Kay Starr ~ A shimmering light

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Kay Starr

date & photographer unknown

Kay Starr (Catherine Laverne Starks) was born on this date in 1922. I enjoyed listening to her sing for decades. She had a voice that thrilled me to the core. She could belt out a tune from any musical genre whether it was pop, blues, jazz, or country. Her voice captivated listeners for over forty years.

She was born on a reservation in Dougherty, Oklahoma. Her father, Harry, was an Iroquois native American; her mother, Annie, was of mixed Irish and Native American heritage. I did not know any of these facts until I researched for this article. 

When the family moved to Dallas. Her mother raised chickens that Starr serenaded in their coop. Her aunt Nora was impressed by her 7-year-old niece's singing and arranged for her to sing on a Dallas radio station, WRR. Starr finishing 3rd one week in a talent contest and placed first every week thereafter. She was given a 15-minute radio show. She sang pop and country songs with a piano accompaniment. By age 10 she was making $3 a night, good pay during the Great Depression.  

When the family moved again, to Memphis, she continued performing on the radio. She sang Western swing music, still mostly a mix of country and pop. While working for Memphis radio station WMPS, misspellings in her fan mail inspired her and her parents to change her name to "Kay Starr".         

Kay Starr 

date & photographer unknown 

In 1939, she worked with Bob Crosby and Glenn Miller, who hired her to replace Marion Hutton who was ill. With Miller she recorded Baby Me and Love with a Capital You. The songs were not a great success, in part because the band played in a key that, while appropriate for Hutton, did not suit Kay's vocal range.     

She moved to Los Angeles and signed with the Wingy Manone band. From 1943 to 1945 she sang with the Charlie Barnet ensemble, retiring for a year after contracting pneumonia and later developing nodes on her vocal cords as a result of fatigue and overwork.  

Kay Starr - 1946
photo Metronome Getty Images

In 1946 Starr became a soloist and a year later 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.  

Kay Starr - 1946 

photographer unknown

In 1950 she returned home to Dougherty, Oklahoma, and heard a fiddle recording of Bonaparte's Retreat by Pee Wee King. She liked it so much that she wanted to record it. She contacted the publishing house for  Roy Acuff in Nashville 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. 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.    

Kay Starr 

date & photographer unknown

In 1955, she signed with RCA Victor Records, however, at that 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 until 1959, hitting the top ten with My Heart Reminds Me, then returned to Capitol.    

Kay Starr -1956

Evertt Collection

Most of Starr's songs had jazz influences. Like those of Frankie Laine and Johnnie Ray, they were sung in a style that anticipated rock and roll songs. These included her hits Wheel of Fortune (her biggest hit, No. 1 for 10 weeks), Side by Side, 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 became a holiday favorite.   

Kay Starr 

date & photographer unknown

After leaving Capitol for a second time in 1966, Starr continued touring in the US and the UK. She recorded several jazz and country albums on small independent labels, including How About This, a 1968 album with Count Basie.      

Louis Armstrong, Kay Starr & Tony Bennett - 1960

Frank Carroll/NBCU Photo

In the late 1980s she performed in the revue 3 Girls with Helen O'Connell and Margaret Whiting, and in 1993 she toured the United Kingdom as part of the Pat Boone April Love Tour. Her first live album, Live at Freddy's, was released in 1997. She sang with Tony Bennett on his album Playin' with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues (2001). Two of her songs, Powder Your Face with Sunshine and It's a Good Day, appeared in the 2007 movie Fido.  

Kay Starr 

date & photographer unknown

In her later years, she sang a duet with Tony Bennett for his 2001 album Playin’ With My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues.          

Playin’ With My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues

vinyl LP front cover

Starr was married six times, including a brief marriage to bandleader Vic Schoen who later married Marion Hutton.          

Kay Starr - 2006
Fred Prouser/Reuters

Kay Starr died from complications of Alzheimer's disease on November 3, 2016 in Los Angeles at the age of 94.           

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Starr among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire (links below).       

