This music film clip is from the same ill fated biker movie as Bobby Vee's "Night Has A Thousand Eyes, It is an "answer" print (also called "rushes" or "dailies") which is a "strikeoff" reference film of poor quality. Our techs did the best they could with picture enhancements being this is such a great song sung by a great singer, but from a chintzy film company who went belly up as quick as they started, the film quality provides one strong reason why.

About Kay Starr: It took an outstanding talent like Kay Starr to perform with such demure radiance amidst the gaudy dance routine surrounding her (Capitol Records promo idea) and the crayola like television picture quality of less than perfected color TV in the 50's.

Born Kathryn La Verne Starks on July 21, 1922 in Dougherty, OK; daughter of Asa Starks, (an employee of the Texas Automatic Sprinkler Company) and Annie, (an employee of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Addresses: Management--Henry Miller, P. O. Box 195 Encino, CA 91426 Phone: (818) 905-9077.

If Emmy Awards were given for transition from one vocal style to another, Kay Starr would win every year with her delivery of country, jazz, blues and popular music. She was born July 21, 1922 in the small rural community of Dougherty, Oklahoma, to Harry and Annie Coll Starks. Harry was a full blooded Iroquois Indian born on a reservation near Buffalo, New York and Annie, a native of Oklahoma, was of Cherokee, Choctaw and Irish descent. Contrary to other stories, Starr was not born on an Indian reservation. When she was three, the family moved to Dallas, Texas where Harry worked at the Texas Automated Sprinkler Company as an installer and Annie raised chickens at their home. When Kay was small she would go to the hen house and standing atop an apple box sing to the chickens that had been gathered in rows at different levels similar to an amphitheater. Her aunt, Nora, heard her singing and entered her in a yo yo contest at radio station WRR where she sang and yo yoed; she won third prize. Starr later competed in a series of talent contests at the Melba Theater and won three times, triggering the station manager to offer her a fifteen minute program of her own, three times a week.

In 1935, her father's vocation again uprooted the family. They relocated to Memphis, Tennessee where she soon landed on country radio station WMPS's Saturday Night Jamboree. She sang with Grand Old Opry legend Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys; she was only fifteen. WMPS frequently received fan mail addressed to names like Kathryn Stokes, Starch, Stairs and even Kathryn Stinks and eventually WMPS's management asked Starr and her father to meet with them for the purpose of changing her name to one that listeners could easily remember. They explained the reason to her father and eventually came up with the name "Star". Her parents felt it was inappropriate because God made the star. It was Starr herself who came up with the idea of adding another "R" and the name Kay was chosen after Kathryn was shortened to "Kay."

While attending Technical High School in Memphis, Kay's radio show caught the attention of Joe Venuti, a popular orchestra leader, who was slated to perform at the famous Peabody Hotel. Venuti's contract called for a girl singer, which he did not have. Venuti visited her parents to obtain permission for her to appear with his orchestra; they agreed, provided she would be accompanied and returned home before midnight since she was only fifteen years old. That same year she briefly appeared with Bob Crosby and his Bobcats on the syndicated Chesterfield Supper Club in Detroit, and she also toured Canada with her mother, who posed as her sister. In July of 1939, she also replaced ailing singer, Marion Hutton, who collapsed with exhaustion on the bandstand. The seventeen year old Starr was considered to be a better singer than Hutton in several ways. Starr also appeared with Glenn Miller's band at Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, and recorded "Baby Me" and "Love, with a Capital You" with the band.

Kay Starr moved to Los Angeles, rejoining Venuti his orchestra . Later she began singing with trumpeter Wingy Monone's band. Bandleader Charlie Barnet hired her away from Monone, replacing vocalist Lena Horne, and she remained with Barnet until 1945. During that time she toured military hospitals and installations around the world and also performed at posh nightclubs in the Los Angeles area, including Mocambo's, Ciro's and El Rancho Vegas. During this time she developed pneumonia and spent six months in an Army hospital. She would eventually lose the use of her voice due to fatigue, overwork, and pneumonia. She was ordered by the doctor to cease talking, whispering, and to abandon singing until she healed. When her voice returned, it was much huskier and tighter.

In 1946 Kay Starr went solo. She was signed on to then fledgling Capitol Records by Dave Dexter after he had heard her sing in a local nightclub. Capitol had a stable of the finest female vocalists in America including Peggy Lee, Jo Stafford, Ella Mae Morse and Margaret Whiting. There Starr met Tennessee Ernie Ford and they recorded duets together. She remained with Capitol and produced such hits a "Bonaparte's Retreat," "Wheel of Fortune," "I'm the Lonesomest Gal in Town," "Half a Photograph," "Allez Vous En," "Crazy," and "Kay's Lament." "Bonaparte's Retreat" was originally an instrumental written by Pee Wee King , the co-author of the Tennessee Waltz. Its lyrics occurred when Starr visited her family in Dougherty, Oklahoma, and her cousin took her to a new "Juke joint" in town. She had a "fiddle song" and asked the manager to pull the record from the juke box. She called Roy Acuff in Nashville, who was the country and western singer and country music publisher, asking that lyrics be added. Acuff subsequently enlisted King's aid and lyrics were added to his instrumental composition. It rose to number four on the charts and nearly a million dollars in records were sold in 1950.

