Kay Starr, was born on July 21st 1922 in Dougherty, Oklahoma by the name of Katherine La Verne Starks. Kay's father Harry was a full-blooded Iroquois Indian and her mother, Annie, was of mixed Native American and Irish descent. While Kay was still small, her family moved to Dallas, Texas in search of work. Harry found work installing water sprinkler systems in buildings and Annie started raising chickens.

KAY: "Mother raised chickens. We had a hen house, and when it was time for the hens to roost, I wold pretend like I was playing piano with an old apple box and I would sing to them."

Kay's Aunt Nora recognized the talent in the young girl, and presueded Annie into entering Kay in WRR-Dallas' weekly talent contest (at Dallas' Melba Theater).

KAY: "I didn't have enough sense to be scared. It was a contest to promote yo-yos. And i didn't have a yo-yo, so this ment that they'd give me a yo-yo and I'd get to sing, which I loved to do, and I didn't care why I did it. So, they gave me a yo-yo about a week in advance. I wasn't very good with it, but I was good enough to do straight up-and-down, 'See the World.' And then I learned to do 'Around the World.' Those were to only tricks I could do, but I could do 'em singin' "Potatoes are Cheaper/Tomatoes are Cheaper/Now's The Time To Fall In Love." I won third prize, which was two tickets to come back and watch somebody else be foolish. But it was during the depression, and everything you got for nothing, well, you prized it."

The following week Kay won. Then Kay continued to win the contest every week until the radio station retired her by giving Kay her own weekly 15 minute program, billed as 'Katherine starr.'

The Starks soon relocated again, this time to Memphis, Tennessee. In Memphis Kay secured a radio show on station WREC , as well as a regular spot on 'Saturday Night Jamboree' broadcast on WMPS. It was at this time that many misspellings of her name promted Kay and her parents to change her name from Katherin Starks to Kay Starr.

Peabody Hotel in Memphis where Kay first met Joe Venuti.

When jazz bandleader and violinist Joe Venuti came to Memphis in 1937 for an engagement at the Peabody Hotel, he was suprised to find that his contract required him to have a female vocalist (which he did not have). Venuti's road manager had heard Kay on the radio and suggested her to Venuti, who went to Kay's home and discussed the possibility of hiring her to Harry and Annie. Venuti was so impressed with Kay that he asked her parents if she might tour with the band that summer. Since Kay was not yet 15 years old, it was agreed Annie should also come along.

KAY: "That summer, Joe Venuti asked my parents if I could travel with the band. Well, of course my mother loved the idea! She went with me. But because she's only seventeen years older than i am, joe said, 'We're going to be working in hotels where they serve cocktails and things, we can't tell them how old she is. We won't lie, but if they don't ask, don't volunteer!' So we played a game. My mother was my sister. This was a wonderful game for a twelve-and-a half year old. And my mother loved it, because it made her seem much younger, and still got a chance to look after me and supervise what i was doing."

Kay and Joe Venuti

Kay sang with Venuti for two years. In June 1939, in an attempt to further her career, Joe Venuti pitched Kay’s talents to Gil Rodin manager of Bob Crosby’s Orchestra. At the time Crosby needed a female vocalist for his upcoming appearances on the Camel Caravan radio program. Kay got the job and traveled to New York where she made her network radio debut singing “Memphis Blues,” but two weeks later she was replaced by Helen Ward when management decided the program needed a more “seasoned” performer. Also in 1939 Kay briefly replace the ailing Marion Hutton, who had collapsed from exhaustion, in the Glenn Miller Band. Kay was noticed walking through the loby of a musician's hotel in New York, where she was staying with Bob Crosby's band.

KAY: "Glenn Miller okayed it for me to come and sing with the band for two weeks. Well, I had to get an okay from my father who had to get an okay from the school board. But, everything was worked out, and I sang with the Glenn Miller Band for two weeks at the Glen Island Casino. It was like a movie set! I'd never worked a place like that! [in] Oklahoma we don't have that kind of water! We were right on the New England Sound. When I got up to sing, my God! I ws overlooking the water... and the moon... I thought it was just wonderful!"

Kay stepped in and it was during those two weeks that, along with the Miller Band, she recorded her first record- "Baby Me" backed with "Love With A Capitol You". The two songs were arranged in a higher key to suite Marion Hutton, a range that Kay was not comfortable with.

KAY: "I sounded like a jazzed-up alfalfa on that, at the time I didn't know what a 'range' was, besides something you cooked on, or something that cattle grazed on."

When her two weeks with the Miller Orchestra were up, Kay and her mother returned to Memphis where Kay finished high school. Following her graduation in 1940, Kay moved to California and returned to work with Joe Venuti. This lasted until 1941 when the general draft call-up for World War II forced Venuti to break up his band. At this time Kay briefly sang with Wingy Manone’s New Orleans Jazz Band until she was hired away by Charlie Barnet late in 1943 to replace Lena Horne.

