The Kay Starr Appreciation Thread

Many of Kay's strengths as an artist and entertainer are nicely showcased in this CD ................. The quality of her voice is NOT one of them.

If memory serves, Kay had just gone through a bad cold, and had not been resting her voice at all. (Her previous, November 1985 engagement at the same venue had found her in far better voice, and had drawn raves.)

This concert was taped in May of 1986. For comparison, listen to the following performance, also said to be from 1986, but taped at a time when la Starr was not hampered by illness and fatigue. She happens to be singing that certain song (a great live version, by the way!):



Naturally, the voice is older, deeper, and so forth, but the hoarseness and raggedness that we hear on the CD is not much in evidence.

I totally agree that the CD makes for great listening all the same. Even if she weren't singing with great 'panache' (which she is), the anecdotes that she tells between song are worth the price of the disc -- or the concert!

This was Kay's very last original album release. Plans were made for studio dates, but no album ever materialized. All what got released was one guest vocal quite a few years later. By that time, her voice was definitely showing signs of deterioration, including a significant amount of hoarseness.

Re: the use of a fine engineer on this CD, etc. All CDs released on this Canadian label are superior items, and thus worth having. The label's owner went to great lengths, while trying to provide what he deemed the best quality of sound at his reach. Most notably, pitch correction was applied to many old performances, taken from acetates and 78s.

 

A point worth following up, as I've been meaning to do for a while now. I keep forgetting. Finally:



The booklet of her CD Back to the Roots has another pic, from the same "baseball shot session" as the one up above. (The blonde is actress Virginia Mayo.)

 

Very pleased to hear that you enjoyed it so much! Thanks for the extended review. (Audio quality: it sounds very good to me, too.)

I don't know if you had this in (the back of) your mind, but a more concrete connection between the two albums is that both happen to feature another song, "It's a Lonesome Old Town."

We all seem to enjoy Blue Starr, but not for the same exact reasons. Actually, this is the rare case in which .crystalised. and I might fully part company when it comes to what we like or dislike from the same Kay Starr album ... But you know what? That state of affairs only speaks well of the album: different people find different things to like about it.

In my case, the chief source of enjoyment is a trilogy of songs which create, in my mind, a gothic atmosphere of haunted houses and grieving ghosts: "The House Is Haunted (By The Echo Of Your Last Good-Bye)," "We Tree (My Echo, My Shadow And Me)," and "It's A Old Lonesome Town (When You're Not Around)." It's not just the lyrics but also the instrumentation that evokes such an atmosphere for me. I wish that the entire album had stuck to the "frightful" vibe that I get from those three songs.

To my disappointment, the album moves instead to upbeat interpretations such as "You're Driving Me Crazy" and "Little White Lies." (I actually enjoy -- really enjoy -- both of those interpretations ... whenever I hear them in compilations. But, as part of this particular LP, they bother me immensely.)

Going through the rest of the album ... the numbers that I like the least are "Wedding Bells" (again, a case of not wanting to hear it in this particular release; otherwise, I admire the gutsiness of Kay's approach to that silly ditty), "Blue Starr" (my dislike stems chiefly from the choice of instrumentation) and "Just Like a Butterfly" (I kinda hate its lyrics and also the use of the male chorus). I have a more mixed reaction to "It's Funny to Everyone But Me" (on the one hand, a bit too dramatic and filled with vibrato when compared to some of the other numbers; on the other hand, I love the instrumentation and her reading of the closing lines) ... Not being a big fan of male choruses, my reaction to the group who backs her is not positive. Neither is it entirely negative, however, perhaps because they are really good. So .... I appreciate them here and there, and hate them elsewhere.

We are back to being in full agreement.

Yeah.

