Kay Starr (born July 21, 1922) is an American pop and jazz singer who enjoyed considerable success in the 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“.
She was born Katherine Laverne Starks on a reservation in Dougherty, Oklahoma.[1] Her father, Harry, was a full-blooded Iroquois Indian; her mother, Annie, was of mixed Irish and American Indian heritage[1]. When her father got a job installing water sprinkler systems for the Automatical Sprinkler Company, the family moved to Dallas, Texas. There, her mother raised chickens, whom Kay used to serenade 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 $3 a night, which was quite a salary in the Depression days.
Kay Starr singing, “The Wheel Of Fortune” 1952
When Starks’ 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, which he did not have. Venuti’s road manager heard Kay Starr on the radio and suggested her to Venuti. She was still in junior high school and her parents insisted on a midnight curfew.
Although 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), she spent most of her next few years with Venuti, until he dissolved his band in 1942. It was, however, with Miller that she cut her first record: “Baby Me”/”Love with a Capital You.” It was not a great success, in part because the band played in a key more appropriate for Marion Hutton that, unfortunately, did not suit Kay’s vocal range.
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 band. She then retired for a year because she developed pneumonia and later developed nodes on her vocal cords, and lost her voice as a result of fatigue and overwork.
Kay singing, “Side By Side”
In 1946 she became a soloist, and in 1947 signed a solo contract with Capitol Records. Capitol had a number of other female singers signed up (such as Peggy Lee, Ella Mae Morse, Jo Stafford, and Margaret Whiting), so it was hard to find her a niche. In 1948 when the American Federation of Musicians was threatening a strike, Capitol wanted to have all its singers record a lot of songs for future release. Since she was junior to all these other artists, every song she wanted to sing got offered to all the others, leaving her a list of old songs from earlier in the century, 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, traditional pop music was being superseded by rock and roll, and Kay had only two hits, the aforementioned which is sometimes considered her attempt to sing rock and roll and sometimes as a song making fun of 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.
Most of her songs have jazz influences, and, like those of Frankie Laine and Johnnie Ray, are sung in a style that sound decidedly close to the rock and roll songs that follow. These include her smash hits “Wheel of Fortune” (her biggest hit, number one for 10 weeks), “Side by Side”, “The Man Upstairs”, and “Rock and Roll Waltz”. One of her biggest hits was her version of “The Man with the Bag”, a Christmas song, which is heard ubiquitously every holiday season in stores, restaurants, and on the radio.
As the 1950s drew to a close, Kay Starr’s popularity began to decline. However she 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 U.S. and the UK. She also recorded several jazz and country albums on small independent labels, including a 1968 album with Count Basie, 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. Most recently 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 Playing with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues.
Here’s Kay in an early variety show on TV -1952
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.
As of 2010 she resides in Bel Air, California; married six times, she has a daughter and a grandchild.
She also was one of the first female artists to perform country western swing music.
In 1981, Kay was a guest at”Backstage” where I was performing. Ted Hook, the owner of the club, introduced us and before long, Kay was up at the mic singing with me. It was a Monday evening so the club was quiet. Kay and I must have gone through 25 tunes before realizing it had gotten so late that the club was ready to close. We exchanged addresses and phone numbers and said we would stay in touch. She was so gracious. I told her that since the club was a popular hang out for Broadway and film stars, that I got to meet a lot of famous people. I told her I enjoyed meeting big band singers most of all. One evening about two weeks after we met, Ted came over to the piano with a wrapped package. He told me that it was for me and that Kay Starr’s manager had delivered it. I couldn’t imagine what it might be. When I opened it, I found 6 of Kay’s most recent recordings with an autographed 8″x10″ photo of Kay on top. The inscription read, “Dear Paul, Merry Christmas from a big band singer! Love, Kay Starr. What a classy lady! She is 88 years old, still singing and as lovely as ever.
Here’s the photo that Kay sent me, which was included with her Christmas gift.
Sources: Wikipedia, YouTube, kaystarr.com, imdb.com, NNDB.com, personal files.
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