2008 Universal fire

Viewfinder links:                 
               
Roy Acuff           
Allez-Vous-En & Half a Photograph        
Count Basie         
Tony Bennett 
Pat Boone       
Bob Crosby   
Marion Hutton       
Frankie Laine         
Peggy Lee       
Glenn Miller         
Johnnie Ray           
Frank Sinatra     
Kay Starr                
     

Net links:                 
        
Afterglow ~ Swingin’ With Kay Starr    
Billboard ~ Universal Fire Destroyed 500,000 Iconic Master Recordings     
Express UK ~ Kay Starr 1922 -2016: The ‘hillbilly’ who could sing it all    
LA Times ~ Kay Starr, who lit up 1950s pop radio dies at 94      

Memphis Hall of Fame ~ Kay Starr
NBC News ~ What did we lose in the Universal Music fire?   
NPR ~ From Chuck Berry To Tupac Shakur: The 2008 Universal Fire    
NY Times ~ Kay Starr, Hillbilly Singer With Crossover Appeal, Dies at 94
Oklahoma Hall of Fame ~ Starr, Kay | 1988           

Kay Starr Discography        
     

YouTube links:                 

KTLA ~ 2008 Universal fire: 500,000 Master Recordings Lost   
Perry Como Show Guest Kay Starr (video) (1952)       
Kay Starr
         Interview (1993)      
         The Rock And Roll Waltz, Rockin' Chair (video) (1952)     

         Tribute to Kay Starr (video) (1952)        
         Wheel Of Fortune (1951)      
         Wheel Of Fortune (video) (1952)  
TV Hit Medley Kay Starr, Tyrone Power (video) (1955)    
      
       
   
   

“ . . . the only white woman who could sing the blues.”       

                       ~ Billie Holiday

   
   
   
      
Styrous® ~ Tuesday, July 21, 2020       
   

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Roy Eldridge ~ "Little Jazz" & tritones

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David Roy Eldridge was born on this day, January 30, in 1911. Commonly known as Roy Eldridge, and nicknamed "Little Jazz", he was an American jazz trumpet player. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of tritone substitutions (link below), his virtuoso solos exhibited a departure from the smooth and lyrical style of earlier jazz trumpet innovator Louis Armstrong, and his strong impact on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most influential musicians of the swing era and a precursor of bebop.      

There is a video of a 1964 telecast of Eldridge performing with Ella Fitzgerald on YouTube (link below) in which he utilizes tritones & she sings the most amazing scat. What a fantastic paring! 

(From left) Thelonious Monk, Howard McGhee,  

Roy Eldridge & Teddy Hill

Minton's Playhouse

New York, c. September 1947 

Photograph by William P. Gottlieb

Eldridge left home after being expelled (couldn't find out why) from high school in ninth grade at the age of sixteen. He found work leading a small band in the traveling "Rock Dinah" show where swing-era bandleader Count Basie saw him and Basie thought Eldridge "the greatest trumpet I'd ever heard in my life."       

At the age of 20, Eldridge led a band in Pittsburgh, billed as "Roy Elliott and his Palais Royal Orchestra", the agent intentionally changing Eldridge's name because "he thought it more classy."      

He moved to New York in November 1930, playing in various bands in the early 1930s, including a number of Harlem dance bands with Cecil Scott, Elmer Snowden, Charlie Johnson, and Teddy Hill. It was during this time that Eldridge received his nickname, 'Little Jazz', from Ellington saxophonist Otto Hardwick, who was amused by the incongruity between Eldridge's raucous playing and his short stature.       

Eldridge recorded a number of small group sides with singer Billie Holiday in July 1935, including What a Little Moonlight Can Do and Miss Brown to You, employing a Dixieland-influenced improvisation style.    

In the fall of 1936, Eldridge moved to Chicago to form an octet with older brother Joe Eldridge playing saxophone and arranging. The ensemble boasted nightly broadcasts and made recordings that featured his extended solos, including After You've Gone and Wabash Stomp." Fed up with the racism he had encountered in the music industry, he quit playing in 1938 to study radio engineering. He returned to playing in 1939, when he formed a ten-piece band that gained a residency at the Arcadia Ballroom in New York.   

 Roy Eldridge Orchestra - January  1, 1939 

Arcadia Ballroom,  New York

photogrpaher unknown

          

When he wasn't onstage himself, one trumpeter remembered, Eldridge would search out young trumpeters in other clubs, then "take out his horn at the door....start on a high B-flat and just come walking in." ~ Jazz: A History of America's Music" by Geoffrey C Ward and Ken Burns.  