Good question. I do not have inside knowledge or anything of the sort, but I'd still like to ponder ... My general impression is that la Starr had the upper hand at Victor. She came into the label with a huge seller on her back ("The Wheel of Fortune"), and promptly turned up another one for RCA ("The Rock and Roll Waltz"). As a result, she might have been given a lot of leeway. Just to lure her away from Capitol, Victor must have doubtlessly offered her quite a bit.

That doesn't mean, however, that she took direct control of her recorded work. It looks to me like she instead ceded control to her manager, who by that time was also her husband, and whom was named her producer at the label. He is probably responsible for the vast majority of her RCA repertoire -- bad, good, or indifferent ... I kind of think that Kay was just content singing almost anything, probably feeling secure in the knowledge that her pipes and craftsmanship could make most everything sound fine. (She was horrified, however, when she was first exposed to the lyrics and music of "The Rock and Roll Waltz"!)



This has turned out to be a much longer rambling than planned.

 

A tour de force. It's also the one song from this album that became a staple of her repertoire. Hence I can only assume that it remained a fan favorite over the decades. She repeatedly performed it on TV in the 1960s (check clip below), and was still singing it in concerts in the 1980s (as attested by the great clip that I posted previously).



Paradoxically, "I Really Don't Want to Know" is the only song in Blue Starr that is not from the album's sessions. It was taken instead from a slightly earlier singles session, at which she recorded three songs. The other two songs did come out on a single. Meanwhile, "I Really Don't Want to Know" sneaked into the LP, apparently taking the place of a number called "Kay's Lament." (The latter was recorded during the Blue Starr sessions, but left unissued at the time. She had previously waxed a version of this "Lament" for Capitol Records.)

.crystalised., if you do not already know the following, it should be of especial interest to you: Kay re-recorded "I Really Don't Want to Know" for Capitol. But not for a blues or Broadway or jazz album:

That's the other interpretation from Blue Starr which has shown longevity beyond its original context. In 2001, "Blue and Sentimental" became Kay's very last performance on record, when she performed it for the following CD, as a duet with il signor Benedetto:

Errors and omissions:

1. I was referring to Hal Stanley. He is seen in these photos, consulting with Kay, during the Blue Starr sessions.

2. I keep getting their period of marriage wrong. They were husband and wife from the late 1940s to 1951. Then they divorced and she went on to getting married for her third or fourth time. Since he remained her manager after years of marital separation, and arrangements were made for him to be her producer at RCA, they must have had a strong professional relationship.

Your check is in the mail!

(And thanks!)

 

What became of the Victor performance of "Kay's Lament", and the two mystery songs from the "Really Don't Want To Know" session? I assume the latter was deemed too long for a single. I'm happy that Stanley put it on the album - singles can fall through the cracks, and otherwise great performances can go unnoticed.

Yes, indeed! This album is in my want list. It may interest you to know that Patsy Cline performed "I Really Don't Want To Know" as a duet with Red Foley on ABC's Ozark Jubilee in December 1957, presumably because of her love for Kay. Doubtless that Patsy had a copy of Blue Starr in her collection. Alas, I have never seen the Patsy footage.

And here we have another Patsy connection. Bennett also got noticed on Arthur Godfrey programs, and the two young singers worked together on the Grand Ole Opry in January of 1956. (In fact, Bennett came to Patsy's rescue - he pulls her out of the way just in time to avoid a stampede of cloggers hellbent on closing the broadcast). The degree of separation between the mutual admiration society of Kay and Patsy is exactly one.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. Yes, I believe you had mentioned in a previous post that it was Stanley who objected to the Songs For Stags title of the Capitol album during the early 1950s.

 

The 1956 Victor version of "Kay's Lament" seems to remain unissued to this day. It's actually one of three studio versions that she recorded, the other two for Capitol (1951, 1961).

Among the incentives for re-recording "Kay's Lament" over and over: the original was a top 20 hit and the credited songwriters are Kay herself along with her manager-husband Hal Stanley. So, the ditty could have made them money on more than one account. There are the Capitol versions:


Kay's Lament

I can only assume the same, even if it hadn't occurred to me until you pointed it out.