Kay onstage with Charlie Barnet Orchestra

Kay stayed with Barnet until 1945, when fatigue and overwork developed into pneumonia causing her to collapse during an army camp show. Upon recovering she realized she had lost her voice, and rather than risk a surgical operation which may have altered her entire singing style, she treated her vocal cords and refrained from speaking ( let alone singing) for six months. Following Kay’s professional hiatus, she returned with a deeper and huskier voice that has since become her trademark. Settling in Los Angeles, Kay began her career as a solo performer and had no trouble finding work with the reputation she garnered from her time with Charlie Barnet’s Orchestra. After making a name for herself at Hollywood’s Streets Of Paris and other nightclubs, Kay was invited by Dave Dexter of Capitol Records to sing two songs as a part of Capitol's "Volumes of Jazz" series. She was signed to the label shortly thereafter in 1947.

Kay found herself struggling for attention alongside other Capitol female singers like Peggy Lee, Margaret Whiting, Jo Stafford and Ella Mae Morse. An American Federation of Musician's strike was set to occur, so Capitol decided to extensively record its artists for future release. Dexter asked Kay to submit a list of songs she wanted to record.

KAY: "I wrote them down and handed the list in, but it had to go through Peggy Lee and all the other girls, and when I got it back every song had a line through it. What I was doing, really, was finding songs for them."

Kay met with friend, cornetist Red Nichols, at the Hangover Club on Hollywood Boulevard and explained her dilemma. Nichols came to her rescue the following day by rummaging in his home piano bench and digging out sheet music for several obscure jazz age songs that fit Starr's style.

Kay turned in this list and it came back unmarked. She proceeded to record on of the songs, 'I'm the Lonesomest Gal in Town', at her first Capitol session on September 11th 1947 (this recording was not released, however, until 1950). Kay's first release single, "You've Got To See Mamma Ev'ry Night" failed to chart, although the next release "You Were Only Foolin' (While I Was Falling in Love)", a country song, reached number 16 on the billboard pop chart. It was Russ Morgan's "So Tired" that became Kay's first top ten hit. The musician's union had called strike in 1948, forcing the labels to either cut songs acappella, or have the instrumental tracks recorded out of the country, then flown in for mixing. Capitol snuck some trombone players (who to this day remain nameless) into a makeshift studio on the second floor of an office building for the session.

Kay's first national magazine cover March 1948

On a hometown visit to Dougherty, Oklahoma, Kay heard a "fiddle song" being played on a juke box in a local honky-tonk. It ws an instrumental called "Bonaparte's Retreat", by Pee Wee King. Kay found the melody so infectious she wanted to record it. She called Roy Acuff's publishing office in Nashville, and ended up speaking to Acuff himself.

KAY: "I told him I was interested in recording it, and he replied 'Well go right ahead, little lady, and record it.' He thought I was a fiddle player! I told him I was a singer, and that if there were some words to that song, I could just about guarantee that I would record it, because I loved it."

Acuff supplied her with some newly written lyrics, and Kay's "Bonaparte's Retreat" shot to number 4 on the charts, becoming a near million seller. Her next releases were also in country tradition: "Mississippi" and "I'll Never Be Free" (a duet with Tennessee Ernie Ford).

KAY: "When Ernie and I sang the first eight bars together, we fell in love, because we are country. You have to be country to sing a song like that."

On the night of January 17th 1952, Kay was awoken from sleep by a telepone call from a Capitol exec, who instructed her to rush to the label's studios on Melrose Avenue for an immediate recording session. Capitol was racing with another label to rush-release a new song by Bennie Benjamin and George Weiss. When Kay arrived at the studio, producer Lee Gillette and arranger Harold Mooney quickly taught her the song, while charts of the arrangement were scribbled and passed to the session men. Also present in the studio was an 'instrument' necessary for the song's novel intro: a wheel of fortune.

KAY: "It took longer to get the right sound out of that wheel of fortune than it did for us to record the song. It had to be timed correctly and it had to be in the same key."

Kay's double-tracked vocal version of "Wheel of Fortune" was released almost at the same time as two other versions, but it climbed straight to the top of the charts and stayed there for ten weeks. This success brought Kay Starr worldwide fame. Kay recorded over two dozen top forty successes for Capitol between 1948 and 1955. Songs like: I Waited A Little Too Long, Kay's Lament (with the Lancers), Fool Fool Fool (with the Lancers), Comes A-Long A-Love, Side By Side, Half A Photograph and Allez-Vous-En.

In 1955, Kay's Capitol contract was up for renewal. Capitol was not, in Kay's view, making any serious attempt to talk her into re-signing, so she accepted an offer from RCA Records.

KAY: "They (Capitol Records) knew I grew up in country music, and they knew I knew how to sig jazz and blues...and they figured I could sing popular music, so they figured whatever's left over, if it needs to be recorded, we'll just throw it in her basket!"

