When I wrote the first post above, it was mid-August of this year (2016). Aye. As the lady herself sang: Now that Kay is in the news (glad that she lived a long life), I thought it best to finally deliver as promised, and open this thread! Feel free to talk here about anything Kay-related here, but be aware that there is already another thread honoring her passing away: Kay Starr, R.I.P. » So, you can post there, too. This thread should be more specifically dedicated to talking about her albums, her singles, and her singing in general. When time permits, I will try to post about each of her albums, one by one, chronologically, as well as related music matters. But, once again, no constraints: post anything you might feel like (including photos and videos), as long as it is Kay-related!
Thanks to @Ridin'High for this much-deserved thread. Kay was one of the most distinctive talents of the 20th century, and her star will forever shine. Successful in jazz, pop and country, apparently Billie Holiday called her "the only white woman who could sing the blues". High praise from a jazz priestess, although not surprising. Two of my favourite vocal albums are titles that Kay recorded for Capitol: Here she is performing with Les Paul in 2005, charming and engaging as ever. Few artists connect with the audience in such a casual, friendly, and fun manner as Kay. Great artists sing their hearts out because it's what they love to do most. Case in point:
Madame Kay and her girls. She owns a house, but every Saturday the sheriff walks up and closes it down! Was the director high? Who conceived of this lip-sync performance? I'm surprised Kay agreed to it, although I admit that I find it enjoyable for its comic appeal. Kay a go-go. @ 2:10 - 'nuff said. She brings an eight-pack at the end.
It's a bit weird but I think the idea was more "showgirls" than "working girls". Any other suggestions of songs where she harmonized with herself like this? The harmonies on "spinning...spinning...spinning" give me goosebumps. I don't know the technical terms to describe it, but it don't sound like a traditional Western harmonic interval, more like the harmonies I hear in Bulgarian choral music.
Kay often harmonized on her hit records. Here's "Side By Side": I'm not completely certain because I only have relative and not absolute pitch, but it sounds to me like she sings a major third harmony.
Here's a fantastic interpretation of the Joni Mitchell standard "Both Sides Now" I wish she cut it. Her delivery of the lines "THAT dizzy, dancing way you FEEL..." and "JUST to SAY I love you RIGHT OUT LOUD!" choke me up.
Oh, yes, but not so much by the trio as by the main sister and her solo work. Connee Boswell an Kay Starr crossed paths in the mid-1940s. They were on the same touring bill for a while, Kay as the canary of the Charlie Barnet Orchestra, and Connee as a singing star on her own. It was then that up-and-coming Kay doubtlessly listened to the already well-established artist, gaining great respect for her in the process. (Connee has also been listed among singers to whom Kay supposedly listened with regularity in her early teens, when she was living in Memphis and singing on local radio. However I am not sure if Kay ever confirmed that the influence went all the way back to that time. She might have not really listened to any Boswell at that early point. But by the next decade, yes, definitely.) Somewhere I read a comment from Starr herself, in which she refers to Boswell as "Miss Connee," with obvious deference. There is also another interview in which, talking about one of the songs that she performed on the radio in the late 1940s ("Was That the Human Thing to Do"), Kay says: "I must've picked [it] from the great Connee Boswell; it's a wonderful song." But not just that one. Kay is likely to have picked from Connee other old-fashioned ditties as well -- probably "Don't Tell Him What Happened to Me," maybe "Down Among the Sheltering Palms." The jazz critic Will Friedwald has put to paper some interesting opinions about the connection, suggesting that it went both ways: Boswell's own later work shows that one of her own disciples, Kay Starr, was rubbing off on Connee, leading to a more "mannish," harder swinging approach. But Boswel "students" such as Ella Fitzgerald, Doris Day, and Starr, gradually usurped the older woman's popularity. Connee Boswell also meant a lot to Starr. While Ella Fitzgerald started off with the soft, yielding Connie of the thirties that she heard while she was growing up, Starr knew better the hard, Smith-ish Connee of her generation ...
Ha! It's a Scopitone video. The large majority of them are like that. They originally played in jukeboxes at bars and similar establishments. They were set up to attract a certain type of audience. The common denominators tend to be scantily dressed babes (beefcakes less often) and lots of dancing, often in the a-go-go or twist style. Nowadays they come off as campy. Sometimes they are hilarious, sometimes corny, but always fun! I don't want to stray too far away from the thread's main topic, but while we are at it, this one might well be the most representative of the whole shebang: Others (out of dozens): Nancy Sinatra These Boots Are Made For Walking Scopitone » Buddy Greco - The Lady is a Tramp (Scopitone) » Scopitone: January Jones - "I Love Being Here With You" (S-1059) » January Jones I've Got The World On A String (Scopitone) » Scopitone: Joi Lansing - "The Web Of Love" (S-1057) » Scopitone: Sue Raney "Before the Rain" (S-1036) » Scopitone's What I Say » Ethel Ennis "I've Got That Feeling" (S-1039) Rare 16mm Technicolor Scopitone »
IIRC, a local film organization here in the Philadelphia area, Secret Cinema, has run a few programs featuring Scopitones as well as their 1940s forerunners, Soundies.
