Philip Pearlstein

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Biography

Pearlstein was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and received his Masters in art history at New York University. He was a friend of Andy Warhol from college and he accompanied Warhol to Manhattan from Pittsburgh in 1949. Warhol and Pearlstein subleased an eighth-floor walkup tenement apartment on St. Mark's Place (and Avenue A) for the summer. According to Pearlstein, "The bathtub was in the kitchen and it was usually full of roaches, incredible roaches." When they moved a few months later to the large front room of dancer Francesca Boas's loft on West 23rd Street, Warhol sent out address change cards in small envelopes filled with glitter announcing: "I've moved from one roach-ridden apartment to another."

Career coffee cup warmers

During the 1950s Pearlstein exhibited abstract expressionist landscape paintings. Around 1958 he began to attend weekly figure drawing drawing sessions at the studio of Mercedes Matter. In 1961 Pearlstein began to make paintings of nude couples based upon his drawings, and in 1962 he began painting directly from the model in a less painterly and more realistic style. In so doing, he demonstrated that figurative realism could once again be made into a vital art form. In an article published in Arts Magazine in April, 1963, Sidney Tillim wrote that "[Pearlstein] has not only regained the figure for painting; he has put it behind the plane and in deep space without recourse to nostalgia (history) or fashion (new images of man) ... He paints the nude not as a symbol of beauty and pure form but as a human factmplicitly imperfect". suction cup hook

Pearlstein's early landscape paintingssually rock-strewn hillsides in which every angle, shadow, and shape was seen with a clinical clarityoreshadow his treatment of the nude as a natural phenomenon devoid of any identity other than the attributes of sex and skin color. Before modernism, painting and sculpture presented the human body in every conceivable pose and situation sanctioned by history, religion, or mythology, but the twentieth century brought a new method of comprehending what we see as form for its own sake. In Pearlstein's paintings, the human body, placed in a corner of a floodlighted studio, assumes a new range of plastic realities, as the mass and weight of the body are emphasized in the unstudied character of the pose. The point of view frequently results in radical cropping of the figure at the edge of the canvas. The painting Models With Mirror is an example of Pearlstein's concern for the body as form. inflatable bop bag

Pearlstein's work is in 63 museums collections in the United States, including the Art Institute of Chicago, The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art amongst others. The Milwaukee Art Museum honored him with a retrospective exhibition in 1983 and accompanied the exhibition with a monograph on his complete paintings. He recently showed at the Century Association, New York; Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Galerie Haas, Zurich; and Galerie Haas & Fuchs, Berlin, Germany.

Since the mid-1950s Pearlstein has received several awards, most recently, the National Council of Arts Administrators Visual Artist Award; The Benjamin West Clinedinst Memorial Medal, The Artists Fellowship, Inc., New York, NY; and honorary doctorate degrees from Brooklyn College, NY, Center for Creative Studies and the College of Art & Design, Detroit, MI, and New York Academy of Arts, New York, NY. Pearlstein is a former President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Notes

^ a b c Pearlstein 1970 (unpaginated)

References

Pearlstein, P. (1970). Philip Pearlstein. Georgia: Georgia Museum of Art.

External links

National Gallery of Art, biography, retrieved July 17, 2008

An essay on Pearlstein by James Kalm

Categories: Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters | Carnegie Mellon University alumni | American painters | American printmakers | 1924 births | Living people | Jewish American artists | Artists from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | Guggenheim Fellows

Bayonet

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History

Early-19th century socket bayonet

Socket of a bayonet wire rope suppliers

The origins of the bayonet are somewhat hazy. The term 'Bayonette' dates back to the end of the 16th century, but it is not clear if the weapon at the time was the weapon as is known today or simply a type of knife. For example, Cotgrave's 1611 Dictionarie describes the Bayonet as 'a kind of small flat pocket dagger, furnished with knives; or a great knife to hang at the girdle'. Likewise, Pierre Borel wrote in 1655 that a kind of long-knife called a 'bayonette' was made in Bayonne but does not give any further description .There is a legend that during the mid-17th century irregular military conflicts of rural France, the peasants of the Southern French town of Bayonne, having run out of powder and shot, rammed their long-bladed hunting knives into the muzzles of their primitive muskets to fashion impromptu spears and, by necessity, created an ancillary weapon. Another possibility is that the bayonet originated as a hunting weapon: early firearms were fairly inaccurate and took a long time to reload; thus a hunter of dangerous animals such as wild boar could easily have been exposed to danger if the hunter's bullet missed the animal. The bayonet thus may have emerged to allow a hunter to fend off wild animals in the event of a missed shot. The weapon was introduced into the French army by General Jean Martinet and was common in most European armies by the 1660s. wire rope supplier

