The Aztec Eagles train in the U.S.

 Two articles about the "Aztec Eagles," and elite group ofr Mexican air force pilots. They did their training in Pocatello, Idaho, but Kay reported that three of the pilots and one of their trainers came to Scott Field to do a special course in radio / communications. 

Mexican Air Force https://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-mexican-air-force-helped-liberate-the-philippines.htm

Pocatello https://www.rickjust.com/blog/the-aztec-eagles

Memories of a Dever-based "all-girl band"

 Kay https://www.denverpost.com/2015/05/22/joy-caylers-denver-based-all-girl-band-brought-swing-to-wwii-troops/

all girl band https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCPlc24JjVQ

Chick Webb

 

Outside Kay's sphere: Modern Dance

Ruth St. Denis, 1944.

Guessing what films Kay saw at the second-run theater

Four three or four years, Kay and her partner Wilmetta "Teeny" Stockton lived and worked in Mill Creek Valley, an African-American section of St. Louis. Kay and Teeny loved to go to the local movie palace, but the selection of films was sketchy fror a number of reasons, including post-war shortages and a low-income neighborhood. 

Sometimes the "new" movies which showed up at neighborhood theaters were actually years old. Kay and Teeny used to joke that they'd gone to see the 1946 version of the film "Luxury Liner," only to find that they'd bought tickets for the 1933 version. 

In Kay's time, "Victory" often meant "hmmm" when it came to products

 

Kay's Peers: A Violinist

 https://www.thestrad.com/news/american-violinist-camilla-wicks-dies-aged-92/11495.article?fbclid=IwAR3X0i7RYOPZETi54juUzqvmPdC3PBFBZw98pnVieYax2j3DREKfdnaPDYk

Teeny's Cartoon Corner

 Teeny Stockton, Kay's life partner was a big fan of cartoons. Betty Boop was fine, but Teeny really loved Pudgy the dog. 

Here's Pudgy in "Swing School":

Song from Kay's era by Guy Lombardo and Orchestra

 

Kay's partner Teeny was a cartoon lover

 

Teeny cartoon hound https://www.newsfromme.com/iaq/iaq12/#:~:text=Disney's%20%22Silly%20Symphonies%2C%22%20the,cartoons%20built%20primarily%20around%20music.&text=Apart%20from%20that%2C%20the%20other,%2Dand%2Dwhite%20until%201943.

Friends of Kay: Bob McFadden

 http://www.rankinbass.com/bobmcfaddenhome.html

In Kay's era: The Kalamazoo Gals at the Gibson factory

 https://www.michiganradio.org/post/best-gibson-guitars-were-made-kalamazoo-gals?fbclid=IwAR2VwpQYNz4QdxoBVSy3fhLfk1QscCFyAG98v4b6x927_HkOI2sfEtpsNIk

Drummer Viola Smith, born in 1921, has passed away

 A contemporary of Kay's. Kay lived till the late 1980s but Viola stayed with us until October. 2020. 

What does it say about America that there were seven (7) Francis the Talking Mule movies?

The release of "Francis" in 1950 coincided with the start of Kay's growing dissatisfaction with the way popular culture was headed. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_(film) 

Kay and military communication

 Kay fell into situations both as a WAAC member and as a civilian worker at an airfield in which she helped with communications technology. She'd had to learn on the job and quickly in the year when she'd been a high school band director, as managing the school's radio club was part of the job. 

I'm sure she had experience with teletypes, working properly and otherwise. I have only been through about a third of the archival material I have so who knows what will turn up on th topic in the future?

http://taipeisignalarmy.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-model-15-by-teletype-corporation.html

The terrors of traveling by bus in the South of the 1940s

 Kay and Teeny, with a band, toured the South to promote Enchanted Nile Pomade, a hair product marketed to men and women of color. The company couldn't support the cost of a touring bus, so the band traveled in a motley array of second- and third-hand vechicles, which of course occasionally broke down. A few times, one or more members of the band had to take a Greyhound bus to get to the gig while others tended to a disabled vehicle. 

