Meanwhile, 13 miles away in the Mendenhall Valley, karaoke host Louie Rogers cycled through his usual group of regulars at G.W. Teal.

All told, roughly 100 voices rang out Saturday night. They sang Neil Diamond. They covered Shania Twain. They bellowed and serenaded and paid homage to their heroes, because that's what you do at a Juneau bar.

Karaoke is the great equalizer, and any night of the week, there's at least two places in town where you can grab hold of the microphone.

David Sheakley / Juneau Empire   Karaoke master: Louie Rogers dials in the sound for a singer Saturday, Nov. 3, at G.W. Teal.

Yes, just 20 years ago, the art form was a mere curiosity.

Popularized in Japan in the early 1970s, karaoke - a derivation of the Japanese phrase "empty orchestra" - spread through East and Southeast Asia before gaining notoriety in the United States in the mid-1980s.

The now-defunct, Japanese-American-owned City Cafe - then located across South Franklin Street from the present-day Mount Roberts Tramway - is thought to be the first business in town to acquire a karaoke machine.

That was sometime in the mid-1980s, Rogers said. He still uses two of the cafe's large MPX speakers as monitors. They used to hang from the restaurant's ceiling.

Soon after, the Westmark Hotel Juneau - now the Goldbelt Hotel Juneau - purchased its own equipment. Around the same time, another machine showed up in the bingo room of the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall.

"My wife used to play bingo regularly, and she said, 'They've got a karaoke machine over there,'" Ben Jackson Sr. said. "I said, 'What the heck is that?'"

David Sheakley / Juneau Empire   Song sign-up sheets stack up at Rogers' karaoke corner. Rogers has a trademark rule: "If a song has been sung by somebody, I don't let somebody else sing it. We don't need to hear the same song by three people a night. We don't need people saying, 'I do it better than he or she does.'"

Jackson first saw karaoke in the late 1980s at the Mi Casa Lounge in the Travelodge-Juneau Airport Hotel, where Danny Von started hosting on weekends.

A longtime one-man band in town, Von was a legally blind albino who spent a portion of his monthly disability payment on karaoke discs. He started to incorporate the discs into his solo act, then began putting on karaoke contests at Mi Casa.

Jackson dominated.

"I was the only Native, and the place was jam-packed," Jackson said. "It was mostly white guys, white ladies. Good singers. My wife and I were eating all over town just on me entering contests and stomping everybody."

Rogers also was part of that scene.

He saw Von host at Mi Casa, then watched him for six months at the Sandbar. Rogers started thinking about converting his own one-man act to karaoke.

David Sheakley / Juneau Empire   Addressing the audience: Host Louie Rogers talks to the crowd at G.W. Teal. Rogers says Juneau has more good singers than bad singers.

"My hands didn't want to play guitar," said Rogers, 62. "I could entertain a lot more people with karaoke than I could with a single act."

Rogers soon took over at Mi Casa. He quickly instituted his trademark rule:

"If a song has been sung by somebody, I don't let somebody else sing it," Rogers said. "We don't need to hear the same song by three people a night. We don't need people saying, 'I do it better than he or she does.'"

Thus began the longest karaoke-run the town has seen. Rogers has invested thousands into his karaoke gear over the year, and even has his own customized karaoke van. In the early days, he used to wheel stacks of laser discs into the bars. Now, all the songs are stored on small hard drives.

"I don't care if you sing like a dying calf in a hailstorm, I'm going to tell you did a good job, and I'm going to encourage you to sing some more," Rogers said.

"We have more good singers in this town than we have bad ones," he said. "I got to Juneau playing music. It turned into karaoke, and I'm a blessed individual."

David Sheakley / Juneau Empire   A singing legend: Ben Jackson Sr., a Juneau karaoke legend since the 1980s, was a regular for many years until about six years ago when he became fed up with college kids who would scream into the microphone with little regard for the singer or the art of karaoke. He made an appearance Saturday, Nov. 3, at G.W. Teal.

"I've been blessed and shocked at the same time, all these years, at how many people come out to sing," Rogers said.

"You could have told me that I'd be my age, singing karaoke and getting people to sing, and I would have told you that you were nuts," Rogers he. "I'm an entertainer. I have to do my thing.

"But the more I put Louie on the back burner and make karaoke the big thing for everybody, it's just like the Bible says: 'You put others first and things go real well.' It certainly has in my life."

Jackson tried to talk the old owner of the Viking, Lil Harris, into buying a karaoke machine. But the bar wouldn't bite. Jack Tripp bought a machine when he took over the Viking in 1994 and quickly hired Jackson, who sang Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World" for his audition.

The place was packed on Jackson's first night at the lounge. But most of the crowd was too shy to sing.

"We had slips out there, and I said, 'Don't be shy. I know this is all new to you. Don't worry about it if you don't how to sing."

Friday nights turned into a one-man revue, as Jackson entertained the reticent audience. People would show up just to hear him sing.

He imitated Elvis, Aaron Neville, Louis Armstrong, Tony Williams and The Platters, Paul Anka, Bobby Darin, Roy Orbison, Jimmy Clanton and more. He had so many voices, people accused him of lip-synching.

By Saturdays, his voice would be shot.

"Karaoke made my voice even better because I was singing every weekend," Jackson said.

"One time this guy said, 'Whoa, he sounds a lot like Elvis but sure as hell doesn't look like him,'" he said. "I'm not up there trying to look like Elvis. I'm just trying to honor the guy by singing one of his songs."

Soon the shyness went away, and singers started coming out of the woodwork. Jackson would sing three tunes at the start of the night to set the levels, then turn the audience loose.

"I knew everybody's voice, and if they didn't know how to sing, I'd give them extra reverb or echo," Jackson said. They sounded good, and everybody listened. Every three to four seconds, there was a new singer. As soon as they were done, I'd have the next person out there."

The Viking was voted the top karaoke spot in Alaska in 2000, Jackson said. It's acclaim had spread around the country. Singers would drop in from Anchorage, Seattle and Chicago - telling Jackson his reputation had spread.

"I know how to sing, and singing does not come from (the throat)," Jackson said. "Singing comes from your abdomen. You put air in there, and you just pass it through your vocal chords. That's the reason why I can do Roy Orbison. If I want to get higher, I push more air through my vocal chords.

"You can tell when a person is singing from (the throat)," he said.

The following year - fed up with college kids who would scream into the microphone with little regard for the singer or the art itself - Jackson quit.

• Korry Keeker can be reached at 523-2268 or korry.keeker@juneauempire.com.