The benefit of such a dual-purpose arm contained in one was soon apparent. The early muskets fired at a slow rate (about 2 rounds per minute when loading with loose powder and ball, and no more than 34 rounds per minute using paper cartridges), and were both inaccurate and unreliable. Bayonets provided a useful addition to the weapons system when an enemy charging to contact could cross the musket's killing ground (a range of approximately 100 yards/meters at the most optimistic) at the expense of perhaps only one or two volleys from their waiting opponents. A foot-long bayonet, extending to a regulation 17 inches (approx. 43 centimetres) during the Napoleonic period, on a 5-foot (around 1.5 metre) tall musket achieved a reach similar to the infantry spear, and later halberd, of earlier times. The bayonet/musket combination was however considerably heavier than a polearm of the same length. ratchet lever hoists

Early bayonets were of the "plug" type. The bayonet had a round handle that slid directly into the musket barrel. This naturally prevented the gun from being fired. In 1671, plug bayonets were issued to the French regiment of fusiliers then raised. They were issued to part of an English dragoon regiment raised in 1672 and disbanded in 1674, and to the Royal Fusiliers when raised in 1685. The danger incurred by the use of this bayonet (which put a stop to all fire) was felt so early that the younger Puysgur saw a ring-bayonet in 1678 which could be fixed without stopping the fire. The defeat of forces loyal to William of Orange by Jacobite Highlanders at the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689 was due (among other things) to the use of the plug-bayonet; and shortly afterwards the defeated leader, Hugh Mackay, is believed to have introduced a ring-bayonet of his own invention. Soon "socket" bayonets offset the blade from the musket barrel's muzzle. The bayonet attached over the outside of the barrel with a ring-shaped socket, secured on later models by a spring-loaded catch on the muzzle of the musket barrel.

A trial with badly fitting socket or zigzag bayonets was made after the battle of Fleurus, 1690, in the presence of Louis XIV, who refused to adopt them. Shortly after the Peace of Ryswick (1697), the English and Germans abolished the pike and introduced these bayonets, and plates of them are given in Surirey de St. Remy's Mmoires d'Artillerie, published in Paris in that year; but owing to a military cabal they were not issued to the French infantry until 1703. Henceforward, the bayonet became, with the musket or other firearm, the typical weapon of infantry.

Many socket bayonets were triangular in cross-section in order to provide flexing strength in the blade without much increase in weight. Flexing strength was needed in case a bayonet struck a hard object: better to have it bend and be repairable, than have it be stiff and shatter on impact. This design of bayonet did not usually include a grip for using the bayonet apart from the gun, although a socket bayonet was deemed a sidearm anyway, especially in the British army of 1775.

The triangular bayonet, contrary to an old urban legend, was not designed to create stab wounds "that were difficult to stitch when attended to by a medic, as it is more difficult to stitch a three-sided wound than a two-sided one, thus making the wound more likely to become infected".[citation needed] This quote ignores the reality of surgery, in that surgeons have sewn up jagged wounds using more stitches when needed, since time immemorial. Instead, three sided bayonets were designed to be an economical compromise between flexing strength and the amount of wrought iron needed to make the bayonet (compare to a structural steel Tee-beam).