His rhythmic power to swing a band was a dynamic trademark of the jazz of the time. It has been said that "from the mid-Thirties onwards, he had superseded Louis Armstrong as the exemplar of modern 'hot' trumpet playing".                 

In April 1941, after receiving many offers from white swing bands, Eldridge joined the Gene Krupa Orchestra, and was successfully featured with rookie singer Anita O'Day. In accepting this position, Eldridge became one of the first black musicians to become a permanent member of a white big band. Eldridge was instrumental in changing the course of Krupa's big band from schmaltz to jazz. The group's cover of the Jimmy Dorsey song, Green Eyes, previously an entirely orchestral work, was transformed into jazz via Eldridge's playing; critic Dave Oliphant notes that Eldridge "lift[ed]" the tune "to a higher level of intensity." Eldridge and O'Day were featured in a number of recordings, including the novelty hit Let Me Off Uptown and Knock Me a Kiss.
        
One of Eldridge's best known recorded solos is on a rendition of the Hoagy Carmichael tune, Rockin' Chair, arranged by Benny Carter as something like a concerto for Eldridge. Jazz historian Gunther Schuller referred to Eldridge's solo on Rockin' Chair as "a strong and at times tremendously moving performance", although he disapproved of the "opening and closing cadenzas, the latter unforgivably aping the corniest of operatic cadenza traditions." Critic and author Dave Oliphant describes Eldridge's unique tone on Rockin' Chair as "a raspy, buzzy tone, which enormously heightens his playing's intensity, emotionally and dynamically" and writes that it "was also meant to hurt a little, to be disturbing, to express unfathomable stress."

After leaving Krupa's band, Eldridge freelanced in New York during 1943 before joining the Artie Shaw band in 1944. In the postwar years, he became part of the group which toured under the Jazz at the Philharmonic, a series of jazz concerts, tours and recordings produced by Norman Granz.    

Eldridge moved to Paris in 1950 while on tour with Benny Goodman, before returning to New York in 1951 to lead a band at the Birdland jazz club.     

 Chet Baker - 1960 

Birdland, New York

photo by William Claxton 

He additionally performed from 1952 until the early 1960s in small groups with Coleman Hawkins, Ella Fitzgerald and Earl Hines among others, and also began to record for Granz at this time. Eldridge also toured with Fitzgerald from late 1963 until March 1965 and with Count Basie from July until September 1966 before returning to freelance playing and touring at festivals.        
           
In 1960, Eldridge participated, alongside Abbey Lincoln, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Kenny Dorham and others, in recordings by the Jazz Artist's Guild, a short-lived grouping formed by Mingus and Max Roach as a reaction to the perceived commercialism of the Newport Festival. These resulted in the Newport Jazz Rebels LP.
      

Eldridge became the leader of the house band at Jimmy Ryan's jazz club on West 54th Street in Manhattan for several years, beginning in 1969. Although Ryan's was primarily a Dixieland venue, Eldridge tried to combine the traditional Dixieland style with his own more brash and speedy playing.   
   
Eldridge was incapacitated by a stroke in 1970, but continued to lead the group at Ryan's soon after and performing occasionally as a singer, drummer and pianist. Writer Michael Zirpolo, seeing Eldridge at Ryan's in the late 1970s, noted, "I was amazed that he still could pop out those piercing high notes, but he did, with frequency....I worried about his health, because the veins at his temples would bulge alarmingly." In 1971, Eldridge was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. 

After suffering a heart attack in 1980, Eldridge gave up playing. He died on February 26, 1989, at the Franklin General Hospital in Valley Stream, New York, three weeks after the death of his wife, Viola. He was 78 years old.     
       

Viewfinder links:        
        
Louis Armstrong  

Count Basie    
Eric Dolphy        
Kenny Dorham           
Jimmy Dorsey   

Ella Fitzgerald                 
Benny Goodman      
Norman Granz    Dizzy Gillespie  
William P. Gottlieb   
Coleman Hawkins        
Billie Holiday        
Charles Mingus       
Thelonious Monk     

Anita O'Day        
Max Roach         
         

Net links:        

        

Discography    

NPR ~ The 'Little Jazz' Centennial        Jazz-Music-History ~ jazz history's link        
The Telegraph ~ Roy Eldridge: passionate perfectionist     
All About Jazz ~ Little Jazz Giant        
NY Times obit      
Jerry Jazz Musician ~ A Roy Eldridge story        
            
YouTube links:   
         
TriTone Substitutions explained
Ella Fitzgerald, Roy Eldridge ~ Perdido        
Roy Eldridge & Mildred Bailey ~ I'm Nobody's Baby (1940)     
Roy Eldridge ~
           Hoppin' John (January 29, 1951)       
           They Raided The Joint (January 22, 1951)             
           Rockin' Chair        
     
     
    

"I resolved to play my trumpet like a sax." 