It was not a rare practice in the pop music of the 1950s. I think that Patti Page popularized it in the late 1940s ... One story goes that record engineer Bill Putnam came up with the idea when a harmony vocal was needed for a number at a Patti session, yet no harmony group was readily available (due to personnel challenges posed by an upcoming musicians' union record ban). So, Putnam came up with the idea of overdubbing her voice instead. Another story goes that, Patti being a fresh face and unknown quantity at the time, too small a budget was allotted to her session, and there was no money to hire somebody for the scheduled harmony parts. Her manager would have thus come up with the idea of having Patti sing the harmonies as well. (There are probably other stories out there.) Anyway, the resulting record became a hit, and the "technique" became must talked about. Here you have it: Patti Page - Confess ». This type of multi-tracking (or whatever you might want to call it) can be gimmicky, but I for one find it enjoyable -- sometimes. I like it when I sense that it is being used meaningfully, and/or to punctuate the melody. Kay did resort to it on a fair number of occasions, reportedly being goaded to do so by her manager-husband Hal Stanley. Among the various other recordings in which you can hear la Kay duetting with la Starr (though sometimes for just a chorus or two), there are "You're Just in Love," "The Man Upstairs," and "Jump for Joy" (in which she does not so much duet as "triples" or "quadruples" with herself!) ... "Side by Side" is one of her earliest uses of it ( Kay Starr Side By Side » ). But how did she manage to perform this hit of hers on those occasions in which she had was singing live, and her audiences requested? Why, with a little help from her friends, of course. See for yourself:
Indeed; a trick recording made by Kay's friend Margaret Whiting was actually written by Bill Putnam, titled "Good Morning, Mr. Echo". Patsy Cline was another artist that Kay Starr enjoyed, and the appreciation was mutual. Patsy collected all of Kay's records, and the decision to overdub harmony vocals on some of her own records may have been the result of Kay's influence. It's possible the idea came from Patti Page instead, although to my knowledge Patsy never cited Page as an influence. "The Man Upstairs" is a fantastic record:
Just got and listened to the 2fer cd of country songs. Much jazzier than I expected, nice changes of tempo on some very familiar songs.
Glad you found a copy! Hadn't thought about this until you mentioned it, but yes, I guess that Just Plain Country could be considered a country album with jazzy elements in it. Imagine that. Be that as it may, she does cover some of the greatest country standards in that album. I vaguely remember the other album as being more country-pop, or perhaps countrypolitan ... It's been a long time since I last played it. Talking about Just Plain Country, here is another number in which she sings with herself:
Mutual indeed. The liner annotator of Kay's CD from the Capitol Collectors' series seconds it: "Cline was one of Kay's favorite singers (and viceversa)." The same applies to Kay and Dinah Washington: in that case, it was not only mutual appreciation of each others' singing but also a good friendship. Kay counted with a long and diverse list of distinguished admirers. In addition to Patsy and Dinah (and Billie): Edith Piaf, Mahalia Jackson, Lester Young, John Lennon, Ella Fitzgerald, Jack Teagarden, Count Basie, Helen Humes, Jimmy Rushing, Jimmy Whitherspoon, and others that I'm forgetting!
Wow! Kay and Dinah Washington. Two sticks of dynamite. How'd they meet? Any stories about their friendship? I was certainly pleased with the mention of Patsy in the notes of the Capitol Collectors' Series disc. Although it's a great cover and an excellent vocal performance by Kay, I'm left to wonder if "Crazy" was included on the disc to illustrate this point and to serve as a tribute of sorts, especially since the CD is a "greatest hits" singles compilation and "Crazy" was an album cut. And, conversely, Kay recorded "Foolin' 'Round" as a new single in early 1961. Patsy covered it on her album Showcase with the Jordanaires later that same year.
