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."