Similarly, in the Soviet Union, later bayonet blades, now made of steel, were stiffened with a small cross-section in the form of a cross, in order to make them more compact in form and fold better onto the sides of their rifles (see Mosin Nagant model of 1944). It is said that self-inflicted wounds made by soldiers to get themselves out of the line of battle would be recognized as such and bring them greater disciplinary punishment.[citation needed] 18th and 19th century military tactics included various massed bayonet charges and defenses. The Russian Army used the bayonet the most frequently in any Napoleonic conflict. Their motto was "The Bullet is foolish, the Bayonet wise". This implies that the bullet of a smoothbore musket was wildly inaccurate at ranges past about 100 yards (which was true in most cases), but with the close quarters of bayonet fighting, it was hard to miss. It should be noted, however, that in the thick of a close-quarter combat, many soldiers revert to using bayonet-mounted rifles as clubs, this apparently being a more "natural" way of fighting (as described by military historians such as John Keegan).

Bayonets were experimented with through much of the 18th and 19th centuries. In the United States Navy before the American Civil War, bayonet blades were even affixed to single-shot pistols, although they soon proved useless for anything but cooking. Cutlasses remained the favoured weapon for the navies of the time, though Queen Victoria's Royal Navy gave up the pikes once used to repel attacks by boarders in favor of the cutlass bayonet.

German Soldiers at Bayonet practice 1914

French infantry bayonet charge during the First World War. These are for Lebel rifle.

The 19th century finally saw the popularity of the sword bayonet. It was a long-bladed weapon with a single- or double-edged blade that could also be used as a shortsword. Its initial purpose was to ensure that riflemen, when in ranks with musketmen, whose weapons were longer, could form square properly to fend off cavalry attacks, when sword bayonets were fitted. A prime early example of a sword bayonet-fitted rifle would be the British Infantry Rifle of 1800-1840, later known as the "Baker Rifle". (However, one usually removed the sword bayonet on the Infantry Rifle before firing; the weight at the end of the barrel affected balance and stability, hence accuracy)

The hilt usually had quillons modified to accommodate the gun barrel, and a hilt mechanism that enabled the bayonet to be attached to a bayonet lug. When dismounted, a sword bayonet could be used in combat as a side arm. When attached to the musket or rifle, it effectively turned almost any long gun into a spear or glaive, suitable not only for thrusting but also for slashing. World War I saw the shortening of sword bayonets into knife-sized weapons, usable as fighting knives or trench knives, so that the vast majority of modern bayonets are knife bayonets.

Design

Modern bayonets are often knife-shaped with either a handle and a socket, or are permanently attached to the rifle as with the SKS. Depending on where and when a specific SKS was manufactured, it may have a permanently attached bayonet with a knife-shaped blade (Russian, Romanian, Yugoslavian, early Chinese), or a cruciform (late Chinese) or triangular (Albanian) spike bayonet, or no bayonet at all.

In being attached to a rifle, the bayonet slides onto the bayonet lug, a rail-like slide on the rifle, with a reciprocating feature in the hilt of the bayonet. Using spring-loaded devices that differentiate from bayonet to bayonet, the hilt is locked in place on the bayonet lug. Typically, a hole in the guard on the bayonet fits around the barrel of the rifle to keep it in place and not allow wobbling, a serious problem if the bayonet is only attached to the lug. To detach, the user simply pushes a button, usually found at the pommel of the bayonet or just behind the guard on the spine or edge side, not in line with the flat of the blade, to be pushed with the thumb. This button releases the spring locks and allows the bayonet to be removed.

Most modern bayonets have a fuller (visible on the top half of the blade shown above), which is a concave depression in the blade designed to reduce the weight while keeping the blade's stiffness. Some speculate that this design feature makes a bayonet easier to withdraw after a stabbing attack by allowing air into the wound it produces, or to allow blood to drain from it, but in fact fullers have not been experimentally shown to have such an effect. Rather, the fuller increases the bending strength of the blade in the same way the "I" cross-section of an I-Beam is more efficient in resisting bending than an equivant rectangular cross-section.

Many modern bayonets are designed to be multi-use tools. A knife bayonet, for example contains all of the non-combat utility of regular knives (for example, in cooking). The Mosin-Nagant M1891/30 was equipped with a socket bayonet whose flat tapered point culminated in what is essentially a flat-head screwdriver. As such, a soldier could completely disassemble the rifle with only the bayonet.

Modern use

Swiss army Sig 550 rifle with bayonet.