Album cut: hopefully we will get to discuss Just Plain Country in some detail later on, as I'm hoping to turn this thread into a chronological discussion of Kay's LPs and singles. For now, here's just a detail of possible interest to fans of the album: while "Crazy" was the album cut included in the Capitol Collectors disc, "Singin' the Blues" was the choice for inclusion in a relatively similar Kay Capitol US compilation CD series, Spotlight On ... Great Ladies of Song. Why "Crazy" was chosen for inclusion in the volume from Capitol's Collectors Series: like you, I can only speculate. The simplest and likeliest possibility would be that the compiler-producer a) wanted to represent Kay's second Capitol period with a few tracks, and b) felt that the period would be better represented if both singles and album cuts were included (rather than sticking exclusively to singles). From this 1959-1964 period, four tracks were chosen: 1. a cut from a jazzy album ("Lazy River," 1959) 2. a cut from a country album ("Crazy," 1962) 3. a country single ("Foolin' Around," 1962) 4. a cut from an album of hit remakes (1964) Looking at that four-track list as an unit, we could speculate that the compiler went for variety -- as in, "a little bit of each." Now, none of the above explains why, out of the many available candidates, "Crazy" was chosen. Going again by the simpler possible explanation, we would have to assume that the compiler thought of "Crazy" as one of Kay's best country tracks from her 1959-1964 albums. If so, he would not have been alone in holding that opinion. Gary Giddins, arguably the greatest jazz critic of the last few decades, singled it out as one of the two strongest tracks from Just Country. Another possible reason would be the one that you were considering, and which I certainly find plausible, though less likely. Normally, track selection happens well in advance of liner annotation assignment. (But, of course, we don't know if that "normal" order of events was maintained in this instance.) We could come up with other scenarios, too. Here is one that falls somewhere in between the one you considered and the one I added: "Crazy" could have been chosen due to the immense popularity of Patsy's version. Capitol could have thought that the number had the potential to attract customers, curious to hear how Kay tackled the famous number. I wish I could remember where I read Kay's own comments about Patsy, and was that she said exactly. I am hoping that, as this thread keeps going, it will come to me. It was just a brief, respectful, possibly admiring comment, mind you ... As part of that comment, I sort of remember Kay pointing out that, while Patsy was alive, she was not aware of the younger artist's admiration ... It would be interesting to learn how much of Patsy's work she heard while the country legend was still alive. Patsy's "Crazy" would seem to be a given. "Foolin' Around" would be harder to determine, since I understand that the big 1961 hit was by the song's co-writer, Buck Owens, and it was on Kay's own label, Capitol ... Well, "to be continued" ... when we get to the Plain Country album ...
In Kay's own words: "I think I've known Dinah about half my adult life. I got to meet her on Central Avenue in LA, when I was with Charlie Barnet, and she would come to hear me with Charlie's band, and we became good friends. We'd laugh because she was one color and I was another, but we were the same." "[She] was a very dear friend of mine -- we did a lot of each other's songs. When she and 'Night Train' Lane got married, I stood up for her. That was down in one of those Central Avenue nightclubs where she was appearing. She was wonderful." Meanwhile, Dinah is reported to have once exclaimed, "I love Kay; she sings her ass off!"
I look forward to this greatly! Interesting thoughts. The hybrid scenario is certainly very plausible - "Crazy" is so well known that fans of both artists might be curious to hear the different interpretation. My guess is that Giddins' other pick was Kay's haunting performance of "Four Walls". When I first learned that Kay had covered "Crazy", I was skeptical. Although once I heard it, I felt foolish for my initial hesitation. Kay's performance is excellent, and it sounds very different from Patsy's. A lot of Patsy Cline covers sound like tributes to me, but this performance is fresh and original. I rate it right up there with the original. Your photo of Patsy at the jukebox is apropos. It's just as likely that she's pointing out one of Kay's hits as she is one of her own
Ha. I imagine that she is actually pointing to one of her own records, as you said. (Would be funny if one day we were to discover that she was pointing to a record by someone who we totally didn't expect!) Do you really want to know? ... Do you? Really? Well, really! If you really, really want to know .... "I Don't Really Want to Know." That was his other choice. However, I should clarify that he had a secondary reason for picking up those two particular tracks. He was reviewing an early 1990s NY concert appearance, and those two numbers were the ones that Kay reprised from the album. So, for all we know, if Kay had instead performed "Four Walls," Giddins would have referred to it as one of the album's strongest songs as well. In any case, here are his actual words: 'She does the two strongest songs from her Just Plain Country album of 23 years ago, "I Really Don't Want to Know" and "Crazy," but with more feeling and invention than in her previous versions. Taking the former as a blues (it isn't), she slows it down to a deliciously sensual plea, twanging upper-register notes against chesty mid-range phrases, and underscoring musical conceits with histrionic ones -- expressive mask, imploring hands.'
