Kay Starr American Pop & Jazz Singer Original Photograph 1968

Description

Jane Powell Actress Husband Jim Fitzgerald Daughter Lindsay Age 13 Photograph
Original photograph...this is not a copy........
Kay Starr
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kay Starr
Starr in 1999
Background information
Birth name
Katherine Laverne Starks
Born
July 21, 1922
Dougherty, Oklahoma
, United States
Died
November 3, 2016
(aged 94)
Beverly Hills, California
, United States
Genres
Traditional pop
,
jazz
Occupation(s)
Singer
Years active
1939–2016
Labels
Capitol
,
RCA Victor
Website
Official website
Katherine Laverne Starks
(July 21, 1922 – November 3, 2016), known as
Kay Starr
, was an American
pop
and
jazz
singer
who enjoyed considerable success in the 1940s and 1950s. She is best remembered for introducing two songs that became #1 hits in the 1950s, "
Wheel of Fortune
" and "
The Rock And Roll Waltz
".
Starr was successful in every field of music she tried:
jazz
,
pop
and
country
. But her roots were in jazz.
Billie Holiday
, considered by many the greatest jazz singer of all time, called Starr "the only white woman who could sing the
blues
."
[1]
Contents
[
show
]
Life and career
[
edit
]
Kay Starr was born Katherine Laverne Starks on a
reservation
in
Dougherty, Oklahoma
.
[2]
Her father, Harry, was a full-blooded
Iroquois
Indian
; her mother, Annie, was of mixed Irish and American Indian heritage.
[2]
When her father got a job installing water sprinkler systems for the Automatic Sprinkler Company, the family moved to
Dallas, Texas
. There, her mother raised
chickens
, whom Kay serenaded in the
coop
. Kay's aunt Nora was impressed by her 7-year-old niece's singing and arranged for her to sing on a Dallas
radio
station,
WRR
. First she took a talent competition by storm, finishing 3rd one week and placing first every week thereafter. Eventually she had her own 15-minute show. She sang
pop
and
"hillbilly"
songs with a piano accompaniment. By age 10 she was making a night, which was quite a salary during the
Great Depression
.
When Starr's father changed jobs, the family moved to
Memphis, Tennessee
, where she continued performing on the
radio
. She sang "Western swing music," still mostly a mix of
country
and
pop
. During this time at Memphis radio station WMPS, misspellings in her fan mail inspired her and her parents to change her name to Kay Starr.
At 15, she was chosen to sing with the
Joe Venuti
orchestra. Venuti had a contract to play in the Peabody Hotel in
Memphis
which called for his band to feature a girl singer, a performer he did not have at the time. Venuti's road manager heard Starr on the radio and recommended her to his boss although she was still in junior high school and her parents insisted on a midnight curfew.
Though she had brief stints in 1939 with
Bob Crosby
and
Glenn Miller
(who hired her in July of that year when his regular singer,
Marion Hutton
, was sick), Starr spent most of the next few years with Venuti until he dissolved his band in 1942. It was, however, with Miller that she cut her first two recordings: "Baby Me" and "Love with a Capital You". They were not a great success, in part because the band played in a key that, while appropriate for Marion Hutton, did not suit Kay's vocal range.
Kay Starr in a 1945 advertisement
After finishing high school, she moved to Los Angeles and signed with
Wingy Manone
's band; then from 1943 to 1945 she sang with
Charlie Barnet
's ensemble, retiring for a year after contracting
pneumonia
and later developing nodes on her
vocal cords
as a result of fatigue and overwork.
A singer ... is no more than an actor set to music.
Kay Starr, 1967 interview
[3]
In 1946 Starr became a soloist, and in 1947 signed a contract with
Capitol Records
. The label had a number of female singers signed up including
Peggy Lee
,
Ella Mae Morse
,
Jo Stafford
and
Margaret Whiting
, so it was hard to find her a niche of her own. In 1948 when the
American Federation of Musicians
was threatening a strike, Capitol wanted to have each of its singers record a back list for future release. Being junior to all these other artists meant that every song Starr wanted to sing was taken by her rivals on the label, leaving her a list of old songs which nobody else wanted to record.
Around 1950 Starr made a trip back home to Dougherty and heard a fiddle recording of
Pee Wee King
's song,
"Bonaparte's Retreat"
. She liked it so much that she wanted to record it, and contacted
Roy Acuff
's publishing house in
Nashville, Tennessee
, and spoke to Acuff directly. He was happy to let her record it, but it took a while for her to make clear that she was a singer, not a fiddler, and therefore needed to have some lyrics written. Eventually Acuff came up with a new lyric, and "Bonaparte's Retreat" became her biggest hit up to that point, with close to a million sales.
In 1955, she signed with
RCA Victor Records
. However, at this time,
rock-and-roll
was displacing the existing forms of pop music and Kay had only two hits, the aforementioned, which is sometimes considered her attempt to sing rock and roll, and sometimes as a song poking fun at it, "
The Rock And Roll Waltz
". She stayed at RCA Victor until 1959, hitting the top ten only once more with "My Heart Reminds Me", then returned to Capitol.
Kay Starr with Andy Mansfield on
AFRTS
'
America's Popular Music
(1968)
Most of Starr's songs had jazz influences, and, like those of
Frankie Laine
and
Johnnie Ray
, were sung in a style that anticipated the rock and roll songs that followed. These included her smash hits "
Wheel of Fortune
" (her biggest hit,
number one
for 10 weeks), "Side by Side",
[3]
"The Man Upstairs", and "Rock and Roll Waltz". One of her biggest hits was her version of "
(Everybody's Waitin' For) The Man with the Bag
", a
Christmas
song that quickly became a holiday favorite.
[4]
[5]
The song has remained popular over the years and has been covered by many artists, including
Vonda Shepard
, who performed the song on an
Ally McBeal
episode of the same name.
[6]
After rock-and-roll swept older performers from the charts, Starr subsequently appeared in such television series as
NBC
's
Club Oasis
, mostly associated with the bandleader
Spike Jones
. However, Starr recorded several albums, including
Movin’
(1959), an up-tempo jazz album. Others included
Losers, Weepers…
(1960) and
I Cry By Night
(1962) in the jazz/blues genre, as well as a country album entitled
Just Plain Country
(1962).
After departing from Capitol Records for a second time in 1966, Starr continued touring concert venues in the US and the UK. She also recorded several jazz and country albums on small independent labels, including a 1968 album with
Count Basie
,
How About This
and
Back to the Roots
(1975). In the late 1980s she was featured in the revue
3 Girls
with
Helen O'Connell
and
Margaret Whiting
, and in 1993 she toured the United Kingdom as part of
Pat Boone
’s
April Love
Tour. Her first "live" album,
Live At Freddy's
, was released in 1997. Kay Starr performs "Blue and Sentimental" with
Tony Bennett
on his 2001 album
Playin' with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues
.
In 2006 a remix by
Stuhr
of Starr's vocal of the classic "
I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm
" was used in a commercial for
Telus
. Additionally, a remixed version of "It's a Good Day" was used in a 2014 commercial spot for
HomeGoods
.
As of 2007 she resided in the
Bel Air
neighborhood of Los Angeles; married six times, she had a daughter and a grandchild.
Starr was one of the first female artists to perform country western swing music.
Starr died on November 3, 2016 at her home in Beverly Hills from complications of Alzheimer's disease at the age of 94.
[7]
She was laid to rest at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles, CA.
This is original............................ not a copy.................... photo is 8" X 10" printed on photo paper.
If you have any questions or other information, please let me know.
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