Henry Newinn needed something to believe in. In 1975, the Vietnamese refugee had few friends, limited prospects and a wife and baby to support on a busboy's salary.

Then one afternoon, at a roadside stand in Houston, Newinn found a reminder of happier days in South Vietnam: a velvet Elvis. The King, wearing a white jumpsuit, was captured mid-song on black cloth. Pictures of Elvis had been common in Saigon, Newinn's home town, but he'd never before seen a velvet version of his rock-and-roll idol. It was beautiful.

After a few weeks of saving tips, Newinn bought the picture for $5. For years the Elvis hung in his living room, across from the family's Buddhist altar.

"He is the main spirit in the house," says Newinn, now a 60-year-old mechanical engineer in Houston. "He's an example for me to follow. He was poor, but he moved up."

Friday will mark the 25th anniversary of Elvis's death, and it may come as a surprise to learn that many of those taking note will be Vietnamese immigrants who formed an intense bond with the King long ago in their homeland.

Ever since homesick GIs started bringing over Elvis records in the late 1950s, the Vietnamese have used the King and his music as a gateway to American culture. And when the war was over, many refugees like Newinn found faith in the story of the poor boy from Tupelo, Miss.

Many can recall the moment they first heard Elvis's music or saw his image.

Some named their kids after him.

And naturally, some became Elvis-inspired performers.

Elvis Phuong, one of the most famous Vietnamese American crooners, sings "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Can't Help Falling in Love" in both English and Vietnamese. Elvis Cong, a Vietnamese American magician, performs his illusions sporting a pompadour and wearing black clothes.

And Paolo, now a nail salon owner living in Southern California, was one of the best-known Elvis impersonators in Saigon in the 1960s. Thanks to the Elvis movies, he has English lingo down pat.

"That's right, uh-huh, I first started it. My legs started shaking to his music, uh-huh," said Paolo, 56, who goes by just one name.

Henry Newinn, too, played the guitar and sang Elvis tunes in his sister's Saigon nightclub. Today, his son, John, is an Elvis impersonator who performs in custom-made rhinestone-studded jumpsuits. John, 28, finished in the top 10 in the 1994 international impersonator competition sponsored by Graceland. Father and son are the founders of the Asian Worldwide Elvis Fan Club, a Houston-based organization officially sanctioned by Elvis Presley Enterprises.

For Henry Newinn, a Vietnamese passion for Elvis isn't surprising at all. It makes perfect sense.

To Vietnamese immigrants of a certain age, Elvis is forever linked with a carefree adolescence, before the darkest days of the war. He is Saigon before it became Ho Chi Minh City.

His music and movies came to South Vietnam at a time when nearly all things American were novel and fashionable, particularly in well-to-do Saigon society. The presence of GIs was building, along with nightclubs, Coca-Cola and rock-and-roll.

There was plenty of English-language music broadcast in Saigon -- the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Supremes -- but it was Elvis's picture plastered in barbershops across the city. As in America, in Vietnam Elvis inspired youth rebellion, but the Vietnamese could also relate to his sentimental songs and romantic life story. His songs also were a lot easier to learn for beginning English students than most stuff by the Beatles (compare "It's Now or Never" to most of the tracks from the "White Album.")

Henry Newinn discovered Elvis sometime in the late 1950s. He remembers himself and a group of teenage friends staring in awe at the movie poster for "Jailhouse Rock."

"It looked like he was moving," Newinn says now. "We wished one day we could be like that."

After seeing the movie, Newinn grew out his hair, rolled up his jeans and carried cigarettes in his back pocket. He bought a few records and began learning songs. Eventually, he was rocking in his sister's nightclub.

American GIs came to the Rainbow Bar to listen and dance to Newinn's covers of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" and "That's All Right, Mama."

"It was kind of like stepping back home for a minute," says Tim Swearengin, of Houston, then a 19-year-old draftee.

Swearengin became a regular at the club during his 1966-67 tour of duty, and he and Newinn became friends. At his request, Swearengin's mother sent him several LPs -- Elvis, Johnny Rivers, Jimmie Rodgers -- so he could expand Newinn's song list.

Swearengin finished his tour of duty in November 1967. On his last day, he went to the Rainbow Bar and wrote down his parents' address and phone number in Houston. He remembers telling Newinn, "If you're ever in America, give me a call."

Swearengin got that call in the summer of 1975. Newinn and his family were among the hundreds of Vietnamese refugees housed temporarily in barracks at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, looking for American sponsors.

Newinn, who had worked for the U.S. Embassy, fled Saigon just a few hours before North Vietnamese tanks rolled into the city. His family jumped onto a crowded fishing boat and were picked up by a U.S. military ship. The pillowcase his wife had packed contained their son's diapers and a piece of paper with Swearengin's number.

