The pop legend reprised the Elvis drag she first donned in the video for her 1995 single "Walking in Memphis" for the charity concert.
Cher had the audience at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre all shook up on Thursday when she took the stage at the 9th annual Love Rocks NYC benefit concert dressed as Elvis Presley.
"One of the great thrills of my life is knowing our next performer," Whoopi Goldberg said by way of introduction. "I'm not going to go into all the information, I'm simply going to stand here and say, Cher."
The pop legend born Cherilyn Sarkisian then began singing the opening lyrics to "Walking in Memphis," her 1995 cover of the song by Marc Cohn. The video for "Walking in Memphis," which features Cher in a dual role as herself and in drag as the King, played on a big screen in the background as Cher finally walked out, dressed in the same pinstriped suit with slicked-up hair.
The "If I Could Turn Back Time" singer, 78, performed three songs during her Love Rocks NYC set. She performed in her Elvis drag for the "Walking in Memphis" number, then changed outfits for her next, 2001's "(This Is) A Song for the Lonely," and again for the closing song, her dance club anthem "Believe."
Love Rocks NYC's primary beneficiary is God's Love We Deliver, a not-for-profit organization that was founded in 1985 at the height of the AIDS pandemic. The organization provides medically tailored meals and nutrition services to over 14,000 New Yorkers facing a wide variety of diagnoses. The annual Love Rocks NYC concert also benefitted the Los Angeles-based Food Is Medicine Coalition peer organization Project Angel Food in response to the wildfires that devastated the city earlier this year.
Keys opened the evening's events with a stirring rendition of Roberta Flack's immortal 1973 hit, "Killing Me Softly with His Song." Flack died on Feb. 24 at the age of 88, after being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2022. Nearly the full roster of performers -- including Cher -- returned to the stage for the grand finale: a foot-stomping sing-along to Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground."
Though Cher and Presley did occupy many of the same spaces while the "Dark Lady" singer was just starting out and the "Blue Suede Shoes" crooner was at the height of his powers, they never collaborated on a song or even shared a stage.
But Cher did discuss turning down a date request from the King on a May episode of The Jennifer Hudson Show. "It was because I just was, I was nervous, and I knew the people around him," she said, "And it wasn't that they were bad people, it's just that I was kind of nervous of his reputation. I'm really shy when I'm not working, and kind of shy around men."