What was the most accurate impersonation of all time?

UncleScoopy

When Joe Cocker first heard John Belushi impersonate him at a party, he insisted that Belushi must be lip-synching. When the person being impersonated thinks it is his own voice, THAT is a good impression.

Are there any other impressions so accurate that they would fool the person being impersonated?

15 thoughts on “What was the most accurate impersonation of all time?”

  1. Actually the more recent SNL had Ego Nwodim doing a spot on Dionne Warwick and then had the real Dionne Warwick on as a guest

    1. I saw that one! I didn’t think it was a spot-on Dionne Warwick though, but it was pretty good. I’d put it on the same level as Alec Baldwin and the Tony Bennett Show. Or Cecily Strong doing Pirro. Or Bill Hader doing Alan Alda.

      Actually, no, Bill Hader as Alan Alda is a few levels higher.

      1. The best mimic on the current SNL may be Melissa Villasenor.

        In this YouTube clip she does: Dolly Parton, Owen Wilson, and Natalie Portman, but the best one her freaking out Seth Meyers by doing Kristen Wiig

        1. Agree, it has taken a while for SNL use her as more than the “Latina character” Most of their impressions of course are comic impressions. Ego playing Warwick is tough because Ego is 33 and Dionne is 80.

  2. I am not sure it is possible to fool a dead person, but I thought Val Kilmer did an amazing job as Jim Morrison.

    Outside of music, as I understand Rich Little was used used to dub David Niven’s dialog on 1983’s Curse of the Pink Panther. The film’s producers obviously thought Rich Little did a better David Niven than David Niven did. Of course Niven had been very sick. But still. There have been some amazing impressionists through the years, but I don’t think anyone has ever been better at it than Rich Little. Last I checked he is still performing. I don’t think anyone he impersonated enjoyed his impersonation more than Ronald Reagan. Reagan would invite Rich to the White House and then send him to the briefing room to do a press conference while Reagan waited outside the door laughing.

    1. Now that you mention Little, I’ll bet his George Burns imitation could have fooled George Burns. To my ear, it was spot-on.

      Also, in The Rat Pack movie, a guy named Michael Dees impersonates Sinatra so well I had to look at the credits to find out it was not Sinatra.

      1. In 2002, I took my mother to see a Frank Gorshin’s one man play on Broadway. It was called “Say Goodnight Gracie” and just consisted of Frank Gorshin as George Burns talking about his (Burns’) life. It was really excellent. Up to that point, I had basically known Gorshin as the Riddler not an impressionist. Since then, I’ve enjoyed watching clips of his appearances on various shows such as Ed Sullivan.

  3. There’s a band called Rock Sugar whose frontman is one of the voice actors from Animaniacs. They sing song mashups where the singer impersonates others. Someone took them to court over thinking he was sampled with the safe money saying it’s Steve Perry of Journey fame.

  4. Belushi first performed his Cocker imitation in the parody song “Lonely At The Bottom” in the 1973 Off-Broadway musical National Lampoon’s Lemmings. (I worked in various capacities at Lemmings.) It was one of the many highlights of that classic show that also starred Chevy Chase and Christopher Guest. The video version that’s floating around doesn’t do it justice, although the cast album is great.

    1. I have a very poor video of that show, which misses some of the best material on the album. To this day I can still sing the faux-James Taylor number by Chris Guest

      Farewell, New York City, with your streets that flash like strobes
      Farewell to Carolina, where I left my frontal lobes

      1. The Lemmings video that circulates was shot at a college in (I think) Queens and not at the Village Gate/NYC where it actually played. It was an off-night for the cast, but most of the music holds up.

        That was Chris Guest (later director of Waiting For Guffman, et al) doing James Taylor. (He’s a killer mimic, as well as a fine musician and writer/director.) The song/sketch centered on Taylor being a junkie and the band/actors nodded out by the end. Among my other duties at the show was doorman. One night we got word that James Taylor & Carly Simon were coming, so I reserved seats for them and escorted them when they arrived. When Chris did the Taylor parody (called “Highway Toes”), J.T. sunk his head into hands and Carly cradled him. It was heartbreaking, but I think they had to know it was gonna be savage.

    2. I see that you wrote the Kinky Friedman bio on his website – are you by any chance familiar with Bowley and Wilson?

        1. Acolytes of Kinky. They are two former SMU students who at one time in the 70s and 80s had the raunchiest, wildest, most profane act in the Greenville Ave entertainment district in Dallas. They started playing in bars, then finally bought their own club. They sold out their show six nights a week. It was a raunchy combination of frat-boy comedy, obscene songs, magic, audience participation and some genuinely good rock and country music. They did some Kinky songs and some of their originals.

          I guess you could call them the Texas Methodist Boys.

          I lived in Dallas for about five years, and took every visitor there. Everybody had a raunchy good time, laughing non-stop.

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