PROFILE : Karaoke Cutter : Hairstylist Kyle Peraino entertains customers and fans with his crooning at his Thousand Oaks barbershop.

Kyle Peraino is about as close as Thousand Oaks will ever get to the Barber of Seville.

The 46-year-old hairstylist croons while he cuts. Warbles while he hair-weaves. Trills while he tints. Better that his Kyle and Co. Hair Salon in the Oakbrook Plaza mall be renamed. Beauty and the Beat, perhaps.

Every day, this teddy-bearish man with the sandy hair and close-cropped beard arrives for work and gets out the tools of his trade: scissors, tints, dyes, curlers--and microphone headset. Then, as the first customer of the day settles into position, music drifts from a nearby karaoke machine, and Peraino’s sweet, easy tenor wafts through the air:

“Start spreadin’ the newwwws.

I’m leavin’ todayyyy.

I want to be a part of it--

New York, New Yorrrk ...”

Or it could be “My Way.” Or “Witchcraft,” “Chicago,” “Strangers in the Night,” “Impossible,” “The Long and Winding Road.” Peraino even does a karaoke duet of “Unforgettable” with Natalie Cole.

Well, Nat King Cole he ain’t. But this barbershop-quartet-minus- three is no amateur, either.

“I’ve been a singer all my life,” said Peraino, sitting in the lobby of his pink and breezy salon. “I’ve worked Jersey. I’ve worked Vegas. I’m married. I’ve got a couple kids. I never wanted to go on the road. I figured, look, I’m never going to be Frank Sinatra. This karaoke machine is so small--it’s perfect for the salon. And I own the place, so no one’s going to tell me to shut up.”

Quite to the contrary, customers smile and tap their feet. Ladies with sticky goo on their heads close their eyes blissfully. Sometimes they sing along. Indeed, the only one who ever yells “Cut!” around Peraino’s place is the owner himself.

How did Kyle Peraino, Westlake resident since 1976, wind up styling songs and hair? The answer is found in Richfield Park, N.J., where Kyle’s dad worked as--you guessed it--a barber. He played guitar, too, and sometimes Kyle and his two brothers would stop by the shop to find Dad strumming between customers.

“It would have been a trick,” said Kyle, “for him to have played and cut hair at the same time.”

All three brothers got their haircutting licenses; Kyle went to a barbering school while his brothers were taught by their father. But Kyle was less inclined toward matters tonsorial than he was toward matters of the tonsils.

“I was singing at night in nightclubs, and I wasn’t cutting hair, and I really didn’t want to get my license,” Peraino said, taking a rare break from his 40-plus-hour workweek.

“My dad said, ‘Look, just get your license, you’ve got something to rely on. Who knows? Maybe in 20 years you won’t be singing.’ ”

Peraino went on to a healthy crooning career in New Jersey, he said, working all over the state in supper clubs and later singing in discos. In 1979, he said, he worked six weeks in the lounge of what was then the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. The stint was not renewed.

At about that same time he moved his family to Southern California and tried his hand as a businessman, opening up one of the San Fernando Valley’s first yogurt parlors. (“It was called the Yogurt Yen--worst thing I ever did. I gained 30 pounds.”)

With yogurt and Vegas not working out, Peraino fell back on the hairstyling license his dad made him get so many years ago--first in a Woodland Hills salon, and then in partnership with a friend at John of Italy in Thousand Oaks.

The shop became Kyle and Co. early this year. For the grand opening bash, Peraino, who still sings Saturday nights at the North Ranch Country Club in Westlake, imported his band. It went over so well that it gave him an idea. Why whistle while you work when you can . . . sing?

He went to an electronics store to investigate karaoke machines and tried one out.

“I had a damned crowd around me. They didn’t want me to leave. They wanted me to stay to advertise the thing for a whole day. I bought the machine.”

Today, the machine sits a few feet from his salon station. A nearby drawer overflows with CDs of karaoke sing-along material: “You Sing the Hits of Perry Como,” “Papa Loves to Mambo,” Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” a full complement of Beatles tunes, even Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.”

One number, it seems, is notably absent--the title song from “Hair.” (“Oh,” he said, “I like that. What a great concept!”)

Peraino’s eyes grew wistful as he remembered his father’s insistence that he keep his hairstyling license.

“I wish he could see what I’m doing. He passed away about 12 years ago. If he saw that I had my own place, and I was (doing all of this) in the salon, I think he would be delighted.”

The Singing Hairstylist, as he’s billed in clubs, gets mixed reviews from his immediate family. His 20-year-old daughter, Alexis, is “a little embarrassed’ by her dad’s show-biz side, Peraino said. Younger daughter Lorin, however, “thinks it’s great,” while Peraino’s wife, Vicky, a medical technologist, is “totally tone-deaf” and “does not like show business at all.”

Unanimous raves from customers and employees must offset his family’s uneven enthusiasm.

Kyle and Co. skin care cosmetician Blanca Gaeta: “We are really happy. I was surprised. He sings so good. All the songs he sings, I like it. Oh, I like (‘America’), the Neil Diamond song--it reminds me of when I come to this country. That one is my favorite.”

Receptionist Dorothy Blunt: “Everybody took to it. I used to live in San Francisco, and he sings ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco,’ so that’s my favorite. This is really a neat place to work. I’m from Detroit. Midwest people are really straight. This is truly L.A.--even in Thousand Oaks.”

Or consider this unsolicited comment from Thousand Oaks resident Lillian Garner, who stopped in at Kyle and Co. to get a color touch-up and found herself at a concert: “My husband and I go dancing every week, and that’s the type of music we love. If he’d have been here, he’d have gone crazy.”

Some people stop in for the music alone.

“You’d be surprised,” said Peraino, “how many friends of mine drop in, listen to a couple songs, have a cup of coffee, and then split.”

With that, Peraino joined the karaoke machine with a verse of “My Way” and returned to work on five-year client Denise DiFabbio, who was getting a hair-weave. Peraino’s voice was effortless, smooth--reminiscent of, well, somebody you can’t quite place.

A question was asked of him as he carefully slid sheets of foil under sections of DiFabbio’s hair, then painted them with sticky green stuff: Which singers does he admire?

“Oh, my favorites are Andy Williams, Tony Bennett, Sinatra, I like a lot of Neil Diamond, Perry Como, Barry Manilow,” Peraino said, missing a verse while the canned band played on.

“A lot of people say I sound like Neil Sedaka. And I do. If I sang ‘Breakin’ Up Is Hard to Do,’ you wouldn’t know whether it was him or me. Which isn’t chopped liver. He’s had a lot of hits!”

Maybe so. But Sedaka has never had the satisfaction of making a head of hair just a little more beautiful as he sang them.

“For what is a man?

What has he got?

If not himself

then he has nought. ...”