"Wheel Of Fortune" was not only Kay's favorite hit song, but very close at heart to her. Find out why below.

Kay Starr's her biggest hit, "Wheel of Fortune," was the singer's favorite of all pieces because it allowed her to have a lovely home in California It also provided an education for her two daughters, Kathy and Donna and the opportunity to sing all over the world and before Presidents. She described recording "Wheel of Fortune" as difficult since the wheel had to emit the right sound to correspond to the lyrics and music that were easily recorded. This 1952 introduction to the pop music field became her theme song and her first gold record.

Other hits followed including "Allez Vous En," Cole Porter's "Half a Photograph," and her first hit released single "I'm the Lonesomest Gal In Town." In 1952, she recorded a late 1920's song written by Harry Woods, a former Cape Cod, Massachusetts farmer, who had gone to New York after successfully writing "When the Red Red Robin Goes Bob Bob Bobin Along." Wood's song, "Side by Side" had been written in the 1920's depression era and was inspired as a result of the hard times he and his wife had endured while working at the songwriter's Brill Building in New York. The song became a big hit when Starr revived it in 1953.

Kay Starr conveyed in an interview that Capitol Records (later would be the debut lavel of The Beatles) often treated her as a utility singer and songs were offered to other female singers before being offered to her, and that she was assigned offbeat selections. On one occasion she submitted a list of songs she wanted to sing and the list was given to Peggy Lee and the other female vocalists. When it was returned a line had been drawn through all of them and she felt she was finding songs for them. Other top twenty hits include "Changing Partners," "Man Upstairs," "So Tired," and "If You Love Me." Starr also recorded an English version of Edith Piaf's song "Hymn L'Amour", written for her lover, French boxing champion Marcel Cerdan.

In 1955, she went to a new label, RCA (then RCA Victor) Records, which had a large stable of top male vocalists including Perry Como and Eddie Fisher. The following year she was presented with the sheet music to a song entitled "The Rock and Roll Waltz." When she looked at the sheet music, she first thought the song was a joke since she could not read musical scales. It also appeared to sound like a nursery rhyme. However, "The Rock and Roll Waltz" became her first RCA recording and rose to number one on the charts in the United States and it made it to the top ten in the United Kingdom. It was also considered the first hit by a female vocalist in the newly issued in "Rock and Roll Era".

The 1950s, Kay desired spending more time with her daughter, Kathy. However, she began to book engagements in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe casinos and made guest appearances on numerous major television shows including those of The Ed Sullivan Show, The Perry Como Show, The Dinah Shore Show, and others. In 1959 she renewed her relationship with Capitol Records and since that time has appeared in nightclubs and theaters all over the world as well as appearing on television and in the motion picture The Lord Don't Play Favorites with Robert Stack, Buster Keaton and singer Dick Haymes. In recent years she has regularly appeared in revues at Palm Beach, Florida.

Kay Starr made singing debut on Radio Station WRR, 1932 in Dallas, Texas (now a classical music station); later WREC, 1935 in Memphis, TN; served as a staff vocalist at the station throughout high school; joined Joe Venuti and his orchestra, 1937 at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis; eventually led to assignments with Bob Crosby and Glenn Miller, where she made her first recordings; rejoined Venuti; sang with Wingy Manone's band and later with Charlie Barnet and his orchestra.; joined Capitol Records, 1946 and had a number of top ten hits including "Wheel of Fortune" her theme song; left Capitol in the 1950s; joined RCA and had a number one hit in "Rock and Roll Waltz;" today Starr performs when she wants to have fun and makes appearances from FL to CA.

Kay Starr Facts & Trivia Lay Starr was a role model to an LA night club singer who had a beguine tempo top 10 hit amidst the wild rock and roll of 1960.

Singer Toni Fisher (The Big Hurt. You Never Told Me 1959-60 hits on Wayne Shanklin's Signet label) declared that her biggest role model and influence was Kay Starr. (Toni Fisher died 1995 of a massive heart attack in LA where she lived).

Kay Starr was noted by Hit Parade Magazine as the Number One Female Performer of the Year (1957),

Kay Starr was also inducted into the; Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame.

Kay Starr 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.

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.'

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.

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.
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Came 1950, Kay 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, Kay Starr 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 Kay Starr's 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 Kay Starr left 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 Playin' with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues.

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 this writing (2009), Kay Starr resides in Bel Air, California; married six times, she has a daughter and a grandchild.

Kay Starr was also one of the first female artists to perform country western swing music.

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