The advent of modern warfare in the 1900s decreased the bayonet's usefulness, and as early as the U.S. Civil War (186165) the bayonet was ultimately responsible for less than one percent of battlefield casualties. Modern warfare, however, does still sees the use of the bayonet for close-quarter fighting. The British Army, for example, performed bayonet charges during the Falklands War, the Second Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan. During the Korean War, Lewis L. Millett led soldiers of the US Army's 27th Infantry Regiment in taking out a Chinese machine gun position with bayonets. Millett was awarded the Medal of Honor for this action.

In the U.S. Marine Corps, trainees at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego for instance get their first instruction in using the bayonet as a lethal weapon on their 10th day. The essence of bayonet fighting as taught in the Corps is to spring forward from a modified crouch and thrust the blade into the enemy. Recruits are taught to and how to use a bayonet to push aside an enemy's weapon.[citation needed]

In a modern context, bayonets are used for controlling prisoners and as a "last resort" weapon for close quarters combat e.g. situations where a soldier has run out of ammunition, or if his weapon has jammed or is damaged.

In general, bayonets are not fitted to weapons except when such emergency situations are at hand. This is because a bayonet will impair long-range accuracy. The reason for this is because the extra weight of the bayonet affects the balance of the rifle barrel, which alters its sighting characteristics. For example, bayonet-equipped Mosin Nagant rifles were normally sighted in at the factory with the bayonet fixed because Russian doctrine at the time specified that the bayonet should normally be fixed. Consequently, those rifles would shoot to a different point of aim if the bayonet were removed.

A bayonet remains useful as a utility knife, and as an aid to combat morale. Training in the use of the bayonet has been given precedence long after the combat role of the bayonet declined as it is thought to increase desired aggressiveness in troops. Despite the limitations of the bayonet, many modern assault rifles retain a bayonet lug and the weapon is still issued in many armies.

Although bayonets might appear to be obsolete, they have been used in combat during the 21st Century. For example, they were used as a direct attack weapon by Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders troops from the British Army in the second conflict in Iraq. When two landrovers of Highlander troops were ambushed by soldiers loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the Highlander troops fixed bayonets to their rifles and charged the militiamen. A total of 30 Iraqi gunmen were killed and 12 were captured. Similarly, in 2009, Lieutenant James Adamson, aged 24, of the Royal Regiment of Scotland was awarded the Military Cross for a bayonet charge whilst on a tour of duty in Afghanistan: after shooting one Taliban fighter dead Adamson had run out of ammunition when another enemy appeared. Adamson immediately charged the second Taliban fighter and bayonetted him. Both situations demonstrate that the bayonet remains an effective and psychologically powerful last resort weapon even on the modern battlefield.

Commonwealth armies

The blade bayonet for the Lee-Enfield Rifle No. 5 Mk I "Jungle Carbine" rifle showing fuller

In armies of the Commonwealth of Nations, in close-order drill the command to fix bayonets is a two-part command. It consists of the preparatory order "Fix" and the execution order "BAYONETS". It is issued only from the Order Arms position. The commands to "Fix" and "Unfix" bayonets are among the only drill commands not executed in a specified cadence.

In the Rifle Regiments of the British Army, using a practice harkening back to the days when their flintlock rifles carried sword bayonets, the command is "Fix....SWORDS!". Bayonets are also fixed on the command, "Prepare to Assault", which is given towards the end of a section or fire team attack. The bayonet in the Canadian Forces is fitted on the front of the Tactical Vest for easy access.

The current British bayonet has a hollow handle so it can fit over the flash eliminator and the blade is offset to the right of the handle.

U.S.