Kay's first release with RCA was the first number one single by a female vocalist in the rock era, "Rock and Roll Waltz".

KAY: "I can't read music, but I read these lyrics (Rock and Roll Waltz), and I thought they were playing a joke on me. It was difficult for me to sing because it was like a nursery rhyme. When it became a hit, it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life."

"All I could see ws 'One, two and then rock - one, two and then roll,' and I thought 'Jesus, I'm gonna have to take a Dramamine to record this song! It ended up that finally, I found out they were not kidding, and this again was something we were going to cover, so I got in there and did it. It never occurred to me that it wold be anything, because it was not what I considered my kind of song. When the damn thing hit, I was in Jamaica! I was out playing with my boyfriend. My attorney called and said, 'I hope you're not having too good a time, because you gotta come back! Your record, Rock & Roll Waltz just hit a million in two weeks!' So, I had to cut the vacation short and come back and get my gold record."

Kay stayed with RCA until 1959, when she returned again to Capitol Records. By 1959, the era of the long playing concept album organized around a particular theme was in full flower. Artists like Frank Sinatra, Nat Cole and Kay Starr were devoting their attention to the LP format, increasingly abandoning the singles market to the adolescent tastes of a younger generation of record buyers. During this period Kay would record several such albums starting with Movin’ (1959), an up-tempo jazz album. Considered by many to be the period of her best work, she would record several notable albums like Losers, Weepers…(1960) and I Cry By Night (1962) in the jazz/blues genre, as well as a country album aptly titled Just Plain County (1962).

Like many pop vocalists of the 1940s and 1950s, Kay’s popularity began to wane in the 1960s as musical tastes changed with the advent of ‘Rock and Roll.’

KAY: "When they brought in rock, hard rock and acid rock, I thought God was trying to tell me it was my turn to get off stage."

After departing from Capitol Records for a second time in 1966, Kay continued touring concert venues in the U.S. and England, along with performing at the Riveria, Sands and Fremont Hotels in Las Vegas, and Harrah’s in Reno, Nevada. She also recorded several jazz and country albums on small independent labels, most notably her 1968 pair-up album with Count Basie, and Back To The Roots an underrated and overlooked collection of jazz classics. Though Kay has cut back on her appearances since the 1970s in order to devote more time to her family life.

In the 1981 Kay released her album "Kay Starr" and the single 'The Feeling Doesn't Go Away/He Will Call Again'. Also in the 80's Kay joined the 'The 4 Girls 4' - which had blown away audiences in the late seventies and early eighties. Kay came to the group after it had disbanded and re-grouped calling themselves 'The New 4 Girls 4'. The 'New' girls were: Kay Starr, Rosemary Clooney, Helen O'Connel and Martha Raye.

KAY: "I didn’t have any sisters or brothers so I hesitated even joining the group for about two years, Clooney finally said to me, ‘What the hell’s the matter with you?!’ And I explained to her, ‘I don’t have any siblings and I don’t know what I’m getting into. I don’t want to get in there and make a mess of things.’ She said, ‘Don’t you understand? We wouldn’t be asking you to do it if we didn’t think you were the one.’

KAY: "So then I said, ‘Well, let me try it for a week.’ I joined them in St. Louis and I said, ‘Two things: I’ll join you for the week and we’ll see if we get along. The second thing is, I want to go on first. Rosemary said, ‘Now I know you’re crazy. Nobody ever wants to go on first.’ I said, ‘I do.’ She said, ‘Do you mind telling me why?’ And I said, ‘If I go on first, by the time everybody else has sung, they’ll have forgotten how much they dislike me! And when I do the finale I’ll be accepted as one of the 4 Girls 4. It’ll be tough enough to be considered a girl. You girls can be whatever you want to be, but I’m a grandma and I’m a woman!"

Kay continued with "The New 4 Girls 4" until the end of it's run. In 1993 she toured the United Kingdom as a part of Pat Boone's 'April Love Tour'.

Most recently her first "live" album, Live At Freddy's (recorded at Freddy's Supper Club in New York City on May 22nd and 23rd 1986) was released in 1997.

Kay's Live Album 1997

Kay also appeared on Tony Benett's "Playin' with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues" in 2001. Kay duets with Benett on "Blue And Sentimental", which Kay did solo in 1957 on her album "Blue Starr". Kay & Tony's duet on "Blue And Sentimental" proves that Kay still has the energy to give you chills!

KAY: "I like the songs that have to do with life. It has always been my theory that a singer, male or female, is no more than an actor or actress set to music. They are only as good as the stories they tell."

Kay Starr has always considered herself a saloon singer who tells a story with each song. To Kay's fans, she is a saloon singer and much, much more.

We Love You, Kay.

Jason Heath-Fitzgerald
January 2005