While I don't know if Kay or Teeny were aware of the brutal beating of honorably-dischanrged serviceman Stt. Isaac Woodard, I'm sure they had heard similar tales of punishment meted out to people of color who were perceived to act "above themselves."

https://carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu/isaac-woodard-a-forgotten-story-that-changed-history/

From Kay's Era: Alternative version of Ma and Pa Kettle on film plus the one without Pa

 The Family Next Door:

Vimeo:  https://vimeo.com/channels/592159/74891764

"I don't know what you'd call that"

 "I don't know what you'd call that" was Kay's reply to an interviewer in the 1980s, who used a cassette player to play a tape of orchestral dance music from the late 1950s, about a decade after Kay had switched from a music-oriented career to her work as a teacher. 

"The album is called 'Swing Fever," said the interviewer. "Now, would you call music of this type swing?"

Radio sponsors you don't hear today #1

In the age of old time radio, every kind of industry had a program named after it. Some of the products don't exist any more -- tooth powder, for example. Other sponsors are around but their product line or business has radically changed. For example, trains!

The Railroad Hour:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Railroad_Hour#:~:text=The%20Railroad%20Hour%20was%20a,on%20those%20written%20before%201943.

"Super Circus" -- no wonder Kay had doubts about early television

 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157618281566139&set=pcb.10157618287081139&type=3&theater

A contemporary of Kay's in a NYC appreciation piece

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/obituaries/Helen-Woods-dead-coronavirus.html?smid=fb-share

My life mirroring Kay's -- part 2 of 2

Kay spit valve rubber band trick https://www.smartmusic.com/blog/dos-and-donts-of-emergency-band-instrument-repair/

Trumpet rim repair -- Kay used marble ashtray and I used marble cutting board. 

The mystery mallet I found in the box, with the joke tag on it. 

I used a modern plastic trumpet stand as my make-do mandrel to straight out a bent bell, but Kay used the kind of wooden mute in popular use in the 1940s.

The first time my life has mirrored Kay's -- Part 1 of 2

I work my way, when I can find some time down through the five orf six remaining boxes of unexamined Kay memorabilia I have. I guess "unexamined" isn't quite accurate, as I did transfer the contents of the original vintage and worse-for-wear storage boxes the items were packed in. Neither Kay nor Teeny had thought of long-term storage; I'm sure they packed these things for the move from St. Louis down to New Orleans and then once they'd gotten the living room lamps and the spaghetti strainer in place, then the rest went into the attic or garage to be 'dealt with later." Been failed to deal with that. 

And then the next generation of family was thoughtful enough not to toss the tattered old boxes into a dumpster somewhere when Kay and Teeny's house needed to be emptied before the real estate agent could list it. The stuff was stored in a different attic  until Hurricane Katrina hit, and then everything that could be salvaged from upper floors was put into a storage unit until everyone was settled again. 

So I got the stuff, and immediately transferred it to boxes which were newer and sturdier, and stacked those up in my attic and basement. In that process, I did glance through things quickly but I'm just now really looking at some notes and letters and receipts and so on that I've never had time to un-box and spread out on the dining room table to go through. 

In my own moves, I've jumbled items together into boxes. At first, items which go together are grouped in cartons. But then after a while things go where there is room for them. So I wasn't startled to come across some loose objects in with what was otherwise a boxful of paper ephemera. It's true that a wooden square-headed meat tenderizing mallet isn't an everyday item but it's not extremely strange either. 

But the one I found about eight or ten inches into a large box had a homemade paper tag tied to the handle with a bit of string. The faded ink on the tag (done in fountain pen, I believe) says "Kay's Wonder Mallet for Musical Instrument Repair."

The rest of the story in the next post. . .

Newspapers of the 1940s

Now that daily newspapers, printed on newsprint, are dying off, it's hard to remember how many papers there used to be, often three or four in a large city. I've been researching newspapers published in St. Louis, as they would have been where Kay got her news when she wasn't traveling. 

