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Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend swings into its 25th year bigger and better than ever

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Classic style and cars at Viva Las Vegas
Julie Bergonz/Courtesy

It appears like something out of a time capsule.

Vintage hot rods, optimized for speed and power, idle in the car parks. Women coolly lean against them, their bullet bras and ankle-cut pin-up jeans fitting effortlessly into the aesthetic. Meanwhile, the men shamelessly primp their pompadours, because if there’s anything we know about rockabilly fashion, it’s that voluminous hair is a must.

This is the scene the Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend has fostered over the last 25 years. More than 9,000 people attend Viva over four days of music, burlesque, shopping, tiki pool parties and car shows. What started as just a retro 1950s rock ‘n’ roll weekender at the Gold Coast has exploded in size, moved to the Orleans and become not only the longest-running music festival in Las Vegas, but the largest rockabilly event in the world.

“I didn’t know if it was gonna be long term or not, so we treated each one as a special event,” says Tom Ingram, DJ, promoter and founder of Viva. “But it got to a stage where literally the Gold Coast was bursting at the seams. We had more people for Viva Las Vegas staying in the Orleans than the Gold Coast had a total number of rooms.”

Before Viva came to fruition, Ingram founded the incredibly successful Hemsby Rock ’n’ Roll Weekender in England. He had high hopes of bringing the event to Southern California when he moved in 1996, but after being ripped off by a business partner, he was left with no money or potential income.

It took time to rebuild, Ingram says, but once he did, he decided to reroute the weekender to Las Vegas for its 24-hour appeal. Meanwhile, “the guy in England who ripped me off was going around telling everyone, very vocally, ‘Who does Tom think he is, trying to do an event in Vegas? You can’t do rockabilly in Vegas,’” he says.

But Ingram pressed on. Several casinos rejected the idea before he reconnected with talent agent Seymour Heller, an old acquaintance who had managed a number of stars, most notably The Treniers and Liberace. “He goes, ‘Oh, a friend of mine does entertainment at the Gold Coast. I’ll put you in touch with him.’ Within a week, I was at the Gold Coast sitting down for a meeting with all the heads of department to organize Viva Las Vegas.”

Viva debuted in Vegas in 1997, shaking up the local culture. “At the time, unless you were over 60 years old, the entertainment in Vegas sucked. We were the first ones to really cater to this much younger audience,” Ingram says. “From the very beginning, we had Vegas locals from all different music scenes coming to the weekenders because it was the only big event like that to cater to them.”

Alisha Alexander remembers those early days well. She attended the very first Viva as a fan, and many others after that as a journalist. One of her fondest festival memories is of dancing on stage with Little Richard during his last public performance. “There were probably 20,000 people at that show,” she remembers.

Alexander now works as the festival’s publicist, and has seen her share of positive changes. “It started out [being]really 99% about the music, and maybe the other 1% were the clothes and the cars,” she says.

But now? “The fashion is almost like art,” Alexander says, adding that you generally don’t see hundreds of people in 1950s-inspired outfits outside of Viva. “It’s like being in the middle of a fashion show. That element always existed from the very beginning, but it got amplified ... It started to feel like a rockabilly Disneyland.”

Much of what makes Viva great today happened organically over time. Ingram says the car show that now draws up to 20,000 people started as just dedicated parking for the safety of vintage vehicles. And the wildly popular Burlesque Bingo and annual pin-up contest became a permanent fixture of the festival after performer Audrey DeLuxe suggested it had a place in the “retro mecca” that is Viva.

“[Tom] wants people within his own community to work with him,” Alexander says. “It’s a bunch of music lovers, a bunch of car lovers, a bunch of burlesque lovers. People who attend his events who he knows, and sees something in.”

Now DeLuxe serves as the assistant organizer of Viva and co-produces all of the burlesque events, and the chance to bring her craft to Viva means more than anyone could know. “It allowed me the opportunity to do what I’ve always wanted to do: Be a full-time producer and performer,” she says. “It sounds a little over the top, but he did make my dreams come true, coming from the South and moving here.”

Other additions over the years, such as organizing festival meetup groups for LGBTQ members or for women attending the festival alone, have positioned Viva as a safe space for all fans.

“Too many promoters have an image of being a suit who sits in an office and just counts the money,” Ingram says. “But for me, Viva Las Vegas has to be an event that I would pay to go to. … If I look at my ideas and think, ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ then I have to rethink them. But I’ve always listened to everyone else’s ideas.”

But the one thing that’s remained constant about Viva over its first quarter-century is its commitment to the music. From Jerry Lee Lewis to Wanda Jackson, the festival has hosted its share of rock royalty. Ingram has plenty of great musical memories from Viva, he says, among them a performance by Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Ruth Brown.

“She hadn’t performed her ’50s rock ’n’ roll for a very long time, and I persuaded her to do it,” he recalls. “Right before she went on stage, she said, ‘If they throw tomatoes at me, I’m going to blame you.’ ... She couldn’t have gone down better. She was so happy.”

Another significant feather in Ingram’s cap was booking Chuck Berry, who he had originally heard was a difficult get. He realized other promoters just hadn’t read Berry’s contracts carefully. “These stories about him demanding cash before going on stage were because the promoter didn’t get the right guitar amp,” he says. “We got two of them just in case. … He liked the band we put with him, you could see that on his face. It was a good show.”

This year, Viva Las Vegas will feature 80 bands, 30 DJs, more than 100 vendors and everything else rockabilly enthusiasts have come to know, love and adore about the festival. Ingram will also receive a Key to the City from Mayor Carolyn Goodman for the milestone anniversary. And though it is a special year, he says the party will commence like any other.

“We’re not trying to make the biggest festival,” he says. “We’re just trying to represent our scene.”

Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend April 14-17, $60-$230. The Orleans, vivalasvegas.net.

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Amber Sampson

Amber Sampson is a Staff Writer for Las Vegas Weekly. She got her start in journalism as an intern at ...

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