Kay Starr

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Kay Starr with Andy Mansfield (1968)

Kay Starr (born July 21, 1922 in Dougherty , Oklahoma , † November 3, 2016 in Beverly Hills , California ), a native of Katherine Laverne Starks, was an American jazz and pop singer.

Live and act

Kay Starr's father was an Iroquois , the mother of half Irish, half Native American descent. When the family moved to Dallas , the voice of little Katherine was noticed there. At the age of seven, she won a radio station's talent competition and got her own fifteen-minute radio show. There she sang pop and old-time music songs with piano accompaniment. At the age of ten, she was making $ 3 a night, a lot of money during the Great Depression .

Her father, who was a plumber, changed jobs frequently and so the family ended up in Memphis , Tennessee , where Kay Starr began singing more in the style of country and swing on the radio . During her time on the WMPS channel in Memphis, she and her parents decided to continue their career under the name of Kay Starr due to frequent misspellings of their name in fan letters . At the age of 15 she was hired by Joe Venuti for his orchestra , which performed in a nearby hotel. Since Kay Starr was still in junior high school at the time, her parents signed band leader Venuti to bring her home no later than midnight. In 1939 she recommended Venuti to Bob Crosby , in whose orchestra she appeared on the Camel Caravan Show and presented the title Memphis Blues ; after that she had a short guest appearance in the orchestra of Glenn Miller , where the first recordings were made. After graduating from high school , Kay Starr returned to work at Venuti, but the band split up in 1941.

The first recordings for Bluebird Records ( Babe Me and Love with a Capital You ) were made in 1939 ; In 1943 she sang in Wingy Manone ’s New Orleans Jazz Band , with whom she recorded If I Could Be with You , later she replaced Lena Horne in Charlie Barnet’s orchestra , with whom, forced by the record strike , she didn’t get a few tracks until March 1944 for Decca Records recorded (Share croppin 'Blues) . In 1945, a voice disorder forced her to take a longer break, which enabled her to continue working as a soloist. At the end of 1945 she performed in the Streets of Paris, a jazz club in Los Angeles ; During this time, several recordings were made - such as standards like Honeysuckle Rose , All of Me or There's a Lull in My Life for smaller labels with well-known jazz musicians like Joe Venuti, Barney Bigard , Willie Smith , Vic Dickenson and Zutty Singleton .

In 1947 her voice was back, but it sounded hoarse. She signed a record deal with Capitol Records at the time ; numerous hits were created such as I'm the Lonesomest Girl in Town and So Tired . Right at the beginning, jazz titles such as Too Busy and Irving Berlin's Spiritual Waiting at the End of the Road were created with Red Nichols . In early 1948 her popularity was great enough that she got an engagement at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago ; from May to June she performed at the New York Café Society , then at Paramount.

Kay Starr in January 1999

Her repertoire now included more country music titles.

From 1949 Capitol shifted more to the country side of Kay Starr, in 1950 they had success with the Pee-Wee-King number Bonaparte's Retreat with a mixture of Dixieland and Western Music , of which almost a million copies were sold. Then Capitol came up with the idea of adding gags like doo-wop- like background choirs to their recordings , such as the single I Waited a Little Too Long , to entire albums, such as even the jazzy LPs Rockin 'with Kay , Blue Starr and The Jazz Singer . With Wheel Of Fortune (1952), which Johnny Hartman had previously recorded for Victor, and The Rock And Roll Waltz (1956, on RCA Victor ), she had two number one hits in the US charts and received two gold records for it. The singer was represented in the hit lists between 1948 and 1962 and achieved a total of around 40 single successes. About this part of her work she said to Down Beat in 1950 : “It's my singing style that has changed. You can't make money as a jazz singer, and I was forced to go commercial with a young daughter to be fed and raised. I'm happy? What do you think? I became a jazz singer, and yet I never made any money from it. Do you think I like singing a song like 'Hoop-De-Doo'? "

In 1955 she moved to RCA-Victor , where she had the hit The Rock'n'Roll Waltz ; In 1957 she was once again in the top ten with My Heart Reminds Me . She returned to Capitol in 1959 and recorded four more "outstanding" jazz albums, Movin ', Movin' on Broadway (with veteran Van Alexander ), The Jazz Singer and finally I Cry by Night , Starr's only small-line album, including Ben Webster , in which she interpreted classics such as Baby Won't You Please Come Home , More Than You Know or Lover Man . But after 1962 the style of singing and music she favored slowly went out of fashion, Capitol Records dropped it and Kay Starr, like so many stars before and after her, found a grateful audience in the amusement parks of Las Vegas - off the charts. In 1968 she returned to jazz again and recorded an album with Count Basie , which, however, was affected by the arrangements by Dick Hyman . She remained active on stage until the 1990s and made records from time to time. Whether pop, jazz or country - the varieties were varied.

Kay Starr single Frying Pan

Discography

Albums under your own name

year title Top ranking, total weeks, awardChartsChart placements
(Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes) 		Remarks
UK UK
1959 Movin ' UK16 (1 week)
UK

More albums

  • 1955: In a Blue Mood (Capitol)
  • 1955: Blue Starr (Victor)
  • Rockin 'with Kay (RCA)
  • 1956: Kay Starr with the Hal Mooney Orchestra: The One and Only Kay Starr (RCA / Fresh Sound)
  • Moonbeams and Steady Dreams (Stash, compilation of radio recordings)
  • The Uncollected, Vol. 1 & 2 (Hindsight)

Albums as a band singer

  • Bob Crosby: Suddenly It's 1939 (Giants of Jazz)
  • Charlie Barnet: Big Band Bounce & Boogie (Affinity, 1944)
  • Nat King Cole: Jazz Encounters (Capitol, 1947–50; Classics, 1944–1945)
  • Red Norvo: The Complete Keynote Recordings and More (Definitive, 1944-45)

Singles

year Title
album 		Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements
(Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes) 		Remarks
UK UK US US
1952 Comes A-Long A-Love UK1 (16 weeks)
UK 		-
1953 Side by Side UK7 (4 weeks)
UK 		-
1954 Changing Partners UK4 (14 weeks)
UK 		-
Am IA Toy Or A Treasure UK17 (4 weeks)
UK 		-
1956 Rock and Roll Waltz UK1 (20 weeks)
UK 		US1 (23 weeks)
US
I've Changed My Mind A Thousand Times - US73 (4 weeks)
US
Second fiddle - US40 (10 weeks)
US
Love ain't right - US89 (1 week)
US
The Things I Never Had - US89 (3 weeks)
US
The Good Book - US89 (4 weeks)
US
1957 Jamie Boy - US54 (5 weeks)
US
A little loneliness - US73 (3 weeks)
US
My Heart Reminds Me - US53 (12 weeks)
US
1961 Foolin 'around - US49 (9 weeks)
US
I'll never be free - US94 (3 weeks)
US
1962 Four walls - US92 (4 weeks)
US

literature

Web links

Commons : Kay Starr  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ronald P. Smith: Have You Heard the News… . ( Memento of the original from October 21, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. oldiesmusic.com, accessed November 4, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.oldiesmusic.com
  2. ↑ cit. after Friedwald, p. 155.
  3. ↑ cit. after Friedwald, p. 156.
  4. ↑ a b Chart sources: UK US US before 1961
personal data
SURNAME Rigid, Kay
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Starks, Katherine Laverne (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz and pop singer
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Dougherty , Oklahoma
DATE OF DEATH 3rd November 2016
Place of death Beverly Hills , California