Today I was reading some 1940s history and came across a mention of PM, a liberal newspaper published in New York using funds from Marshall Field. I'd never heard of it. This evaporating culture is some of why I do this project; things which were once known to thousands or tens of thousands of people just vanish. 

The geography of Kay's time

Until I began researching Kay's life and times, I don't know if I'd ever heard of Silesia, among other places. I may need a 1940s geography/social studies book to know where countries' borders were, or what nations used to be called 80 years ago. 

Hand-held WWII radio was a part of Kay's life in the 40s

The history and people of Kay' era -- postwar Germany in the news

It's clearer now than it once was about when and where Hitler's private secretary and later Nazi high official Martin Bormann died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Bormann

ZaSu Pitts and the gang, plus the King Cole Trio

Melba Liston, 1945

Kay read "My Day" in the newspaper

This website has Eleanor Roosevelt's "My Day" newspaper column, gathered in one place and organized by date. Cool. 

Radio research

To understand Kay's relationship to radio -- including her work with a group of child singers promoting a brand of pancake syrup -- it helps for me to read up a bi.

https://archive.org/details/TheEarlyHistoryOfRadioFromFaradayToMarconi/mode/2up?q=Hertz+Electric+Waves

Vera Lynn was a huge celebrity in Kay's era

The London Telepgraph's obit for Dasme Vera Lynn  is a fascinating read. 

Hits from Kay's era: "Cocoanut Grove" 1938

A morale-booster from Kay's era -- 1945's "O Dry Those Tears"

Kay's appreciation of Caapt. Trimble of the Air Force

Because of her work, both as a service member and as a civilian, at Scott Air Field (later Scott Air Force Base), Kay was aware of the rescue missions organized by Capt. Robert Trimble, who saved the lives of many prisoners of war at the Eastern Front. 

The Stars & Stripes website has a good article about Trimble and his missions, and there are plenty of historic photos to go with it. 

https://www.stripes.com/news/special-reports/features/wwii-captain-s-secret-mission-to-save-hundreds-from-soviets-1.339135

Related to Kay's military experience and radio systems

https://ieeetv.ieee.org/mobile/video/richard-thompson-jr-crystal-clear


Author interview with the man who wrote the book Crystal Clear.

Kay and the SOE

Kay had some classified information about secret British operations during the Second World War. She was not allowed to tell anyone what she knew, but I found some stuff on the internet.

This article filled in some of the details for me. 

A book called Code Name: Lise which has more of the personal histories of the people involved. 

Music from Kay's Era: "Gotta Be This or That"

Three Stooges Time!

Kay was included in one scene of a Three Stooges film, but alas, she ended up on the cutting room floor. She maintained a longime friendship with "Curly," and she told an interviewer about watching "Movie Maniacs" at a private screening at Jerome's home.

Watch Three Stooges in "Movie Maniacs"

A name better known in Kay's era than in ours

https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/Article/107811/general-henry-h-arnold/

War Time

https://www.defense.gov/Explore/Features/story/Article/1779177/daylight-saving-time-was-once-known-as-war-time/

Celebrity of Kay's era: Alexander Woollcott

Alexander Woollcott was a household name in the 1930s and 1940s and here, as "The Town Crier," he introduces the trailer for the 1939 film "Goodbye, Mr. Chips."

During Kay's most active years, Greer Garson was one of Hollywood's best-known stars. Garson appeared in the film version of the best-seller Random Harvest. In the thumbnail for the video we see Garson's co-star Ronald Colman.

The trailer begins with accolades about the novel and what a literary success it had been. The book was by James Hilton, author of Lost Horizon  and Goodbye, Mr. Chips. 

People do enjoy the release of new books, but with e-book, a slew of new fiction appears daily. But in Kay's day, people waited outside bookstores for them to open to get the newest bestseller. Stores had plate glass windows and shoppers on the sidewalk would look anxiously to see when something new was going to appear in the window. Only modern instance I can think of us was the buzz over each new book in the Harry Potter series. 

Women's Army Corps battalion got the mail where it needed to go

This article covers a part of history I missed until today. May appreciation be shown now -- better late than never. 