The modern sawback U.S. M9 bayonet, officially adopted in 1984, is issued with a special sheath designed to double as a wire cutter, developed by Phrobis III. Some production runs of the M9 have a fuller and some do not, depending upon which contractor manufactured that batch and what the military specs were at the time. The M9 bayonet partially replaced, but is used in addition to, the older M7 bayonet, introduced 1964. Many troops have retained the M7, since the M9 has a reputation for breakage due to a combination of its thin blade and varying quality among the various contractors used.[citation needed]

US Marines at bayonet practice

As of 2002, the U.S. Marine Corps is also issuing small quantities of new bayonets of a different design from the M9, with an 8-inch Bowie knife-style blade and no fuller, manufactured by the Ontario Knife Company of New York. This new bayonet, the OKC-3S, is cosmetically similar to the Marines' famed Ka-Bar fighting knife. The weapon upgrade is part of a push begun four years ago by then-Commandant Gen. James L. Jones to expand and toughen hand-to-hand combat training for Marines, including more training in the martial arts and knife fighting. The new bayonet with a 8-inch (20 cm) long, 1+38 in (3.49 cm) wide, .2-inch (0.51 cm) thick steel blade, and weighing 1.25 pounds (0.57 kg) with its sheath is slightly longer, thicker, and heavier than the current M9. A sharper point and serrations near the handle help penetrate body armor that many modern adversaries wear. In one demonstration, a prototype was able to pierce a punching bag covered with aircraft aluminium and a ballistic vest. Also, the handle is more oval than round to prevent repetitive-stress injuries during training.

In United States Marine Corps drill and ceremonies, the command "FIX... BAYONETS!" is executed in four movements from the order arms position. In the United States Army, the movement is also executed from order arms; there are no specified movements, but the bayonet is to be attached quickly and quietly.

Krag Bowie Bayonet marked 1900

M1 Bayonet made by American Fork & Hoe; used with M1 Garand

The U.S. M6 bayonet and sheath used with the M14 rifle

M7 Bayonet and M8A1 Sheath used with M16 rifle

Adopted in 1984, the U.S. M9 bayonet and sheath used with the M16 rifle and M4 carbine.

The USMC OKC-3S Bayonet

Cultural impact

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (January 2010)

The push-twist motion of fastening the older type of bayonet has given name to:

The "bayonet mount" used for various types of quick fastenings, such as camera lenses.

Several connectors and contacts including the bayonet-fitting light bulb that is common in the UK (as opposed to the continental screw-fitting type).

The BNC ("Bayonet Neill-Concelman") RF connector.

The bayonet has become a symbol of military power. The term "at the point of a bayonet" refers to using military force or action to accomplish, maintain, or defend something. EG. Bayonet Constitution

The Australian Army 'Rising Sun' badge features a semicircle of bayonets. The Australian Army Infantry Combat Badge (ICB) takes the form of a vertically mounted Australian Army SLR (7.62mm self-loading rifle FN FAL) bayonet surrounded by an oval shaped laurel wreath.

The U.S. Army Combat Action Badge, awarded to personnel who have come under fire since 2001 and who are not eligible for the Combat Infantryman Badge, has a bayonet as its central motif.

Undertaking a task 'with fixed bayonets' has this connotation of no room for compromise and is a phrase used particularly in politics.

The shoulder sleeve insignia for the 10th Mountain Division in the U.S. Army features crossed bayonets.

In the popular BBC sitcom Dad's Army, the bayonet was the weapon of choice for Lance Corporal Jones, giving rise to his immortal sayings "They dont like it up 'em" and "We'll give 'em the old cold steel"

See also

Bayonet Constitution

Bayonet mount

Gunpowder warfare

Combatives

Knife bayonet

Machete

Pistol sword

Bayonet lug

Pole weapon

Spike bayonet

Sword bayonet

Sword

List of bayonets by country

Jkend

References

Hunting weapons, Howard L Blackmore, 2000, Dover Publications

Footnotes

^ H.Blackmore, Hunting Weapons, pg 50

^ Blackmore, Howard L. 2000. Hunting Weapons: From the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Courier Dover Publications. p.66-70

^ Boutell, Charles. 1907. Arms and armour in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Reeves & Turner. p.166

^ O'Connell, Robert L., "Arme Blanche", Military History Quarterly, Vol. 5, n 1.

^ a b The Telegraph, 2004-06-13.

^ U.S. Army Field Manual 3-25.150, 2002-12-18.