                       ~ Roy Eldridge 

     
          
       
       
Styrous® ~ Tuesday, January 30, 2018          

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Louis Armstrong ~ Trumpeter & scat singer extraordinaire

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Today is the birthday of Louis Armstrong who was born August 4, 1901, 116 years ago. He was an American trumpeter, composer, singer and actor who was an influential figure in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different eras in jazz. He came to prominence in the 1920s as an "inventive" trumpet and cornet player. He was an influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance.

     
   
Louis Armstrong    
photographer unknown
     
Armstrong was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and was the grandson of slaves. He was born into a poor family in New Orleans, Louisiana, and was the grandson of slaves. He spent his youth in poverty, in a rough neighborhood known as the Battlefield, which was part of the Storyville legal prostitution district. The district was immortalized by the photographer, E. J. Bellocq, in the early 1900's.

He attended the Fisk School for Boys, where he most likely had early exposure to music. He brought in some money by selling newspapers, delivering coal, singing on the streets at night, and also by finding discarded food and selling it to restaurants, but it was not enough to keep his mother from prostitution. He hung out in dance halls close to home, where he observed everything from licentious dancing to the quadrille. For extra money he also hauled coal to Storyville, and listened to the bands playing in the brothels and dance halls, especially Pete Lala's, where Joe "King" Oliver performed as well as other famous musicians who would drop in to jam.    

After dropping out of the Fisk School at age eleven, Armstrong joined a quartet of boys who sang in the streets for money. He also started to get into trouble. Cornet player Bunk Johnson said he taught Armstrong (then 11) to play by ear at Dago Tony's Tonk in New Orleans, although in his later years Armstrong gave the credit to Oliver. Armstrong hardly looked back at his youth as the worst of times but drew inspiration from it instead: "Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine—I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans... It has given me something to live for.

Louis Armstrong ca 1900's

photographer unknown

In Louisiana on New Year’s Eve, 1912, Armstrong fired a pistol (loaded with blanks) in the air in celebration. A nearby policeman arrested him for the offense and took him to juvenile court. The following day, eleven year old Louis was sentenced to the Colored Waifs Home for Boys, a New Orleans reform school. The year and a half sentence would have an incredible impact on his life (link below). He developed his cornet playing skills by playing in the band of the Home.   

 

Louis Armstrong, front row center 

1931 visit to the New Orleans boys' home 

formerly known as the 'Colored Waifs Home' 

Louisiana Digital Library

In 1919, Joe Oliver decided to go north and resigned his position in the Kid Ory band; Armstrong replaced him. He also became second trumpet for the Tuxedo Brass Band.        

Armstrong had considerable success with vocal recordings, including versions of famous songs composed by his friend Hoagy Carmichael. His 1930s recordings took full advantage of the new RCA ribbon microphone, introduced in 1931, which imparted a characteristic warmth to vocals and immediately became an intrinsic part of the 'crooning' sound of artists like Bing Crosby. His interpretation of the Hoagy Carmichael song, Stardust, became one of the most successful versions of this song ever recorded, showcasing Armstrong's unique vocal sound and style and his innovative approach to singing songs that had already become standards (link below).    

Armstrong's radical re-working of Sidney Arodin and Carmichael's Lazy River (recorded in 1931) encapsulated many features of his groundbreaking approach to melody and phrasing. The song begins with a brief trumpet solo, then the main melody is introduced by sobbing horns, memorably punctuated by Armstrong's growling interjections at the end of each bar: "Yeah! ..."Uh-huh" ..."Sure" ... "Way down, way down." In the first verse, he ignores the notated melody entirely and sings as if playing a trumpet solo, pitching most of the first line on a single note and using strongly syncopated phrasing. In the second stanza he breaks into an almost fully improvised melody, which then evolves into a classic passage of Armstrong "scat singing" (link below).    

