Take a look at this article about Terry's career journey on Star-Telegram.com!

Dallas ventriloquist Terry Fator fulfills dream with Vegas show
Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2009

The title of singing ventriloquist Terry Fator’s new TV comedy special and DVD is Live From Las Vegas.

Those four words, Live From Las Vegas, have special meaning for the Dallas native. For Fator, who hit it big by winning America’s Got Talent in 2007, they represent a lifelong dream come true.

"I had been wanting to play Vegas since I was 15," says Fator, 44. "I just could not get anyone to notice me. At one point, I booked a corporate show, invited three producers, did the show and then asked them what they thought.

"All three said: 'You’re not Vegas material. You’ll never play Vegas.’ One of them said I wasn’t good-looking enough to be on a billboard. I was crushed. But I still believed I had something Vegas would love."

Look who turned out to be right. In February, Fator began a five-year gig as a five-night-a-week headliner at the Mirage Las Vegas. Now he’s one of the hottest tickets in town.

"If you keep trying, if you never give up the dream, anything is possible," Fator says. "I am living proof of that."

A one-hour version of Terry Fator: Live From Las Vegas premieres at 9 p.m. Friday on CMT. An expanded DVD version hits stores Tuesday.

We checked in with Fator last week:

How did you develop the gimmick that makes your act unique? What compelled you to do a ventriloquist act in which the puppets impersonate famous singers?

"I had been doing it on a modest scale for years. When I was in my 20s, I started a band, and I would have a puppet doing impressions of Elvis and Dwight Yoakam and different country singers. People loved it. They would come up afterward and say, 'Wow, it’s really cool to see that puppet doing Hank Williams Sr.’ But it didn’t really click for me until I came to Las Vegas, about four or five years ago, and I saw Danny Gans perform. I was watching the audience. They were just enamored by his impressions. He got a huge standing ovation at the end. And I thought, 'I can do every voice he does, and I can do it without moving my lips.’ That was the epiphany moment. So I put a show together where every puppet did impressions."

Before that, and before America’s Got Talent, what was your career like?

"I was performing at schools, small festivals. Little, little things. We’re talking, like, a show for 25 first-graders. But I still said, 'I want to be the best in the world, even if the whole world doesn’t know it.’ So I worked and worked and never stopped working. I figured, even if I’m just performing for first-graders, in 60 years, I want them to say, 'I saw the best ventriloquist I ever saw when I was in first grade.’ So I was doing it for my own pride and my own sense of self-accomplishment. Then I found the venue of America’s Got Talent and everything changed."

In your show, you do a Bee Gees number and then explain that you sing one song without the puppets so fans will know you sing, too. That’s a joke, of course, but how much truth is in it?

"It is a joke, but it’s not a joke. People actually would come up to me and say, 'Wow, I didn’t realize that you could sing!’ Not that I’m commenting on their intelligence. Actually, what’s happening is they’re paying me the highest compliment. They’re telling me I did a really good job bringing those characters to life."

Of the puppets you work with, is one your favorite? Might it be Cowboy Walter? Or Winston the Impersonating Turtle? Or is it too hard to choose?

"Walter T. Airedale, the cowboy, is my favorite. And I can say with 100 percent confidence that the other puppets are not going to complain — unless I want them to."

Why are the top ventriloquists in the business today all from Texas?

"I have no idea. But I would say three of the top four ventriloquists are from North Texas: myself, Jay Johnson and Jeff Dunham. Also, Ronn Lucas, who The New York Times named the best ventriloquist in the world back in the late ’80s, is from El Paso. How amazingly odd, this trend. But I would add that, if someone wants to be the next big-name ventriloquist, maybe he should move to Texas!"

'Terry Fator: Live From Las Vegas’

9 p.m. Friday on CMT
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