Kay was a teacher all her life

Kay thought of herself as a musician, as a producer of concerts, as a adoptive parent -- but rarely did she speak of herself as a teacher. She had a teaching certificate, earned in a two-year program which was considered a practical education for young women during the Depression years. And she did teach briefly in a public school, serving as Band Director and music teacher when the original male teacher died unexpectedly during the school year. 

But other than that, Kay taught many people over the years, but always in an unofficial  capacity. For example, she worked at Scott Field (now Scott Air Force Base) as a music librarian, organizing the sheet music for the military bands. Because she shared a quonset hut with the area where all airmen-to-be took Morse Code lessons, she ended up tutoring enlisted men who struggled with learning the Morse alphabet. Many said they would not have passed the course, and thus would not have been qualified to fly, without Kay's help. 

This video goes over the basics of the Morse Code alphabet, at a slow enough pace for someone just learning. 

Actor in gorilla suit falls down

Kay spent a great deal of time inside movie theaters during the 1040s. Theaters often doubled as music venues, especially when Kay traveled with the small jazz ensemble "Dit's Dots," and also when she produced concerts which were also rallies to sell War Bonds.

Kay also went with Teeny Stockton to one of the two Black-owned movie picture houses in the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood of St. Louis. The movies at this theater were terrible, but Kay used to say "You got a lot for your money," meaning that here would often be two or three B pictures in addition to the main feature. 

I don't know which of the movie theaters it was where Kay saw the 1944 movie "Nabonga," a poor man's version of "King Kong." But I have heard a snippet of a home recording of Kay and Teeny laughing about the moment in the film (at 1 hour, nine minutes, just after two shots from a pistol are fired at the ape) when the man in the gorilla suit falls down. He is supposed to be sneaking down a jungle path, and the fake grass on the studio floor, or perhaps his furry gorilla feet trip him up, and down he goes. Does the director keep filming? Yep. They just added a couple of extra meancing grunts and snarls to cover up the "oof" moment. 

Child star of the 1930s/1940s: Jane Withers

Shirley Temple and Baby Rose Marie weren't the only child actor to win the movie-going public's heart; there was also Jane Withers.

Withers, in her younger years, is best known for playing the anti-heroine in "Bright Eyes." But a few years later, she did some Judy Garland style young-teenager singing in a 1944 Broadway musical. I couldn't find a recording on Withers herself singing "I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry" in 1944, so here's Kitty Kallem singing a Big Band version the following year.

"Little Anna" Pickard

As a child, Kay and her sister and their cousin sang on a radio show promoting Ma-Flow pancake syrup. They were just three of many famous singing children from family acts like the Picards. 

Morale-lifters which influenced Kay

From her stint in a teacher's college program to a briefer stint as a piano teacher, to a sewing instructor for female parolees, to her work during the Second World War, Kay was always finding a way to raise spirits.

The many Depression-era films with this same purpose must have been an influence. Here's one from dicrector King Vidor, who wrote the script, being "inspired by the headlines of today."

The era of the Wssterns begins for Kay

This film was one of many, many Western films of the 1930s and 1940s, but it was the first which alerted Kay to a cultured trend. 

Kay was a jazz-lover, and she'd really enjoyed the raised cultural awareness that the Second World War brought to music. The general public was aware of jazz and swing, and also was learned to  be comfortable with people of color as musical celebrities. 

The boom in cowboy/Western-themed entertainment had been going on for a while, but Kay had been too busy to really take note. But long lines at the movie theater of people waiting to see Gregory Peck in the 1948 movie "Yellow Sky" made Kay look and listen more carefully. The radio version of "Gunsmoke" would soon evolve into a television program American tastes were changing. 

Broacast history book

Someone kindly scanned the pages of Broadcasting History of Maine and placed it on a radio history site. I've looked through the book before, because while the setting is not where Kay did her radio and early-television work, the time period and the type of facility, etc. is a pretty good match-up.

Natiional Archive site of World War II radio

This link takes you there.

