"Can Karaoke Take Root in America?” asks a May 1992 Billboard headline. The article notes that, worldwide, “karaoke is a billion-dollar industry, but so far it’s little more than a ripple in the U.S.” It goes on to add that the novelty of the medium had nonetheless lured bar patrons to the mic.
By the year Billboard released that piece, Las Vegas’ Shiela Wright had earned herself the title “The First Lady of Karaoke” — a name Circus Circus’ marketing team had emblazoned on posters advertising the events Wright hosted. “Every single sportsbook monitor and television was lit up with karaoke,” Wright remembers of her time at the resort. “They even built a special stage for me.” In the 31 years since, she’s been a karaoke DJ (or KJ) at a laundry list of venues across Vegas. Now, having turned 60, she still KJs nearly every night of the week.
Wright’s karaoke career began with a call from her father in 1989. He was working in a promotional capacity with the now-defunct Japanese restaurant Kabuki House on Sahara when the eatery got its first karaoke machine. “Pioneer was making American laser discs at the time,” Wright explains. “You would have 14 songs on each side. For $300, you got 28 songs.”
Well aware of his daughter’s vocal talents, Wright’s father asked her to come to the restaurant and sing karaoke. When she first went and saw servers plugging in the songs, she thought, “It needs an emcee, it needs to be hosted. The singers need to be treated like they’re superstars. It’s a show, and nobody’s paying attention.”
After Wright began hosting karaoke at the restaurant, she was spotted by entertainment managers from Ellis Island, who brought her talents on the mic to their casino.
On a recent visit to The Phoenix, where Wright has hosted a weekly karaoke night for the past 16 years, it’s easy to spot what the Ellis Island managers saw in her. First, there’s the look. “I’m known for my shoes,” she tells me, flashing a pair of black velvet, bow-topped pumps. Once a tailor for J. Riggins, Wright learned to sew from her grandmother and has used the skill to hone her image. On stage last month, she donned a pink, three-piece suit replete with more than 3,000 Swarovski crystals.
In addition to fashion, Wright is even more attentive to her singers — among whom she has dozens of disciples. “I sit back all night long playing music for people and watching these amazing singers sing their hearts out,” Wright beams. “It doesn’t get any better.”
While the occasional inebriate may horrify — or entertain — at the mic, Wright is right about the quality of the singers she’s attracted to her events, some of whom have been following the KJ around for years. At The Phoenix, I meet a local who has shown up to Wright’s karaoke nights there for the past 15 years and a New York transplant who found a home in the karaoke community during his first year in Vegas.
“You could talk to 100 people here, and not one person would have a negative thing to say about Shiela,” says the trans- plant (who preferred not to give their name), before slaying a performance of a Stevie Ray Vaughan song.
Wright understood what karaoke could be 34 years ago: a show. And she’s right in the middle of it, never confined to the karaoke booth. “I also want to be out here where I’m easy-access, more inviting,” she says, hovering over a bedazzled laptop on which she burned her thousands of karaoke laserdiscs, a project that took six months.
For the valley’s indubitable karaoke queen, this is a labor of love. “I have the best job,” Wright says, her smile reflected in her mirror ball manicure.