Kay Starr |
||
|
|
||
Career Highlights |
||
Kay Starr DiscographySee also Kay Starr Songs
|
||
Kay Starr Biography |
||
|
A solid jazz singer whose early recordings tended to be forgotten after her ascendancy into the commercial sphere during the mid-`50s, Kay Starr was among the first pop singer to capitalize on the "rock fad" with her 1955 novelty "Rock and Roll Waltz." Her biggest hit came with the era-defining "Wheel of Fortune," a prime slice of `50s adult pop with a suitably brassy reading. Born in Oklahoma, she moved to Dallas at a young age and made her debut on radio while still in school. A brief stay with Glenn Miller & His Orchestra precipitated her working with groups led by Bob Crosby, Joe Venuti and finally Charlie Barnet. She recorded a few numbers with Barnet that earned her a solo contract with Capitol.
By 1948, Starr made her Your Hit Parade breakthrough with "You Were Only Foolin` (While I Was Falling in Love)." Subsequent hits like "Hoop-Dee-Doo," "Oh, Babe!" and "I`ll Never Be Free" (the latter with Tennessee Ernie Ford) framed her in an emerging vein of the popular market that also looked back to traditional country and folk. In 1952, "Wheel of Fortune" became her biggest hit and one of the signature songs of the `50s pop sound. She struggled to reach a similar chart peak for several years afterwards, though "Comes A-Long A-Love" topped the British charts. With her move to RCA in 1955, though the comical "Rock and Roll Waltz" spent several weeks at number one. It was her last major hit, followed by just one additional Top Ten entry, 1957`s "My Heart Reminds Me." By the 1960s, she had begun to concentrate more on performing (especially in Las Vegas) than recording, despite moving back to Capitol in 1961. In the `90s, she played several oldies packages, including the 3 Girls 3 tour with Helen O`Connell and Margaret Whiting. Biography Credit: www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:fiftxqw5ldhe~T1 |
||
Top News Stories |
||
|
||
Snapshot |
||
Photo Gallery |
||
|
|
||
Fans |
||
|
|
||
Trivia |
||
Quotes "When they brought in rock, hard rock and acid rock, I thought God was trying to tell me it was my turn to get off stage." "When Ernie and I sang the first eight bars together, we fell in love, because we are country. You have to be country to sing a song like that." "I wrote them down and handed the list in, but it had to go through Peggy Lee and all the other girls, and when I got it back every song had a line through it. What I was doing, really, was finding songs for them." "(on recording her first record) I sounded like a jazzed-up alfalfa on that, at the time I didn`t know what a `range` was, besides something you cooked on, or something that cattle grazed on." "Glenn Miller okayed it for me to come and sing with the band for two weeks. Well, I had to get an okay from my father who had to get an okay from the school board. But, everything was worked out, and I sang with the Glenn Miller Band for two weeks at the Glen Island Casino. It was like a movie set! I`d never worked a place like that! [in] Oklahoma we don`t have that kind of water! We were right on the New England Sound. When I got up to sing, my God! I was overlooking the water... and the moon... I thought it was just wonderful!" "That summer, Joe Venuti asked my parents if I could travel with the band. Well, of course my mother loved the idea! She went with me. But because she`s only seventeen years older than i am, joe said, `We`re going to be working in hotels where they serve cocktails and things, we can`t tell them how old she is. We won`t lie, but if they don`t ask, don`t volunteer!` So we played a game. My mother was my sister. This was a wonderful game for a twelve-and-a half year old. And my mother loved it, because it made her seem much younger, and still got a chance to look after me and supervise what i was doing." "I didn`t have enough sense to be scared. It was a contest to promote yo-yos. And i didn`t have a yo-yo, so this ment that they`d give me a yo-yo and I`d get to sing, which I loved to do, and I didn`t care why I did it. So, they gave me a yo-yo about a week in advance. I wasn`t very good with it, but I was good enough to do straight up-and-down, `See the World.` And then I learned to do `Around the World.` Those were to only tricks I could do, but I could do `em singin` "Potatoes are Cheaper/Tomatoes are Cheaper/Now`s The Time To Fall In Love." I won third prize, which was two tickets to come back and watch somebody else be foolish. But it was during the depression, and everything you got for nothing, well, you prized it." "Mother raised chickens. We had a hen house, and when it was time for the hens to roost, I wold pretend like I was playing piano with an old apple box and I would sing to them."Trivia She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 1716 Vine Street in Hollywood, California. Has a daughter and one grandson. Married six times and living in Bel-Air, California. Rough-voiced (due to a throat ailment) Native American popular singer. At the height of her popularity, during the 1950s, she had two number one hit singles, "Wheel of Fortune" (Capitol: 1952) and "The Rock-and-Roll Waltz" (RCA Victor: 1956). Native American, who was born on a reservation in Oklahoma. | ||
Top Contributors |
||
|
Top editors for this profile:
|
||
Related Links |
||
 Silver Sites
|
||
Related Profiles |
||
Comments
Continue the Conversation