The other two songs were issued on the single shown below.




Both sides of the single made it to CD thanks to Jasmine Records:

Good to know, indeed. It would definitely be interesting to hear how Patsy tackles this one.

When a number has been previously sung by Kay (1956), there is always a chance that Patsy (1957) heard it from her. In this particular case, though, Patsy probably heard several other versions first, because this 1953 number has been recorded often and in many genres. What's more, this is really a song born in the world of country, co-written as it was by the famous country-based songwriter Don Robertson, and turned into a #1 country hit right away (1954), courtesy of Eddy Arnold. That same year, the ultra popular Les Paul and Mary Ford covered it on Capitol, and had a sizable pop hit as well. So, Patsy might have frequently listened to those versions over the radio airwaves.

 

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Before she became the big-voiced pop singer that topped the commercial charts with "The Wheel of Fortune" and "The Rock and Roll Waltz," Kay was a jazz singer with a strong affinity to the blues ... Roughly speaking, the period to which I am referring is the second half of the 1940s, which marked the start of her solo career as a recording artist. (Right before that, she was not a solo act but a big band singer, working with the bands of Charlie Barnet and Glenn Miller, among others.)

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Joe Venuti was her chief mentor. She was about 15 when he heard her on local radio (probably in Tennessee) and talked her parents into letting her tour with him for the next two years. Kay's mother accompanied and chaperoned the minor.

With Venuti's blessing, she eventually moved on. Kay wasn't yet 18 when she accepted job offers from Bob Crosby and Glenn Miller. After her high school graduation, she returned to Venuti, touring with the violinist for another short period, before taking on additional work as a canary. A few years later, he would recruit her once more, though just for the recording of a batch of radio transcriptions.

Eric and I talked about those LPs on another forum thread, where I provided pictures of the LPs and its CD reissues. If anyone is interested, go here: Obscure & Neglected Female Singers Of Jazz & Standards (1930s to 1960s) (post #1716).

Let's talk here about the original stuff, predating the LP era. Those are indeed numbers that Kay Starr recorded between December 1945 and June 1946. There is actually a mixture of two types: some of them are (1) master recordings, made for the short-lived jazz label Lamplighter, while others are (2) transcription recordings, made for a syndicated radio service called Standard.

Lamplighter​

Of the 10 tracks on the LP Portrait of a Starr, the following numbers are recordings made for the Lamplighter label: #1, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10. Since Kay made a total of 17 masters for the label, this LP is offering about half of the total output.

The musicians behind Kay include Barney Bigard, Willie Smith, Red Callendar, and Vic Dickerson.

Lamplighter was a label founded in 1946 by Ted Yerxa, a Los Angeles Daily News columnist who was also a jazz aficionado, and who had a radio show at a local station. Through that show, he made the connections which allowed him to hire a stellar roster of jazz musicians. And he took to Kay Starr as well. Becoming her manager, Yerxa essentially turned her into the female singer at his new label.

All 17 of Kay's Lamplighter recordings (plus 1 alternate) have been collected and carefully mastered on this highly recommended CD:

Standard​

Of the 10 tracks on the LP Portrait of a Starr, #2 is the only track that is a Standard transcription. There are a couple more on the earlier LP (Swingin' with the Starr), which consists of 16 tracks.

During the second half of the 1940s, Kay actually recorded over 50 songs for the Standard ET service. The ones of our interest are her earliest ones, though. Those were recorded in May 1946. There are 10 on that early batch, including the three transcriptions which can be found on the LP Swingin' with the Starr.

They feature Joe Venuti and the Les Paul Trio.

The best source on which to collect all 50 Standard transcriptions is this one:





And, to close this post with some nice music, here is one of the tracks that were included on the 16-track LP Swingin' with the Starr (but excluded from the 10-track LP Portrait of a Starr):

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And on cassette, pictured above. Sonic-wise, it's okay, especially when you take into consideration that (a) this is radio material and (b) the transfer from the transcription discs presumably took place in the 1980s.

