"Dancing With the Stars" just might be the ticket Wayne Newton has needed for years; a vehicle to let him turn the corner on his past.

The ABC hit starting Monday puts the Midnight Idol into ballroom dancing competition with tough rivals on all fronts: Floyd Mayweather in the macho man department, Disney's Sabrina Bryan for the pearly smile and even another Entertainer Who Feels Like a Family Member, TV queen Jane Seymour.

But don't underestimate Mr. Las Vegas' ability to go the distance. For years it's been clear that the only roadblock to Newton's continued popularity is his stubborn attempt to keep singing.

What's that you say? It sounds like someone at the next Starbucks table just muttered, "That's because he's a singer, stupid."

Wrong, Kemo Sabe.

Newton hasn't been able to hit the notes since at least 1995, when he explained in my first interview with him, "I had walking pneumonia for six months. ... It was nothing more than just fatigue and illness."

The accumulated damage to his vocal cords is understandable. Scroll through microfilm ads from the '70s, and you'll see shows routinely advertised at midnight (hence, the nickname) and sometimes 2:30 a.m. Newton also broke in as a teen novelty act in smoky Vegas lounges, and so missed the operatic training that taught Clint Holmes and Robert Goulet how to save their voices.

The Wayner explained his own keep-on-working technique in 1995: "The voice is a muscle." Strengthening it is "like lifting weights or anything else. And anytime you don't use it ... by virtue of being sick or just being off, is a lot worse on it than doing two shows a night."

That logic never seemed to bear fruit. The explanation would change over the years -- at one point, his publicist called it acid reflux -- but the Hoarse Whisperer rarely did. The needle measuring his vocal quality would waver from "Hound Dog Howl" to "respectable" (as I described his 2000 debut at the Stardust) but never into "good" territory.

Each time I would see his show I would think, "This is so easily avoided."

Most people who go see Wayne Newton these days don't think of him as a recording artist anyway. And we don't care if he can sing. We go because he's Wayne Newton. We love the black helmet hair, the cheesy smile, the corny jokes. It's one of the last connections to a Vegas that has nearly vanished.

All Newton had to do was adopt the format of his USO visits to the troops overseas: Come out, fake his way through maybe one song and then play the Bob Hope role, cracking jokes and introducing younger, more listenable co-stars.

In recent years, he has gone halfway down that track. In 2003, it took 45 minutes to get to the third song. An extended vamp on "Suspicious Minds" had Newton out in the house, greeting very nearly every single audience member.

But he always crossed that line. At some point there would come a ballad that would make fans squirm in their seats and feel sorry for him.

Ballroom dancing? It's more far-fetched than a segue into a stand-up career, a la Frank Sinatra in the 1957 film "The Joker is Wild," after gangsters cut his throat. But "Dancing" will give Mr. Las Vegas a national forum to do what he does best: be Wayne Newton.

Just hope they don't get carried away and ask him to sing.

Mike Weatherford's entertainment column appears Thursdays and Sundays. Contact him at 383-0288 or e-mail him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com.