After getting over the shock of hearing Newinn's voice again, Swearengin didn't hesitate. He and his parents invited the Newinns to Houston and agreed to sponsor them.

Elvis had come through.

By the time Vietnamese immigrants settled in the United States, they would face a new kind of Elvis, a King defined by fat jokes and rumors of drug abuse. Then, two years after the war ended, he was dead. But for many Vietnamese, it was the Elvis of their youth who remained.

Singer Elvis Phuong had emigrated to Paris in 1975, but the city just didn't have enough Vietnamese immigrants and Elvis fans to support his shows. In 1981 he moved to Orange County, Calif. -- the Vietnamese Motown, as it has come to be known.

In Houston, Newinn sang "Love Me Tender" to his son, John, as a lullaby. His collection of Elvis memorabilia grew to include oil paintings, clocks, bathroom accessories, a cookie jar, a phone and a park bench. He converted the garage into an Elvis Room, where his first velvet Elvis hangs today.

Newinn and his wife, Tania, say they had tried to conceive their son so that he would have the same birthday as Elvis, Jan. 8. John arrived three weeks early, on Dec. 14, 1973. Tania, who fell in love with Henry partly because he was a singer, said she felt John's birthday was close enough to be auspicious.

"I think when my child grows up, I want him to be like Elvis," Tania Newinn says.

She got her wish. Kinda. John Newinn, a student at Stephen F. Austin State University, has been doing Elvis ever since his successful appearance in a high school talent show. And he will do Elvis, he says, as long as possible, "until I can't shake my hips anymore."

No matter, he says, that times have changed and that younger Vietnamese Americans often see his act as funny. Or that his own sister, Carol, 19, thinks he should move on.

"I don't think it's a good idea to be an Elvis for the rest of his life," she says. "Being a singer is such a shaky job."

Elvis was good for her father, says Carol, who is also a performer, but she has decided to create an Asian American music identity for herself, using English pop songs with a few Vietnamese words thrown in, and Chinese instrumentals mixed with a techno beat.

Perhaps it's a sign that the Vietnamese immigrants are now settled into American society if their children want to reach back to their roots for some inspiration.

These are the fat years in the Vietnamese-Elvis affair. Those who loved him in their youth must watch him decline in the eyes of their children. In a way, says 38-year-old Minh-Hoa Ta, a San Francisco State University professor, the Elvis lovers are trapped in time.

If South Vietnam hadn't lost the war, the immigrants wouldn't still be stuck in the 1960s, says Ta, who is also co-director of the Vietnamese American Studies Center at San Francisco State. She remembers her own reaction at hearing "Love Me Tender" one night on television. Her Saigon childhood came rushing back: It was the tune she had heard constantly floating out of her older brother's room.

"They could never cross that time," she says of fellow immigrants. "It's something they lost when they were forced to leave Vietnam. That moment was something to treasure. . . That's my era. I got stuck, too."

Paolo, billed as one of Saigon's best Elvises, tried to continue his singing career in the United States. After a few years, he decided to quit and go into the nail salon business.

He found the subsequent waves of Vietnamese immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s didn't have as much of an interest in classic rock-and-roll. Many of them were from the countryside and, under the communist regime, had developed other musical tastes.

"They just listen to the old Vietnamese music," Paolo sniffs.

Last year, missing the recognition he once enjoyed, Paolo began to record songs again. He diversified his music, including Tommy Jones covers, French tunes and even some old Vietnamese classics, and released two compact discs.

But the Saigon days are gone.

Asked about Paolo, one freelance reporter for Vietnamese-language publications had trouble remembering him. She thought he was dead.

Elvis Phuong has lost some of his hair and his boyish figure. In 2000, angry callers to radio stations and newspaper editorials denounced him when he toured Vietnam during April, the month set aside to mark the fall of Saigon.

Today, most of the second generation of Vietnamese in the United States have never heard of him.

Phuong focuses on the homeland. He spends half the year touring Vietnam, where he lives in a new gated community next to the Saigon River. There, his audience falls into two categories: those who consider him a novelty because he's a Vietnamese American singer and those who remember his pre-1975 popularity. Many of his shows are sold out.

Henry Newinn also returned to Vietnam two years ago. Besides keeping Elvis's memory alive in the United States, he also dreams of helping to bring Elvis back to postwar Vietnam. During his trip home, a relative made an oil painting of Elvis that Newinn entered into the art contest at Graceland. It won second prize.

They are the true believers.

In an e-mail from Vietnam, Phuong says he is proud "that after so many years, the audience still loves me."

He dismisses the jokes about Elvis Presley. His idol's records, he says, are selling well.

In capital letters, he writes, "A legend never dies and will never die."