I have a lot of appreciation for Hindsight's Uncollected series. Back when these albums were first released, most of their material was commercially unavailable. In subsequent decades, however, a lot of European PD labels appropriated their contents, making such erstwhile rare tracks very common on compact disc.

Dexter's annotation is another reason why these albums are to my liking. Since he very often knew the subjects, his notes sometimes include interesting, rarely heard tidbits, and they tend to be extensive.





The one strike against Hindsight pertains to dating accuracy. The recording years that they give can be wrong. (I do not know why that is. Perhaps Dexter et al were relying on dates found on the transcription discs, which are likelier to have been broadcast dates instead. And/or perhaps they didn't care much about exact dating. Since this was radio stuff, and since the LPs/cassettes were being released in the 1980s, the producer and the label might have thought that an approximate year was good enough.)

This Kay Starr album is an example of suspect dating. The performances are indeed from the 1940s, but none of them appears to be from 1947. The bulk of them are believed to be from 1949 -- a few from 1948 and 1946. (That having been said, dating radio stuff is tricky. Hindsight could thus be correct, after all. Nevertheless, I am aware of other albums of theirs which definitely have wrong dating.)

Being able to listen to those samples in a row has served as a neat & nice refresher. Thanks! ... Here's the track listing, again:

Them There Eyes
Nevertheless
It's A Good Day
Maybe You'll Be There
Pretty Baby
Please Love Me
Stars Fell On Alabama
The Best Things In Life Are Free
It Happens Every Spring
I Only Have Eyes For You
Leave Me A Memory Or Two
For The First Time
So Tired
I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm

Quick comments about these 14 songs:

1) Clearly, they are most standards from the world of Tin Pan Alley.

2) A Capitol recording of "So Tired" became one of Kay's earliest hits on that label (a top ten in 1949).

3) Of the rarer songs, "Pretty Baby" is the one that could ring a bell to more modern ears (or, at least, to ears tuned to the Rat Pack and the swing revival of the past decades). Here is why:





4) The other song that could be very familiar to the average modern-day listener is Peggy Lee's self-penned 1947 hit "It's a Good Day." Within the last few decades, that tune has been featured in several films and TV shows, and has also been recorded often. (You can find recordings of it from every decade since the 1940s, including Dean's one cover, made for one of his 1970s albums.) It was a frequently covered tune on 1940s-1960s radio and television variety shows, too.

Of all the ones out there, Peggy's own versions and this Kay Starr cover probably remain the best-known ones. In Kay's case, the reason for its longevity is that it has been featured in two or three TV commercials. Here she is, singing it on TV, at the age of 30:

 

Kay Starr on Hindsight​

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Hindsight actually released two volumes of this material. Each volume has made it to all three aforementioned formats: long play, cassette tape, compact disc.

The CDs have been issued with the original covers and subsequently reissued with different covers & titles. (Well, the first volume was. I'm not sure that the second was issued on a CD with the original blue cover.) Here is the CD edition of the second volume:

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And here's the first volume, in its reissued CD edition:

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One final post about the Kay Starr tunes released over the two Hindsight volumes. They are radio transcriptions recorded for the Standard label between 1945 and 1949. She made nearly 60 of them, which means that Hindsight offers half of the total output (28, to be exact).

The very best source on which to hear Kay's Standard transcriptions is the above-pictured 2-CD set, released in the year 2000. "Disc research/disc to tape transfer: William S. Cook for the Cook Archive. Digital editing and mastering: Phil York for Yorktown Digital Works. Kay Starr photos courtesy 0f Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies and the Wayne Knight Collection. These recordings were transferred from original transcription discs over fifty years old. Digital editing and noise reduction techniques have been used, but only sparingly and never at the expense of the underlying musical content. From time to time surface noise and other defects in the original recordings may be detected." Here is the set's back cover:





This set gives you 40 transcriptions. You are thus getting two thirds of Kay's full Standard output.

