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The legendary Mr. Las Vegas, Wayne Newton is celebrating 50 Years on the Strip in Sin City with his new show "Once Before I Go." Part Native American, he was born in Roanoke, Va., and began performing at age 4. Newton, now 67, and his brother arrived in Las Vegas in the late 1950s and the rest is history. Running through April 24 at the Tropicana Hotel and Casino Las Vegas, his show is packed with memories and surprises. For tickets and information call 1-800-829-9034.
After more than 50 years of entertaining, has how you feel just before you go on stage changed over time?
I've been performing on stage live since I was 4 years old, and I don't remember ever being nervous about walking on stage. I remember some anxiety about lyrics needing to remember or a song I just learned or something like that. I think if there is any apprehension or trepidation, this show that I'm doing now probably causes me to think more before I walk out on stage than I ever have in my entire career. This show I'm doing now at the Trop, of course, is a great deal more theatrical than I have ever done. If you can imagine, we have tried to cram 50 years of being in Las Vegas into an hour and a half. [laughing] Therefore there are places I have to lead the audience instead of being led by the audience.
See the When you've sung a song thousands of times, what goes through your mind as those familiar lyrics are coming out of your mouth?
I probably should be locked up in a rubber room somewhere, but the things that go through my mind when I do certain songs -- for example, if you were to name a song like "Danke Schoen," the first thing that goes through my mind is the day I was recording that my cousin got killed in West Virginia. I got the news halfway through the recording session. That is something I've never told anybody. But that is so imprinted in my mind. The second thing that follows is when Bobby Darin played me the demonstration record of "Danke Schoen." It was being sung by a German baritone singer and being played at 331/3 RPMs, and Bobby jokingly, said to me, "OK, now I'm going to show you how it will sound when you record it." He sped it up to 78 RPMs.
As it was becoming clear that "Danke Schoen" was becoming your signature song, did you ever wonder why that song?
Many times in fact. It has been featured in 21 different motion pictures. Many, many times I have pondered that question because "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast," for example, sold 5 million copies out of the gate. The album went double platinum immediately as did "Red Roses." "Summer Wind" was a million seller, yet none of them have that resilience, that immediate recognition that "Danke Schoen" has.
When people first heard you on the radio, some thought you were a female singer. Did that bother you?
[Laughing] No. Actually, let me explain something. The first time I heard it on the air, I had flown into Los Angeles and was doing some PR stuff with a press agent, and he turned on WKFB, which was the big station in those days. The announcer said, "We have this brand new record and it's a big hit, and it's being sung by somebody by the name of Wayne Newton, but we all know it's actually Margaret Whiting recording under a different name." I laughed about it. But as I look back on it in retrospect, it probably wasn't that funny at the time. I realize I recorded that at such a time, that I did sound like a girl.
Have you had to develop a thick skin and was there any particular turning point that helped you do it?
I think everybody tries to develop that place that you go to that protects you no matter what you do in life. I had to realize that the way I sang and the way I sounded was totally different than anybody out there at the time. I had to just plain live with it.
Do you have any pre-show rituals or superstitions?
I say a prayer to myself right before I walk on stage every single night. I have done it from day one and I still do it. My wife knows that moment. I am very spiritual but I'm not overtly religious, when I say overtly it means it is such a personal thing to me. So I always just put my hand up to my forehead almost like I'm going to sneeze and I say a prayer like "God help me do the best I can do and bring some happiness into somebody's life." That's it.
In the beginning I read you and your brother were doing six shows a day.
That's how we started in Vegas. We came in 1959. May 16th was our opening day and we got hit immediately with six shows a night, six days a week. It was one of those things, at the risk of sounding corny, that nobody told us was difficult.
Spending most of your adult life in Vegas, did you gamble -- do you gamble?
I'm one of those people who probably gambles every day of my life when I wake up. I think we all do by crossing the street and getting on airplanes. [laughing] This is one for the books, too. I came here at 15. By the time I was 21 and old enough to gamble, I had never been to one of the tables. To this day I have never been to one of the gaming tables. I have been to a slot machine once. I've owned two casinos. I can tell you how they function. I can tell you which tables hold the majority of what's played on them and what percentage they should hold and on and on. I've held two gaming licenses, but I've never been to one of the tables. I think by the time I turned 21, I had seen so much of it. I had seen people try to sell me their rings and their watches and just to get enough gas to get home. By the time I turned 21, it didn't interest me.
Are you satisfied with how it has all turned out?
I've got news for you. It has turned out so far beyond what I ever imagined that it might turn out. I have lived a life that I wouldn't trade anything in the world for. I've had my downs. Everybody does in life. But the ups have been so much greater. I think maybe I'm one of the luckiest guys in the world in terms of most blessed when you think I get to go to work every day and do something I enjoy doing.
Mackenzie Carpenter's video program, "Omnivore," is available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.
