For nearly 90 minutes on Aug. 20, the Perry County Senior Center sounded like a mix of Nashville and Las Vegas as Keith Ital brought his gospel, country, and Elvis-style music to town. The concert, sponsored by David Pinkerton, hospice consultant with Legacy Hospice, was part music, part testimony, and part comedy routine — a window into a life lived in unexpected places.
Ital, a southern Illinois minister and singer who has performed at Nashville’s Sunday Mornin’ Country show at the Grand Ole Opry House, filled the room with songs and laughter as he shared memories from more than seven decades.
“I’ve been a salesman, a truck driver, a pilot, a teacher, a carpenter, a plumber, an electrician, a block layer, a roofer — you name it, I’ve done it,” he told the crowd. “The only thing I haven’t done is nursing. I don’t want nothing to do with that.”
One story drew laughs as he remembered shining shoes in East St. Louis as a six-year-old boy,
“I charged a quarter a shine, and the mob guys in their suits always gave me a dollar,” Ital said. “In 1962, that was big money.”
By his teens, he was hosing down used cars for a dollar apiece and saving enough to buy his first guitar at age 13. Hank Williams songs were the easiest to start with, Ital explained, because they were slow. Over the years, his guitar opened doors to Nashville songwriters like Glenn Tubb — the brother of country music star Ernest Tubb — who penned hits such as “Two-Story House” and “Skip a Rope.”
“It was just an honor to sit and talk with him and play guitar,” Ital said.
The show also dipped into his Elvis impersonation roots — a career twist that began with a black costume shop jumpsuit and a high-school reunion gig decades ago. “I did her an entire Elvis show, an hour long,” Ital recalled with a grin. “By the end, my boy wheeled in a chair and said, ‘Last week he thought he was Johnny Cash.’ It worked out pretty good.”
Health scares have shaped his voice as well. Ital told the audience about spinal surgery in 2013 when doctors warned he might lose his ability to sing.
“Oh, don’t do that to me,” he remembered saying. The operation left him one note deeper, and he had to relearn old favorites — but he never stopped singing.
His Nashville connections still make for colorful stories. Ital spoke of befriending a Hee-Haw veteran who cowrote the show’s famous “Doom, despair and agony on me” jingle, and of once being tapped to fill in vocals for country star Ronnie McDowell.
But the true high point of the afternoon came when Ital began walking among the tables, serenading the ladies as he sang. Before long, he had invited several women onto the floor to dance with him. The room filled with laughter, applause, and even a few tears as Ital’s voice carried old favorites from days gone by — songs that sparked memories as much as they entertained.
At 73, Ital says he’s happy to be singing and preaching full-time. With thousands of Elvis-style gospel performances behind him, he still thrives on the joy of connecting with his audience. “The camaraderie, the stories, the songs — that’s what keeps me going,” Ital said, smiling as he closed out his Perryville set.