As stated in the back cover's advertisement, the track total is 50. Ten numbers are actually voice tracks. Yes, that's right. This great set also gives you not only singing but also chatter recorded by the singer. Those very brief bits of chatter were originally incorporated to several episodes of The Kay Starr Show, the syndicated program on which these transcriptions were first heard across the nation.

If you are a big fan of Kay and feel that you have to have all 59 transcriptions, then you need not only the above-shown 2-CD set on the Soundies label, but also the two Hindsight albums, plus the following Stash disc:






Moonbeams and Seamy Dreams is yet another CD worth owning. Used copies sell very cheap on the web.

There is only one Standard transcription that is excluded from the CD just mentioned -- and from every other Kay Starr LP & CD, for that matter. (The one exception is a discontinued Public Domain CD.)

It's not rare because Kay's rendition sucks. On the contrary, that's one of my favorites of hers, by far. It's more because of its classification as a holiday performance. To track it down, you'll need to check various-artists anthologies. I have uploaded the audio before, in other forum threads. Here you have it, once more:

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You're making me want to spend money.

 

A fresh Kay Starr TV performance was just uploaded to YouTube. This is just to alert everybody -- especially fellow posters who have taken the time to contribute more than once to Kay's appreciation thread. I also thought it appropriate to alert the forum's resident country/Christian maven, due to the music genre under which the performance falls.

Here it is:



I am still digesting it. Not yet sure how I truly feel, as a whole. All I can say for now is





I heard it too, Sister Katie, I heard it!

On a related topic ... "Oral Roberts?" What a name. Being so ignorant about televangelists, I just had to look up his bio. I discovered two strong points of connection with Kay: Oklahoman born and Native American (Choctaw) heritage.[/QUOTE]

 

'Digesting' is a good way to put it. That medley is like a full course meal at a church fundraiser. Kay has no trouble feeling the spirit, that much is sure

 

Do you remember what Public Domain CD December is on? I see it's on the CD "On The Radio", from Acrobat, but since some songs on their CDs appear to be lossy, they couldv'e taken the audio from Youtube, or some other lossy source.

 

The message that you quote being several years old, more options have become available since then, including the Acrobat CD that you mention, and also digital download. I'm confident, though, that the best option remains the CD to which I was referring (unless you prefer to get an all-Kay collection, as opposed to a various-artists anthology). The producers of that CD were probably the ones who originally located this Kay performance and transferred it from transcription disc to compact disc. (As for Acrobat, that Public Domain label seems to just grab or copy much of what it releases from pre-existent CDs on other labels.)

Here is the CD in question:





It's still available at various online sites, and inexpensive. Track listing:

