Kay Starr (2)

KAY STARR WITH THE COUNT BASIE ORCHESTRA - HOW ABOUT THIS (1969)

Conducted by Dick Hyman

1-I get the blues when it rains
2-God bless the child
3-Baby, won't you please come home
4-Ain't no use
5-My man
6-Hallelujah, I love him so
7-I can't stop loving you
8-Keep smiling at trouble
9-If I could be with you
10-Good time girl
11-Cottage for sale

KAY STARR - ROCKIN' WITH KAY (1958)

1.Dry Bones     
2.Rockin' Chair     
3.I Gotta Get Away from You     
4.Till We Meet Again     
5.True Blue Lou     
6.Lazy Bones     
7.Lonesome Road     
8.The Glory of Love     
9.I'm Confessin'     
10.Lover Man     
11.How Deep Is the Ocean?     
12.Do I Worry

Kay Starr's third RCA Victor album found her hedging her bets on prevailing musical trends, as the title and album cover indicated. The name Rockin' With Kay may have seemed unequivocal in its proclamation that the 35-year-old swing veteran was joining the rock & roll bandwagon, but Starr playfully posed on the cover in a rocking chair and covered Hoagy Carmichael's "Rockin' Chair," a signature song for Mildred Bailey, inside. Still, the arrangements were bluesy and rocking, after a fashion, and Starr sang with her usual throaty abandon. Her career had been reinvigorated in the fall of 1957 by the Top Ten hit "My Heart Reminds Me," but for the LP market she was still trying to figure out who her audience was. As a result, she split the difference, cutting standards like "How Deep Is the Ocean," but singing with rock & roll fervor, employing jazzy horns in her arrangements alongside a wailing electric guitar. She remained a powerful enough singer to overcome such compromises, but the rock and pop communities were too far apart to be straddled successfully, and she continued to languish in the LP racks.