^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8252974.stm

^ Infantry combat badge

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bayonets

Infantry Tactics During the Napoleonic Wars - Bayonet Fights, Bayonet Charges

Categories: Bayonets | Blade weapons | Firearm components | French loanwordsHidden categories: Articles needing additional references from July 2007 | All articles needing additional references | Articles with limited geographic scope | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from August 2008 | Articles with unsourced statements from September 2007 | Articles with unsourced statements from June 2009 | Articles with unsourced statements from November 2009 | Articles with trivia sections from January 2010 | All articles with trivia sections | Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopdia Britannica

Kay Starr

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Life and career

She was born Katherine Laverne Starks on a reservation in Dougherty, Oklahoma. Her father, Harry, was a full-blooded Iroquois Indian; her mother, Annie, was of mixed Irish and American Indian heritage. 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.' emu oil eczema

At 15, she was chosen to sing with the Joe Venuti orchestra. Venuti had a contract to play in the Peabody Hotel in Memphis which called for his band to feature a girl singer, which he did not have. Venuti's road manager heard Kay Starr on the radio and suggested her to Venuti. She was still in junior high school and her parents insisted on a midnight curfew. magnetic shoe insoles

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. emu oil psoriasis

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.

Around 1950 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, she 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 her 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 cover version of "The Man with the Bag", a Christmas song, which can be heard non-stop 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 departing from 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 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 Playing 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 2007 she resides in Bel Air, California; married six times, she has a daughter and a grandchild.

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

Chart hits

Year

Single

Chart positions

US

US

AC

US Country

UK

1948

"You Were Only Foolin' (While I Was Falling in Love)"

16

1949

"So Tired"

7

"How It Lies, How It Lies, How It Lies"

28

1950

"Hoop-de-Doo"

2

"Bonaparte's Retreat"

4

"Mississippi"

18

"I'll Never Be Free" (w/ Tennessee Ernie Ford)

3

2

"Ain't Nobody's Business But My Own"(w/ Tennessee Ernie Ford)

22

5

"Oh! Babe"

7

1951

"Ocean of Tears" (w/ Tennessee Ernie Ford)

15

"You're My Sugar"(w/ Tennessee Ernie Ford)

22

"Come On-A My House"

8

"Angry"

26

1952

"Wheel of Fortune"(gold record)

1

"I Waited a Little Too Long"

20

"Kay's Lament" (w/ The Lancers)

18

"Fool, Fool, Fool" (w/ The Lancers)

13

"Comes A-Long A-Love"

9

1

"Three Letters"

22

1953

"Side by Side"

3

7

"Half A Photograph"

7

"Allez-Vous-En"

11

"When My Dreamboat Comes Home"

18

"Swamp Fire"

30

"Changing Partners"

7

4

1954

"The Man Upstairs"

7

"If You Love Me (Really Love Me)"

4

"Am I A Toy Or A Treasure"

22

17

"Fortune in Dreams"

17

1955

"Good and Lonesome"

17

1956

"The Rock And Roll Waltz"(gold record)

1

1

"I've Changed My Mind A Thousand Times"

73

"Second Fiddle"

40

"Love Ain't Right"

89

"Things I Never Had"

89

"The Good Book"

89

1957

"Jamie Boy"

54

"A Little Loneliness"

73

"My Heart Reminds Me"

9

1961

"Foolin' Around"

49

"I'll Never Be Free"(re-recording-solo)

94

1962

"Four Walls"

92

1965

"Never Dreamed I Could Love Somebody New"

23

1966

"Tears and Heartaches"

19

"Old Records"

26

1965

"When the Lights Go On Again (All Over the World)"

24

Photographs

January 1999

January 1999

References

^ a b Kay Starr biography

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Kay Starr

The Kay Starr Homepage

KayStarr.net

Lush Lives (Ladies of Jazz) site

MusicMatch Guide site

Biography of Kay Starr (in Spanish)

British charts

The Iceberg site

Songbird of the Month site

Kay Starr Discography

A biography

Kay Starr interview on KUOW 94.9 (NPR) Seattle, 2006

Kay Starr at the Internet Movie Database

Categories: 1922 births | Living people | American female singers | Big band singers | Musicians from Oklahoma | People from Murray County, Oklahoma | Torch singers | Traditional pop music singers | RCA Victor Records artists