Kay's change of heart toward Woody Guthrie

Along with Burl Ives, Sonny Terry, Cisco Houston, Will Geer, and Lee Hays, Woody Guthrie acted, played the guitar and sang in a radio production called "The Martins and the Coys," which had a "hillbilly" theme. The radio play featured the song "All You Fascists Bound to Lose."

As mentioned previously in this blog, Kay was dubious about folk singers in general and about the Almanac Singers (Woody was a member) in particular. This was all about anti-war and anti-draft songs The Almanac Singers put out at a time when Kay was working at a military airfield before the United States entered the Second World War. 


But Kay changed her mind when Woody Guthrie joined up and the Almanac Singers abandoned their anti-draft, anti-FDR, isolationist stance and began working actively against the Fascist movement rising in Europe even before the war. 

  It was the radio play "The Martins and the Coys" which won Kay over toward Woody Guthrie, and she was very impressed with  "All You Fascists Bound to Lose."

Kay and folk music

Kay seems to have been a tolerant person overall, but her dislike of country-western music was known far and wide. That was more of an aesthetic issue, coupled with pressure from an employer who insisted Kay include singing-cowboy records on her morning radio program about 1949 or 1950.

But before that, Kay had taken a general stand against the folk-song movement. As she worked at Scott Air Field, first as a member of the Women's Auxillary Army Corps and then as a civilian, and then during the time she was producing shows to promote the sale of defense bonds, Kay was irked by the anti-war stand taken by some "folkies." In particular, she disliked The Almanac Singers, who made a number of recordings objecting to men being drafted into the Army.

"The Ballad of October 16" refers to the date in 1940 when the Selective Service Act passed in September went into effect and men had to sign up with their draft boards:

"Billy Boy" honed the familar folk song into a general statement against war:

And the lyrics of "Washington Breakdown" talk about serving in the armed forces in the opposite of the morale-boosting manner Kay favored: "Wendell Willkie and Franklin D./ seems to me /they both agree/ on killin' me. . . "

Kay was in no sense a warmonger, but she lumped folksingers in general in with the pro-German "America First" crowd, based on a few records by the singing group which included Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Sis Cunningham among others. Kay didn't display many prejudices in general, but she certainly had no use for this type of social commentator, especially in a time of war. 

Three sleds?

Recently I saw this photo on an online sharing site and someone wondered if the children had shovels to make a path for their sled. 

I don't think so! The shovels are the kind used for shoveling coal into a scuttle or furnace -- not the flat flat bottoms and rims down the sides. 

In a letter to her sister, Kay wrote about the two of them as young children, taking turns sliding down a hill on the family's coal shovel. Apparently, kids turned the shovels around backwsards and sat on the shovel blade and then tried to steer with the handle. 

How well this went is revealed in Kay's letter: "You remember when we went "sledding" and that old sled handle came up and bopped you and your tooth came out? Good thing for you it was a baby tooth but I remember you cried because the white tooth got lost in the snow so the Tooth Fairy couldn't come. Our folks said never mind but we know they didn't want to spare the nickel, ha ha. And then Paw Paw gave you some sticky taffy and it pulled another loose tooth out and you were so happy. I think it was Paw Paw, anyway."

A good one from Kay's era

Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians offer some excellent advice. 

A favorite tune used in Kay's "morale medleys"

In between war-bond rallies during and just after the Second World War, Kay organized community concerts in which local glee clubs, church choirs, and other singing groups would stand on risers at the conclusion of the show and sing a medley of morale-boosting songs. The Marilyn Miller favorite  "Look for the Silver Lining," from the 1920s, was revived by Judy Garland and other singers.

The song was the title number for the Hollywood biopic about Miller:

Pop hits that made Kay glad she'd quit show buiness, #3, 422

In public, Kay was tactful and diplomatic. At home, and in privately-written notes, she experessed her disdain for a culture which once embraced swing music enthusiastically and jazz music with some doubt, and which now wanted the soulful sounds erased from its radio airwaves. 

The Four Preps appear on a television variety show to lip-sync "26 Miles."

Kay-era nutritional supplement