Armstrong moved to Los Angeles in 1930 to seek new opportunities. He played at the New Cotton Club in Los Angeles with Lionel Hampton on drums.   

 

Louis Armstrong - February 27, 1932 

photographer unknown

In 1931, Armstrong appeared in his first movie, Ex-Flame and was also convicted of marijuana possession but received a suspended sentence. He returned to Chicago in late 1931 and played in bands more in the Guy Lombardo vein and he recorded more standards. When the mob insisted that he get out of town, Armstrong visited New Orleans but soon he was on the road again and after a tour across the country shadowed by the mob, Armstrong decided to go to Europe to escape.   

Louis Armstrong publicity portrait 
Chicago - 1932
to promote Armstrong's first European tour

Louis Armstrong, Europe - 1932
photo by Anton Bruehl

After spending many years on the road, Armstrong settled permanently in Queens, New York in 1943 in contentment with his fourth wife, Lucille. Although subject to the vicissitudes of Tin Pan Alley and the gangster-ridden music business, as well as anti-black prejudice, he continued to develop his playing.      

Following a highly successful small-group jazz concert at New York Town Hall on May 17, 1947, featuring Armstrong with trombonist/singer Jack Teagarden, Armstrong's manager, Joe Glaser dissolved the Armstrong big band on August 13, 1947, and established a six-piece traditional jazz group featuring Armstrong with (initially) Teagarden, Earl Hines and other top swing and Dixieland musicians, most of whom were previously leaders of big bands.      

Jack Teagarden, Louis Armstrong & Barney Bigard

Helsinki, Finland - October 1949

On June 26, 1950, Armstrong recorded the first American version of C'est si bon (Henri Betti, André Hornez, Jerry Seelen) and La Vie en rose (Louiguy, Édith Piaf, Mack David). When it was released, the disc garnered worldwide sales.    

Louis Armstrong - 1953

photo by Herman Hiller 

          

In 1964, after over two years without setting foot in a studio, he recorded his biggest-selling record, Hello, Dolly!, a song by Jerry Herman, originally sung by Carol Channing. Armstrong's version remained on the Hot 100 for 22 weeks, longer than any other record produced that year, and went to No. 1 making him, at 62 years, 9 months and 5 days, the oldest person ever to accomplish that feat. In the process, he dislodged the Beatles from the No. 1 position they had occupied for 14 consecutive weeks with three different songs.   

Of course, I can't ignore one of his other great hits, Mack the Knife by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for the music drama Die Dreigroschenoper, or, as it is known in English, The Threepenny Opera. There is a link to the song from the Hollywood Palace filmed on the 1st of May, 1965 (link below).   

Louis Armstrong

Producers Showcase - 1956

Against his doctor's advice, Armstrong played a two-week engagement in March 1971 at the Waldorf-Astoria's Empire Room. At the end of it he was hospitalized for a heart attack. He was released from the hospital in May, and quickly resumed practicing his trumpet playing. Still hoping to get back on the road, Armstrong died of a heart attack in his sleep on July 6, 1971, a month before his 70th birthday. He was residing in Corona, Queens, New York City, at the time of his death. He was interred in Flushing Cemetery, Flushing, in Queens, New York City. His honorary pallbearers included Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Earl Wilson, Alan King, Johnny Carson and David Frost. Peggy Lee sang The Lord's Prayer at the services, Al Hibbler sang Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen and Fred Robbins, a long-time friend, gave the eulogy.         

       
           

           

        

Viewfinder links:            
       
Chrisma ~ Chinese Restaurant      
The Ray Charles Singers        
Al Jarreau ~ Breakin' Away & scat
Verve Records ~ the inner sleeve & Norman Granz     
Carl Van Vechten & the Harlem Renaissance   
William P. Gottlieb ~ Jazz photographer       
        
Net links:            
       
spclarke.com ~ Louis Armstrong ~ An American Original     
E. J. Bellocq ~ The Storyville photographs         
Jazziz ~ Colored Waifs Home for Boys  

       

        
       
YouTube links:            
       
Louis Armstrong:       
          Stardust (1931)
          Lazy River (1931)      
          C'est si bon (1950)   
          Hello, Dolly (1964)    
          Hello, Dolly (live in Berlin 1965)                     
               Mack the Knife     
         
      

Styrous® ~ Tuesday, August 4, 2017        

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