.
But every once in a while, a story comes from someone who wasn’t sitting in the audience.
He was standing only a few feet away.
And according to Larry Strickland, one of those moments happened during his final period performing with Elvis in Las Vegas — when Elvis suddenly stopped the entire show, turned toward him, and stared directly at him.
For Larry, the moment was terrifying.
He says Elvis was performing when something happened with the song. Elvis stopped. The entire performance came to a halt. Then Elvis looked over at Larry.
And Larry admits that it “scared the crap” out of him.
But there is something even more fascinating about Larry’s story.
His journey to that stage didn’t begin with Elvis Presley.
It began when he was just a little boy sitting in a Southern gospel concert.
Larry was the son of a preacher, and when he was around eight or nine years old, his father took him to see the Blackwood Brothers and the Statesmen. Among the legendary voices Larry heard that night was J.D. Sumner, famous for his extraordinarily deep bass voice.
Larry could actually feel the sound.
That bass note didn’t simply reach his ears — it seemed to move through his entire body.
And something clicked.
Larry suddenly knew what he wanted to become.
A singer.
When his own voice began changing during his teenage years, Larry spent countless hours in his bedroom listening to gospel records and singing along, repeatedly practicing the bass parts. Day after day. Over and over again.
Eventually, he left his bedroom behind and began performing with local gospel groups throughout North and South Carolina.
That passion ultimately led him to J.D. Sumner’s Stamps Quartet.
And that connection would change his life forever.
Because eventually, Larry Strickland found himself on stage with Elvis Presley.
He would go on to perform approximately 203 concerts with Elvis, a number he didn’t even know himself until a friend helped research and count the shows.
Imagine that.
Two hundred and three times standing on a stage with Elvis Presley.
Yet Larry says one of his earliest memories remains incredibly vivid: seeing Elvis walk onto the stage for the first time from the unique perspective of a performer.
He wasn’t simply watching the King.
He was watching the man up close.
Larry remembers the emotion, power, and extraordinary vocal range Elvis possessed. The high notes. The difficult passages. The ability to completely command a room.
But perhaps the most unforgettable part of Larry’s story came when Elvis turned his attention toward him.
Larry recalls singing loudly during a performance. Elvis heard him.
Then Elvis told him to sing the line again.
Larry did.
And Elvis apparently liked what he heard.
From that moment forward, Larry says he sang that line during every show.
He even began referring to himself as Elvis’s “alter ego.”
And incredibly, that phrase eventually became part of how Larry was introduced on stage.
Think about the irony.
A young boy who once sat in a gospel audience feeling J.D. Sumner’s impossibly deep bass voice vibrating through his chest eventually became a professional singer standing beside Elvis Presley.
And then, during one unforgettable performance, Elvis stopped the show and looked directly at him.
For most fans, Elvis Presley was an almost unreachable superstar.
For Larry Strickland, Elvis was the man standing beside him under the stage lights — sometimes so close that one look from him could make Larry wonder what he had done wrong.
That is what makes stories from Elvis’s musicians and singers so fascinating.
They don’t describe Elvis from the audience.
They experienced him from the stage.
And sometimes, the smallest moments — a glance, a command, a single line in a song — become the memories that survive for decades.
Larry Strickland performed roughly 203 concerts with Elvis Presley.
But after all those years, all those songs, and all those nights under the lights, one moment still stands out:
**Elvis stopped.
Elvis turned.
And Elvis looked straight at Larry.**
What do you think was going through Elvis’s mind in that moment?
And if you had performed more than 200 shows beside Elvis Presley, what single memory would you remember for the rest of your life?
