Kay's first instrument was the accordion!

  During the time Kay was taking courses for a teaching certificate and then again for a period after graduation, Kay supported herself by giving piano lessons. But she hadn't grown up with a piano in the home; her keyboard skills came from a piano accordion which sat in her family's living room. The instrument belonged to Kay's cousin, with whom (along with Kay's sister) Kay sang in a girl-trio on the radio for fifteen minutes twice a week. The cousin came to town in the fuel-oil delivery truck her father drove as his job, and there was no room for the squeezebox in the cab of the truck, so it was left with Kay's family between radio performances. Kay taught herself to play it by using sheet music meant for the Hawaiian guitar. "It had diagrams for tuning," said Kay. "And it gave the notes for the guitar and then arrows when to the piano keys. I went backwards, and learned the guitar songs off the radio, and then matched the notes up to the piano."

Here's famed accordionist Charles Magnante, playing decades later in another radio studio, with his trio. 

Let Me Off Uptown!

 

Kay was ahead of her time, with Kazoo Swing

 

Recently, I heard this swingin' 1940 tune by "Doctor Sausage and His Five Pork Chops" (!), and it reminded me of part of a letter I found among Kay's paperwork. So far I've only found the second page, so I don't know who she was writing the letter to, but Kay tells about using novelty kazoos with the young women in the correctional center where she led a small band. Almost all the women played by ear, and they'd learned the solos and melodies from listening to the radio, but they didn't know the background parts. When the women were frustrated that they weren't getting a full swing sound, Kay explained about the parts different instruments play in an ensemble, and at a dime store she'd found some kazoos shapewd like trombones and saxes. She'd brought these in for the next band rehearsal and at first the women resisted the idea of playing music on toys. But apparently Kay did a killer sax solo from Claude Hopkins' "Swinging Down the Lane," and the women did try mimicking parts from records with the pretend horns. There were a lot of goofing around and giggling, and a couple of jousters had to be disarmed, but the women did seem to get the idea and after that Kay was able to help the group create some simple arrangements that sounded better to everyone's ears. 

In Kay's era, the world needed a nonstop flow of morale-raising songs

Like this one!

Why Broadway mattered to Kay, even if she never spent much time in New York

 Kay was much more likely to spend time in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, and occasionally out West than she was to go to the East Coast. Most of her performing career was connected with bond rallies / concerts, and her contacts with people she knew made it possible to do the shows very cheaply so that all the proceeds could go to fight the Second World War and then to recover from the war afterward. 

So when I first began researching the popular culture of Kay's time, I was slow to pay attention to Broadway. Then I realized that musicals and revues were the source of songs which appeared on the network readio programs heard across the nation. 

For example, the review "The Show Is On," which ran for about a year from the fall of 1936 to the fall of 1937 produced the Hoagy Carmichael hit "Little Old Lady," here covered by Ray Noble and his orchestra. 

Comedy short shown at Scott Air Field , where Kay once worked

 

Bob Burns' "Bazooka" was so popular that versions were sold. Here are photos from an eBay auction listing: