Anyone can be a star

 

When I was a magazine editor in the 1980s, I asked our video writer about that new karaoke craze.

 

“Aw, it may be popular in Japan, but it will never catch on here,” he said. Wrong!

 

Parties today often have karaoke events in which singers can pretend to be Celine Dion or Elvis Presley, not worried about making fools of themselves. You can find a karaoke version of almost everything on YouTube.

 

I was surprised to see a lot of older folks mimicking singers like Frank Sinatra or Dolly Parton at the daytime YMCA New Year’s party this year.

 

I tried karaoke for the first time 13 years ago at Cal-Neva Lodge in Reno, where the casino in my sister’s town had a karaoke night in front of dozens of people

 

As we waited for our turn, I had a nice friendly chat with the guy next to me. When I got up there, I couldn’t keep up with the words on the screen and stammered a lot. After my song, “What I Did for Love,” bombed, my new friend refused to talk to me. Well, what it happens in Reno, stays in Reno too, I guess.

 

My favorite karaoke place is the Cowboy-Up Bar in Virgilina, which I profiled in an article about 10 years ago. It’s a family-friendly place, and the owner, Alan Gatrell, is a former cop who won’t put up with any rowdiness. He has karaoke Fridays starting at 7 p.m.  Also offering karaoke are Badeaux’s in South Boston (7 p.m. Saturdays) and Pit Stop Pizza in Virgilina (7 p.m. Tuesdays).

 

I don’t have much of a repertoire in country music, Cowboy Up’s specialty. But my best song is “Singin’ The Blues” recorded as a country song in the 1950s by Marty Robbins and a pop song by Guy Mitchell.

 

One of the tricks of karaoke is to pick out songs in your key, which is usually provided in the range of the singer who made it famous. I love Michael McDonald’s hits and some songs by the Stylistics, but their notes are even above my high tenor notes. Tennessee Ernie Ford and Roger Miller were too low. I have heard more good singers screech on notes higher than they can manage in karaoke.

 

If I wanted to please the audience, I learned to forego one of my best songs, “What a Wonderful World” for faster moving pieces. On a ship cruise, I saw a very bad singer get a terrific response with “Sweet Caroline,” a karaoke crowd favorite (but not mine.)

 

Some karaoke hosts sing too much themselves or don’t really understand the music they offer. Once I wrote down “Summertime” and the host came up to me and said, “You can’t sing this!” “Why not?” I replied, wondering what they had against Broadway musicals.

 

“Because it is a duet,” he said. “It says here: From Porgy and Bess.” I sang it anyway.