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