1. THE DELTA RHYTHM BOYS - JINGLE BELLS - 0:20
2. COUNT BASIE ORCHESTRA OPENING THEME (ONE O'CLOCK JUMP) AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 1:16
3. COUNT BASIE ORCHESTRA JUMPING AT TEN 4:20
4. THE DELTA RHYTHM BOYS, COUNT BASIE AND HIS ALL-AMERICAN RHYTHM SECTION JUST A-SETTIN' AND A-ROCKIN' 2:56
5. COUNT BASIE ORCHESTRA (TRUNCATED)*, LENA HORNE MY SILENT LOVE 3:43
6. EDDIE GREEN (3), ERNIE "BUBBLES" WHITMAN, LENA HORNE CHRISTMAS JIVE ROUTINE 5:51
7. BING CROSBY, COUNT BASIE ORCHESTRA GOTTA BE THIS OR THAT 3:28
8. COUNT BASIE ORCHESTRA JUMPIN' AT THE WOODSIDE 3:54
9. LENA HORNE, COUNT BASIE ORCHESTRA (TRUNCATED)* SILENT NIGHT 2:22
10. ALVINO REY, AFRS STUDIO ORCHESTRA CLOSING THEME (ONE O'CLOCK JUMP) 1:49
11. DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA THEME AND OPENING ANNOUNCEMENTS 0:46
12. DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA TAKE THE "A" TRAIN 0:50
13. DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA EVERYTHING GOES 5:08
14. PERRY COMO, THE SATISFIERS WINTER WONDERLAND 3:06
15. ART TATUM YESTERDAYS 3:58
16. LOUIS ARMSTRONG AND HIS ALL-STARS, JACK TEAGARDEN JACK-ARMSTRONG BLUES 3:47
17. DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA ROCK-A-BYE RIVER 3:32
18. THE KING COLE TRIO* THE CHRISTMAS SONG 3:38
19. DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA RING DEM BELLS 2:47
20. PAUL BARON AND ORCHESTRA JINGLE BELLS 0:49
21. DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA CLOSING ANNOUNCEMENTS AND THEME (ONE O'CLOCK JUMP) 2:15
22. FRANK SINATRA SINATRA SPOKEN INTRO 0:21
23. FRANK SINATRA ARESTES FIDELES (OH COME, ALL YE FAITHFUL) 2:09
24. FRANK SINATRA OH, LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM 1:28
25. FRANK SINATRA IT CAME UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR 1:25
26. FRANK SINATRA SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN 2:34
27. MEL BLANC AND THE SPORTSMEN JINGLE BELLS 2:14
28. KAY STARR, THE BILLY BUTTERFIELD QUINTET DECEMBER 3:20
29. LES BROWN AND HIS BAND OF RENOWN I'VE GOT MY LOVE TO KEEP ME WARM 2:48


And, from an earlier message of mine on a different thread:

 

I bought a nice mono copy of Kay Starr's Just Plain Country this week. As I listened through a second and third time, I found I liked it much more than I expected. Early sixties arrangements with orchestra and chorus, but I try to remember those are part of the times when it starts driving me crazy.

I especially like her run at the Delmore Brothers' standard Blues Stay Away From Me.

 

Thanks for this thread.
I recently (re)discovered Kay Starr thanks to Roon, Qobuz and lots of time due to retirement. Already pickup some nice compilations but I want to have more. Are complete recording session details available somewhere?
I have the Soundies Transcriptions 2CD, seems I have to find the Hindsight and Stash CD's also.

 

It's been a few years since I saw this thread. But I since then acquired the Collectors Choice cd of the RCA Years. She was good!

I miss the days when serious companies would produce multi-label collections of performers. (I once had a Rhino box-set of Mel Torme. Don't suppose there was ever one for Kay Starr.)

 

Here's the closest thing to a box I've seen for Kay Starr, so far:
https://www.discogs.com/Kay-Starr-The-Ultimate-Collection/release/7860856

 

Thanks, had it already on order.

 

You are very welcome. Glad that la Starr piqued your interest.

One release that I always recommend very heartily is this one:





It’s long out of print, though. In the US, it can still be found at eBay, but I don’t know how easy it will be to track down a reasonably priced copy in the Netherlands.

Not anywhere online. For many years, I’ve been planning to put together an online discography, but I still haven’t found the time for it.

It’s essentially a sample of the four LPs that she recorded for RCA. Those LPs have also been on CD. Should you feel like continuing to check out her stuff, the followinng CD could be a suitable pick for you, because it concentrates on her very commercial 45 singles, rather than the LPs:

No, nothing remotely like Rhino did for Torme - nor even a simpler set like, say, the one that Decca did for jazz singer Carmen McRae.

Yeah. Two-CD retrospectives and multi-album CD sets can also be found, but all of those are Public Domain collections, some of them no-noised. The one being mentioned by .crystalised. is a 3-CD set from one of her official record labels (Capitol/EMI), and containing many rare cuts.





Elle est magnifique: