KAY KYSER BROUGHT HIS COLLEGE SMARTS AND SWING TO RADIO
THE OL’ PROFESSOR OF SWING
America's most popular bandleader of the World War II years was not a musician - in fact, he couldn't even read music.
Yet, Kay Kyser racked up more Top 50 Network Radio seasons, had more hit records, starred in more movies, entertained more Armed Forces personnel and helped sell more War Bonds than any of the Big Band names more readily associated with the era today. (1) Kyser, however, made no effort to perpetuate his fame. He retired to private life in his native North Carolina at age 45 in 1950 and dedicated himself to civic and ministerial work for the remaining 35 years of his life. As a result, his name is hardly recognized today.
The Ol’ Professor, as he was known to his millions of fans, kept his very public life and his very private life totally separate which makes it difficult for any biographer to combine the two into a comprehensive profile. Fortunately, Los Angeles musician/author Steve Beasley has researched and provided much information in his colorful 2009 text which includes interviews with his widow, daughters and former band members. (2)
Who was this enigma whose friendly, down-home personality continually masked a cautious aloofness? Whose tireless work ethic earned a fortune which he quietly shared with charitable causes? Whose exhausting jitterbug routines while fronting his band led to excruciating arthritic pain which eventually shaped his religious faith?
James King Kern Kyser was born on June 18, 1905, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, (60 miles northeast of Raleigh), where his father P.B. Kyser, (originally from the Dutch, Kyzer), was the town druggist and his mother was the first female pharmacist licensed in the state. Coming from a large Baptist family of three sisters and two brothers with intelligent, entrepreneurial roots, young James was a good and popular student who showed organizational skills that nearly led to his election as President of his class at Rocky Mount High School.
The family's alumni and faculty connections led him to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1923. Once again the slim, bespectacled Kyser approached campus life with exuberance, remindful of Harold Lloyd in The Freshman. Kyser became active in fraternity life, student affairs, dramatic productions and was head of the Tar Heel cheerleading squad. It was a full load but the enthusiastic Kyser took it on and made many friends along the way, including musician Hal Kemp.
Kemp’s popular UNC dance band, The Carolina Club Orchestra, had made a name for itself playing the circuit of Southern colleges for several years and touring Europe in the summer of 1924. His 1925 group, featuring future stars Skinnay Ennis, John Scott Trotter and Saxie Dowell, plus the promise of a Brunswick recording contract, inspired Kemp to keep its nucleus together after graduation and go on tour as The Hal Kemp Orchestra. (3)
Before Kemp left Chapel Hill in 1926, he wanted to perpetuate what remained of his student orchestra. He turned to his pal, Kike Kyser, with what turned out to be a great idea. (4) He proposed that his friend reorganize and lead a new edition of The Carolina Club Orchestra - an idea that Kyser at first considered laughable because, as Kemp knew, Kyser was definitely not a musician.
But Kemp saw intangibles in his friend that he could bring to the bandstand - a genuine Southern charm and a cheerleader’s enthusiasm. Kyser, meanwhile, set aside his lack of musical talent and considered his other strengths - a good business sense and organizational skills. He seized the opportunity and attempted to convince the few leftovers from Kemp’s Carolina Club band to take a chance with his new group that began with six players. Key among those few was a saxophone/clarinetist and jazz vocalist from North Carolina, Sully Mason, who would remain with Kyser as a featured performer until 1944. The fledgling Kay Kyser Orchestra began with its leader doing his best as front man with mugging, dance gyrations and jokes to distract dancers from the band's obvious and many early musical shortcomings. Both Kyser and his sidemen were learning by doing.
The band had grown to ten players in the 1927 school year and Kyser’s need for a musical director was answered when a new, 19-year old student on the Chapel Hill campus joined the group. Pianist-arranger George Duning would give the Kyser orchestra its distinctive sound from 1927 until late 1944. (5)
With Duning’s musicianship, Kyser’s showmanship and their partnership in creating a well disciplined ensemble, the band began retracing Hal Kemp’s past booking successes in Southern colleges. Likewise, they began venturing out of their home territory in the late 1920’s after graduation from UNC. Like most bands on their own with little guidance, Kyser's group drifted from date to date for little more than meal and gas money.
Finally, after a date in Pennsylvania, they were approached and signed by a representative for the newly formed Music Corporation of America booking office based at the time in Chicago. MCA began organizing scheduled dates for the band which gave Kyser some breathing room, provided his side men some pocket money and exposed the group to occasional radio dates.
Another key member of the group was added in June, 1931, when West Virginia University law student Merwyn Bogue joined the band as a trumpet player. Before long, Bogue would also become the band’s star comic-vocalist, known to the public as Ish Kabibble, the dim-witted, expressionless stooge to Kyser. Behind the scenes, Bogue was the band’s road manager and paymaster - providing business back-up to Kyser much as Duning lent him musical support.
Sometime during this early period Kyser and Duning chose the band’s permanent theme song, (I’ve Grown So Lonesome) Thinking of You. Originally a ballad written by Walter Donaldson and Paul Ash, the melody was adapted to many tempos and uses over the years by Duning, particularly for use with Kyser’s unique “singing song titles” which the young arranger created to transition between songs in medleys and to identify the band. (6)
MCA kept the band busy with increased bookings which included its first West Coast dates in 1932. The plum of this package was an extended stay at San Francisco’s popular Bal Tabarin nightclub. The engagement was a success lasting several months which solidly established the band as a drawing card in the Bay Area. (7)
When the band returned East, both Duning's musicianship and Kyser's personality were cited Variety’s April 11, 1933, review of an NBC late night remote broadcast by the band: “It’s a large unit, 14 men, and has an unusual instrumental lineup. This, plus novel arrangements and a lilting rhythm produces a brand of music which is distinctive. An individual touch is the leader’s salutation and sign-off, delivered in a rich Southern drawl. He could do his own announcing.”
Already known for its appearances at the Aragon and Trianon ballrooms in Chicago, the band opened its first of several dates at Chicago’s Blackhawk Restaurant in September, 1934. Because the important engagement, with its WGN radio hookup, demanded a female vocalist, Kyser hired Californian Ginny Simms, 21, whom he and Duning had discovered in San Francisco.
Simms remained with the band until the fall of 1941 when she left for a successful Network Radio and film career. Meanwhile, the band’s male vocal star of this period, Harry Babbitt, joined the group in early 1937 at age 23 and stayed until his induction into the Navy in May, 1944.
This WGN broadcast by the early Kyser band from February 6, 1937, is a far cry from the sound that captured America a few years later. Nevertheless, by April, Kyser was appearing on Mutual every Sunday afternoon and night.
Variety reviewed its afternoon broadcast on April 7 1937: “Half hour of Kay Kyser music from the Trianon Ballroom had everything a dance period should have plus the added heart appeal of Easter Sunday. The band leader brought his mother to the microphone and after giving greetings to everybody - including her southern homefolks - hoped nobody forgot his mother on Easter Sunday. This leaves open a possible criticism for using hoke. But there can be no such criticism here, so fast and so sincerely was it done. Kyser organization has a lot to offer. Kyser handles most of the announcing himself in a friendly, easy Southern voice. Vocalists include Ish Kabibble Bogue, comedian, Sully Mason, personality singer, Harry Babbitt and Bill Stoker who do the pop stuff, the singing song titles and double numbers with Nancy Nelson. A swell ballroom pickup showing the orchestra off to its best.” (8)
MCA arranged a 13 week tour for the Kyser band and sold Willys-Overland Automobiles on sponsoring a Sunday half hour broadcast at 9:00 p.m. on 57 Mutual Network stations from whatever city the group was appearing. Kay Kyser’s Surprise Party debuted coast-to-coast on May 2, 1937 from Chicago. Unfortunately, Variety didn’t think much of its first broadcast: “An otherwise pleasant half hour is messed up with too much and badly spotted commercial bally and Ish Kabibble, a carbon copy comic.” The next lengthy paragraph of the review was a critique of the program’s commercials before it returned to the show itself. “Kyser’s band is one of the better dance groups. … Specially arranged songs are well tended in the hands of Virginia Sims (sp) and tenor Harry Babbitt.” (9) Interestingly, not a word was mentioned in the review about Kyser, himself.
Booked back into the Blackhawk in mid-October, 1937, Kyser was charged with attracting crowds into the restaurant on normally slow Monday nights. The band began a new series of late Monday night remotes on October 18, 1937. The 60 minute broadcast at midnight on WGN was dubbed The Midnight Special, inviting entertainers and musicians appearing elsewhere to come by the Blackhawk after hours and join in the show. Despite Kyser‘s offer to pay them after appearing, James Petrillo’s musicians’ union shut down the popular feature down within weeks.
Not one to give up easily, Kyser, conferred with trusted sidemen Sully Mason, Merwyn Bogue and MCA’s young agent, Lew Wasserman, newly assigned to the band. They decided to capitalize on the new trend of radio quiz shows and replace The Midnight Flyer with Kyser hosting a simple quiz game based in music. Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge was born and the first Monday night midnight broadcast on October 18th drew 2,800 pieces of mail.
Variety issued this review in late November, 1937: “In two short years Kay Kyser has come a long way as an entertainer and showman. He handles his band and his audience with skill, nicely alternating clowning with good dancapation. Kyser has a winning idea in the new Monday midnight 'Musical Knowledge' stunt. This figures as a good substitute for the former 'Blackhawk Midnight Flyers' guest stunt which the theaters and union stepped in to prevent. The Blackhawk is back to capacity biz besides gathering a host of listeners with its coast-to-coast ride for 60 minutes over Mutual. It’s bringing 1,000 letters a week with the senders getting nothing for their trouble except the possibility of getting their names on the air and a diploma from Kyser’s 'College'.
Agent Wasserman wasted no time in spreading the news to Lord & Thomas, the ad agency for American Tobacco which was having problems with its Wednesday night show on NBC, Dick Powell's Your Hollywood Hit Parade, sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes. (See Dick Powell.)
The agency commissioned Wasserman's proposal of an eight-week test commencing on February 1, 1938. The 45-minute prototype, Kay Kyser’s Musical Class, began for Lucky Strike cigarettes in a Tuesday night trial run at 8:00 p.m. over a limited, two-station network from WGN/Chicago to WOR/New York City. In the first three weeks, Kyser pulled 40,000 letters with proposed questions for his “class” - and this was against the stiff competition of Edward G. Robinson's Big Town on CBS, soap opera Those We Love on Blue and Russ Morgan's popular band on NBC.
The results were enough to convince the company and agency to upgrade Kyser’s Musical Class to the full 77 station NBC network on Wednesday nights at 10:00 replacing Your Hollywood Hit Parade. (10)
But the March 30, 1938, debut of Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge on NBC was almost interrupted by American Tobacco’s autocratic George Washington Hill’s demand that Kyser increase his orchestra from a popular dance band of 14 pieces to a near symphonic size of 50 musicians. Kyser flatly refused. A short stalemate persisted until Hill realized that Kyser stood by his convictions. The strong-willed bandleader from North Carolina had the North Carolina tobacco tycoon in a corner and both knew it. Adding to Kyser's presumed insult to his new sponsor, he refused to smoke cigarettes.
The show went on as planned and Variety reviewed the broadcast in its April 6, 1938 issue: “Kay Kyser’s Kollege (sp) of Musical Knowledge now occupies the Wednesday niche on NBC formerly occupied by Dick Powell. Kyser arrives via Chicago sustainers and a preliminary whirl over Mutual for Luckies. For the NBC getaway the hour was characterized by questions that were too easy and answers that were too literal. General idea, however, remains a bright idea in pop music-cigarette merchandising that should do okay. Most of the broadcast time is devoted to Kyser’s brisk melody for a solid hour.”
Listeners gave their approval with a 10.9 Hooperating and 31st place in the Annual Top 50 for Kyser’s first, abbreviated, 1937-38 season. The Ol’ Professor was just getting warmed up - jumping into the Annual Top Ten at ninth place with a 16.9 rating in 1938-39. (11) In doing so, The College of Musical Knowledge became Wednesday‘s most popular program for the first of three consecutive seasons Kay Kyser, a virtual Network Radio newcomer, outranked Wednesday night programs by veterans Eddie Cantor, Fred Allen, Burns & Allen, Lowell Thomas and Amos & Andy. Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge took eleventh place in the Annual Top 50 for the next three straight seasons until 1943-44 when it peaked at a 20.5 Hooperating. (See Wednesday’s All Time Top Ten.)
A sample of Kyser's fast-paced Lucky Strike hour is posted from December 10, 1941. Coming just three days following the Pearl Harbor attack, this broadcast also includes an update casule from NBC News at its midpoint.
Recording success followed Kyser’s radio popularity with The Umbrella Man which was on Billboard’s charts for eleven weeks in late 1938 reaching Number One in December. Another novelty, Three Little Fishes, was nine weeks on the charts and eventually reached Number One in 1939. (12)
While he racked up high radio ratings, Kyser also set attendance records in stage and ballroom appearances which combined music and abbreviated samples of the quiz game. In March, 1939, he broke the house record at the RKO Palace/Cleveland by grossing $37,000 in one week and followed that with a $50,000 week at the RKO Palace in Detroit. In May,10,000 fans turned out for his NBC broadcast of The College of Musical Knowledge at the Kansas City Municipal Auditorium.
Kay Kyser had built a variety show around his band which defined a new category that appealed to radio and stage audiences alike. The band couldn’t be pigeonholed as a sweet or a swing orchestra because it was equally adept at both styles. But it definitely was a show band fronted by a master showman.
Lew Wasserman and MCA took early advantage of the band’s snowballing popularity and signed a multi-picture contract with RKO. The agents smartly provided that Kyser and his band would receive top billing in the films and that Kyser would be a central figure in the plots. The first in the series of seven films, That’s Right, You’re Wrong! premiered on November 15, 1939, at two theaters in Kyser’s hometown, Rocky Mount, North Carolina. (13) Kyser hosted his College of Musical Knowledge broadcast from the local American Tobacco warehouse and a dance for 10,000 was staged afterwards and broadcast over the Blue Network. All proceeds from the events were donated to local charities. The film gathered good reviews and MCA capitalized on the opportunity to book the band into major market theaters where it was showing. The results were predictable new house records.
Sully Mason, Harry Babbitt, Ginny Simms and Merwyn (Ish Kabibble) Bogue join Kyser in the film’s opening number, The Answer Is Love, the first of three film clips in this post. The song also gives Bogue the chance for some serious trumpet playing - first in a muted triple-tonguing trio with Bobby Guy and Pokey Carriere and then in a straight jazz solo.
Note: These video clips require several minutes to download. But they're worth the wait.
American Tobacco cranked up the radio popularity for The College of Musical Knowledge with a unique maneuver on January 4, 1940 when it ordered transcribed repeats of the Wednesday broadcasts on Thursday nights over 19 East Coast Mutual stations. The company reported a month later that its Mutual rating was an additional 40% of its Wednesday night NBC rating in those cities where both broadcasts were heard.
Kyser’s stage appeal remained huge in 1940. His radio troupe broke all house records in its week in May at the Fox Theater/St.Louis, attracting 127,000 customers paying over $43,000. And in November, the gate was over $50,000 at the Roxy Theater in New York City as the band performed five shows a day while its new RKO movie, You’ll Find Out, played on the screen. (14) The combination mystery-comedy-musical directed by David Butler with over-the-top villainy supplied by Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Bela Lugosi, (in a spooky mansion no less), is regarded by many as the best of the seven in which Kyser and his musical gang appeared. As Variety noted, “…Kyser does surprisingly well smacking over comedy lines and situations. He’s relaxed before the camera without any semblance of newcomer self-conscientiousness.”
Kyser commands center stage in this clip from You’ll Find Out, recreating a quiz segment from The College of Musical Knowledge. (The contestants in this scene are played by actors Jeff Corey and Eleanor Lawson.) The Ol’ Professor, in his college cap and gown, mugs his way through the segment with ease. Actually, he was no newcomer to acting, going back to his days at UNC with The Players theatrical group.
With Kyser’s familiar invitation, “C’mon, Chillin, yess dance!” Harry Babbitt provides the singing introduction to one of the five Jimmy McHugh-Johnny Mercer songs in the film, (seen here), Just Like The Fella Once Said. After an instrumental chorus, Ginny, Sully and Ish join Kay and Harry for another of the band’s happy ensemble novelties. The gang had a reason to be happy. Variety estimated that Kay Kyser made over $1.0 Million in 1940, beating out Glenn Miller as the top grossing band in America.
As 1940 rolled into 1941, not even the networks' lengthy boycott of ASCAP music could slow Kay Kyser’s popularity. He had Wednesday’s highest rated radio program, his second movie did great box office, his personal appearances played to capacity crowds and the band continued to produce Billboard charted hit records every year.
Even so, the leader who always seemed to be thinking ahead of the entertainment industry, charted yet another new course on February 26, 1941, (nine months before Pearl Harbor). He originated NBC’s College of Musical Knowledge from the San Diego Marine base. It was the first of many “camp shows” broadcast by many network variety programs during the war. Most of the surviving broadcasts from this period are severely edited Armed Forces Radio half-hour versions of Kyser's World War II remotes from military installations. Two of these shows are posted here from January 27, 1943, and December 6, 1944.
The listening public was aware of Kyser’s string of weekly broadcasts from military camps
and hospitals, but few knew that the band performed hundreds of shows for service personnel that weren’t broadcast or publicized for which Kyser underwrote all the band’s travel expenses. Some published estimates of the band’s gratis performances for war-related causes over the five year period run as high as 1,800 from over 500 locations.
The band’s third RKO film, Playmates, was released at Christmas, 1941, to typically good box office although the nation was still adjusting to the early days of war. (15) Meanwhile, Kyser made peace with the American Federation of Radio Artists, becoming the first Network Radio bandleader to join AFRA after the union demanded that all individuals with regular speaking appearances on radio join its ranks. For good measure, Sully Mason and Merwyn (Ish Kabibble) Bogue also signed with AFTRA which gave them dual memberships with the American Federation of Musicians, much to the annoyance of J.C. Petrillo, who also was beating the war drums against the record industry. Kyser took note of this friction and began preparations to stockpile some arrangements for Columbia Records if a strike neared.
Kay Kyser repeated as 1941’s highest paid band at over $1.0 Million, again ahead of second place Glenn Milller. But instead of following his film, Playmates, into major theaters and cashing in on the personal appearance money, Kyser and the band left Los Angeles in February, 1942, on a bus tour of 50 military camps that otherwise received little entertainment.
A month after returning from the tour on April 4, 1942, a garage fire destroyed the band’s bus containing 15 years’ worth of arrangements. Arrangers George Duning and Bill Fontaine went to work immediately on a new, updated book while Kay and his troupe filmed their fourth RKO musical comedy, My Favorite Spy, for release in mid-June.
Meanwhile, there was the radio show which was always a major concern. Most of Kyser’s bandsmen could play the lost charts from memory and pick up quickly on any new material given them. But to be safe, Kyser began a series of non-broadcast Monday night “previews” of The College of Musical Knowledge, complete with a studio audience and prizes in an effort to polish the shows.
As the AFM strike loomed inevitable, Duning booked more rehearsal and recording time for new material. Petrillo pulled his union’s musicians from the Columbia Records studios on August 1, 1942 for a staggering total of 27 months. (16) Fortunately for Kyser, his band recorded two of its biggest 1942 hits, Praise The Lord & Pass The Ammunition and The Strip Polka, just under the wire on July 31st.
Kyser directed more and more of his time and attention to entertaining the troops and selling war bonds. He used every opportunity to preach patriotism in his simple, heartfelt terms. His efforts prompted The March of Time to profile him and his war efforts on its NBC program of August 27, 1942. A week later he was named Chairman of The Committee of 25 (leading radio personalities) enlisted by the Office of War Information, (OWI), to maintain morale in local communities. The North Carolina bandleader took the job seriously as the Treasury Department would soon learn.
But business commitments being what they were, Kay and his band filmed two musical comedies in 1943. RKO produced Around The World and loaned the gang to MGM for Swing Fever. The biggest distinction in the band between the two films was the presence of featured vocalist Georgia Carroll whom Kyser signed in March and was given a featured role in Around The World. (17) Oddly, both films were released three weeks apart in November, 1943, which didn’t help the box office appeal of either. The band also made two brief film appearances during the year, one in United Artists’ Stage Door Canteen and a second in Thousands Cheer for MGM.
Despite this over-exposure, Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge remained the important 10:00 to 11:00 crown of NBC’s dominant Wednesday night ratings lineup that included Mr. & Mrs. North, Eddie Cantor’s Time To Smile and Mr. District Attorney. Behind the scenes of all this activity in 1943, Kyser at age 38 was rejected for the draft because of chronic arthritis in his legs. But in his OWI role of service to the country, he was helping to create a Billion dollar project to help fund its involvement in World War II.
The massive logistical undertaking was called The Hollywood Bond Cavalcade, a three-week, coast-to-coast personal appearance tour of 15 cities by Hollywood stars to promote The Third War Loan Drive in September, 1943. (18)
The tour was launched with a special radio program simultaneously broadcast by most stations in the country at 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 8th, headlined by Bing Crosby, Burns & Allen, Dinah Shore, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, Jimmy Durante, Kay Kyser’s orchestra and an address by President Roosevelt. The hour broadcast was immediately followed on NBC stations by the regularly scheduled College of Musical Knowledge which gave Kyser an additional hour to promote the tour of stars which included Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Betty Hutton, James Cagney, Greer Garson, Harpo Marx, Olivia deHavilland, Lucille Ball, Kathryn Grayson, Dick Powell, and Jose Iturbi, plus, of course, Kyser's own troupe.
Variety reported on October 5, 1943, that an accounting firm had determined the box office total in bond sales for the 15 city was almost $1.08 Billion, ($1,079,586,000.00), and this did not include additional Millions of dollars in sales from ancillary events in each city involving the tour’s stars, (luncheons, receptions, cocktail parties, etc.).
Kay Kyser had helped to create the greatest single money raising promotional event of World War II. But it came with a price in pain. The arthritis in his legs increasingly nagged him and became almost intolerable by the conclusion of the bond tour. As a result he was forced to cancel a lucrative week’s appearance at a San Francisco theater. It also gave him thoughts of the relief that wealthy retirement at his young age of 38 offered. But there were still his movie commitments and the weekly NBC contract with American Tobacco that had to be honored.
George Washington Hill at American Tobacco was looking at his contract, too. Lucky Strike radio advertising money was tight since he signed Jack Benny for $22,500 a week, (plus NBC time charges). (See Lucky Gets Benny.) But the shrewd tobacco titan had a unique clause in the Kyser contract that gave him an out: He enabled himself to “lend-lease” the program to another sponsor for up to two years and then resume sponsorship or drop the show altogether. Hill and his Foote-Cone-Belding agency made their offering known to other major advertisers on October 30, 1944, and two weeks later struck a deal with Colgate-Palmolive-Peet and its Ted Bates agency. (19)
The soap company “leased” Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge from American Tobacco for $11,500 a week plus NBC’s charge for the Wednesday night hour on 138 stations. The switch took place on Wednesday, December 27, 1944, and had little impact on the show’s popularity over the 1944-45 season. Kyser remained Number One in his time period, a strong Number Three on Wednesday night behind Mr. District Attorney and Eddie Cantor, and rose from 16th to 13th in the Annual Top 50. In addition, his final starring film, Carolina Blues, was released to good business at Christmas Week, 1944.
Despite his increasing arthritis pains, Kyser increased his war workload without complaint. On January 31, 1945, he loaded the College of Musical Knowledge troupe for a 6,000 mile, month long tour of service camps and hospitals including four remote broadcasts of their Wednesday night NBC program. Six months later he headed a small group of entertainers including (Private) Merwyn Bogue as Ish Kabibble for a month of entertaining troops in the Philippines.
When the chronically pained Kyser returned from his USO Pacific tour in September he asked for a year’s sabbatical from his College of Musical Knowledge. He reasoned that the band was on a virtual automatic pilot since George Duning had entered the Navy and he had hired Carl Hoff as band director with arrangers Bill Fontaine and Jerry Fielding. Mike Douglas and Lucy Ann Polk handled the vocals nicely and Phil Harris had proved he could handle the important job of hosting The College of Musical Knowledge in his absence. But Colgate felt differently. They paid American Tobacco for Kay Kyser and they wanted Kay Kyser.
Colgate got Kay Kyser and like the showman he was, he delivered with another Top 50 season, albeit dropping 1.9 rating points and falling to 26th place during 1945-46. Nevertheless, each painful day brought him one day closer to retirement.
As biographer Steve Beasley quotes from a 1946 profile in Note magazine headlined: One More Year And I‘m Through! … “The Ol’ Professor seemed tired and discouraged. He’s got over a million dollars saved, one of the prettiest wives in captivity as well as a legion of friends in every state of the union. …. During the war he sacrificed money - and vacations - trouping over three continents to entertain our fighting men. The government credits him with doing more to help morale than any other maestro. But Kay’s feet are broken and weak. He wears special shoes in order to get around. In recent years he has also been afflicted with arthritis - his back, arms and legs frequently trouble him sorely.”
The continual pain and his many appearances at veterans’ hospitals gave Kyser an even closer empathy with the thousands of servicemen and women returning home with war related injuries and illnesses. Learning that his native North Carolina ranked 48th in the country in health care and that a third of its 100 counties had no hospital facilities, he mobilized the state’s Good Health Plan and personally helped raise over a $1.1 Million in the summer of 1946 dedicated to a teaching hospital at UNC and upgraded medical facilities throughout the state.
Meanwhile, Colgate was forced to cut The College of Musical Knowledge to 30 minutes and push it up to 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday when American Tobacco reclaimed the first 30 minutes of its “lend-lease” time on NBC for Frank Morgan’s ill-fated sitcom, The Fabulous Dr. Tweedy. (See Frank Morgan.) With Tweedy’s feeble 9.8 rating as its lead-in, The College of Musical Knowledge sank out of the Annual Top 50 for the first and only time to 65th place in the 1946-47 season, despite the presence of Kyser’s new vocalist, movie star Jane Russell. (20)
Colgate reacted on October 4, 1947, by cancelling Can You Top This? from its five year, Top 50 Saturday night time slot at 9:30. (See Can You Top This?) This enabled the company to shift The Judy Canova Show back half an hour and move Kay Kyser from Wednesday to Saturday nights at 10:00, between NBC’s two country flavored music shows, Canova at 9:30 and The Grand Ol Opry at 10:30.
During this season, The College of Musical Knowledge was revamped in format to the fast paced Comedy of Errors which proved to be an compact, entertaining half-hour as this episode from October 10, 1947 proves.
The maneuver paid off in ratings. The College of Musical Knowledge rebounded 64%, into Saturday’s Top Ten and back into the Annual Top 50 at Number 41 for the 1947-48 Season. Nevertheless, the weekly cost of the show, ($10,000 in production plus NBC’s charge to reach and broadcast on its affiliates), was too high for Colgate, which was looking to television for future. Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge was cancelled on June 26, 1948. Kyser probably welcomed the news.
Kay Kyser was out of prime time but Lew Wasserman and MCA had different ideas about his leaving radio altogether. The agents fashioned together a daytime half-hour quiz for ABC without the band and sold it to Pillsbury and its McCann-Erickson agency for $3,500 a week. Kyser made over $2,000 from that production price and was able to sit down on the job.
Variety welcomed the new format for the Ol’ Professor in its review of Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Fun & Knowledge’s premiere on October 4, 1948, at 11:00 a.m.: “Shuffled from his prominent nighttime spot last season to an across the board morning airer this fall, Kay Kyser is one of the earliest to feel the impact of the networks’ current weight shifting of top personalities. Kyser, however, should make capital of this deal by quickly establishing his program as the bright segment of the late morning airlanes. One of the most adroit emcees before a mike, is sparking this non-musical quiz show into first class entertainment.”
The problem was that ABC slotted the new Kay Kyser show opposite the second half of powerful Arthur Godfrey Time on CBS. After 13 weeks Pillsbury moved Kyser to 4:00 p.m. to complete ABC’s 90 minute afternoon audience participation block with Ladies Be Seated and Art Linkletter’s House Party. His band still sold records, too, accounting for two Number One discs in 1948, On A Slowboat To China and The Woody Woodpecker Song. Despite this continued popularity, Kay Kyser left Network Radio for once and for all on July 29, 1949.
Before leaving California and settling in North Carolina with Georgia and his daughters, Kyser gave himself one more act of philanthropy to perform in 1948 when he learned of the fundraising needs of the recently built St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. He took it upon himself to combine forces with the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus and his many friends in the film business to produce a Celebrity Circus event starring a number of Hollywood personalities. Combined with other activities, Kyser was credited with helping raise $500,000 for the hospital’s new Veterans’ Memorial Wing. The institution showed its gratitude by dedicating its medical library in his honor.
The next few months proved to be yet another of Kyser’s premature retreats into retirement. MCA convinced him to interrupt his quiet life in North Carolina, reunite the band and move into the television lights for a Thursday night adaptation of The College of Musical Knowledge on NBC-TV.
The Ford Dealers and their J. Walter Thompson agency made the move worthwhile with a sponsorship that guaranteed a production budget of $25,000 week for 39 weeks. Kyser ‘s hour debuted on December 1, 1949 and ran its first 26 weeks to good reception, seemingly returning the car dealers’ big investment. That was confirmed by C.E. Hooper’s twelve-city survey in October, 1950, which ranked Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge Number Eight of all television shows with a 25.2 rating. But that wasn’t good enough for the Ford Dealers which announced in the trade press that they were cancelling the show at the end of its 13-week cycle on December 28th and replacing it with comedian Jack Haley’s variety show for $10,000 a week less than Kyser’s price.
Kay Kyser gladly became “just another” resident of Chapel Hill in early 1951 and finally found relief from his chronic arthritis pains through rest and prayer. He had become a disciple of Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science movement. He began spreading the gospel of his recovered health on speaking tours and 20 years later he led the faith’s film and broadcast division. His work for Christian Science climaxed in 1983 when he served one year as its Worldwide President.
With renewed energy remindful of his younger years, Kyser took on more civic duties. He was instrumental in helping UNC obtain a public television station and equip the facility. He was involved in scholarship funding for the university, in the state's traffic safety campaigns and in North Carolina's Good Health Plan which had prospered and expanded in creating hospital and teaching facilities with Kyser’s help. (21)
A full and active life behind him, Kay Kyser suffered a fatal heart attack on July 23, 1985. He had just turned 80 and was in his Chapel Hill office when stricken. Of course we’ll never know, but would anyone be surprised if his final utterance wasn’t a soft chuckle and, “So long, evvahbody…”
(1) Kay Kyser registered ten Top 50 Seasons on NBC from 1938-39 to 1944-45 - six of them in the Top 15 and two of them in the Top Ten. No other Network Radio bandleader - Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo or Wayne King - could match this record.
2) See Kay Kyser, The Ol’ Professor of Swing! America’s Forgotten Superstar by Steven Beasley - ISBN: 978-0-615-31983-4. Beasley also maintains the excellent website www.kaykyser.net.
(3) Hal Kemp led one of America's most popular bands via his Brunswick records and nightly broadcasts on powerful WGN/Chicago from 1932 to 1934 originating at the Blackhawk Restaurant. Kemp was killed in a December, 1940 auto accident at age 36 and his orchestra disbanded. Skinnay Ennis later gained fame as bandleader of Bob Hope’s NBC Radio show from 1938-43, while John Scott Trotter became Bing Crosby’s musical director from 1937-54, and Saxie Dowell formed his own band in 1940..
(4) For his first few years at UNC, the guileless James Kyser’s fraternity brothers nicknamed him Kike. When he finally learned it was a derogatory synonym for “Jew,” he promptly changed it to Kay.
(5) George Duning left Kyser for the Navy in 1944. When released from the service in 1946, he became a noted composer/arranger for Columbia Pictures. Duning is best remembered for his five Academy Award nominated films, among them From Here To Eternity, The Eddy Duchin Story and Picnic.
(6) The Sammy Kaye and Blue Barron orchestras also used the “singing song title” vehicle. Angered by the copy-cat practice, Kay Kyser’s agent, MCA, bought a full page in the trade press in late May, 1935, crediting Kyser as the originator of “singing song titles” sung by the band’s vocalist at the beginning of songs. The band began using the vehicle on records in 1935.
(7) Kyser showed his gratitude to the Bal Tabarin in 1939 when the band returned, performed for a week at union scale and broke all Bay Area nightclub records by attracting 10,000 patrons.
(8) Ginny Simms was obviously on temporary leave from the group.
(9) Ginny Simms was still known in some quarters as Virginia in 1937. Harry Babbitt was a baratone, not a tenor.
(10) American Tobacco resisted using the word “College” in the show’s title because competitor R.J. Reynolds’ Camel cigarettes sponsored Jack Oakie’s College on NBC. When Reynolds cancelled Oakie on March 22, 1938, Kyser’s show immediately became known as The College of Musical Knowledge.
(11) Kay Kyser’s NBC show was simulcast on WHN/New York City from August 24, 1938, to December 20, 1939. American Tobacco also sponsored Thursday night transcribed repeats of Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge on WOR/Newark during the summer of 1939.
(12) Multiple hit years followed for Kyser in the decade. In 1940: Playmates, (14 chart weeks to Number Two) and Ferryboat Serenade, (Twelve chart weeks to Number Six). In 1941: Til Reveille , (15 weeks to Number One) and Alexander The Swoose, (Four weeks to Number Three). In 1942: (I Got Spurs That) Jingle, Jangle, Jingle, (13 weeks to Number One), Praise The Lord & Pass The Ammunition, (14 weeks to Number One), Who Wouldn’t Love You? (23 weeks to Number One), The Strip Polka, (Eleven weeks to Number One), The White Cliffs of Dover, (13 weeks to Number One), He Wears A Pair of Silver Wings, (14 weeks to Number One), and Johnny Doughboy Found A Rose In Ireland, (17 weeks to Number Two). In 1943: Let’s Get Lost, (Eleven weeks to Number Four). In 1945: Bell Bottom Trousers, (Ten weeks to Number Three). In 1946: Ole Buttermilk Sky, (19 weeks to Number One) and The Old Lamplighter, (13 weeks to Number Three). In 1948: On A Slow Boat To China, (Seven weeks to Number One) and The Woody Woodpecker Song, (15 weeks to Number One).
(13) "That’s Right, You’re Wrong!" was a catch phrase made popular by Kyser in the quiz segments of The College of Musical Knowledge.
(14) Kyser’s band also played for dancing nightly at the Waldorf Plaza during its week’s engagement at the Roxy, in addition to its Wednesday night NBC broadcast. Variety’s review of the Roxy stage show on November 20th noted the week to be, “…a grueling grind,” but added, “…the band gives an excellent account of itself with a skillful blend of current pops, expertly orchestrated for ensemble performance or solo vocalizing by Ginny Simms, Harry Babbitt, the comedic “Ish Kabibble” and Sully Mason.”
(15) Playmates was Ginny Simms' last film with Kyser. She was replaced in the orchestra by Dorothy Dunne & Trudy Irwin and later with Julie Conway and Gloria Wood. Georgia Carroll, the eventual Mrs. Kay Kyser, joined the band in Spring, 1943.
(16) Smaller record companies settled with the AFM a year earlier but Columbia and RCA held out until November 11, 1944.
(17) Kay Kyser, 39, and Georgia Carroll, 24, were married in Las Vegas on June 8, 1944. It was the only marriage for each and lasted until his death 40 years later. The couple had three daughters.
(18) The Hollywood Bond Cavalcade began in Washington, D.C. on September 8, 1943. It proceeded to Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis-St.Paul, St. Louis, New Orleans, Dallas, San Francisco and Los Angeles, completing the tour on September 26th.
(19) Standard Brands later “leased” Fred Allen’s Sunday night NBC program to Ford. The network banned the practice in 1948.
(20) Jane Russell was Kay Kyser’s featured vocalist for the one season. Meanwhile, Georgia Carroll, (Mrs. Kay Kyser), who left the band and retired, give birth to their first daughter, Kimberly, in June, 1946.
(21) Biographer Steve Beasley quotes Kyser’s Chapel Hill friend Orville Campbell, “Isn’t it ironic that Kay had no use for these hospitals but he knew the people needed them.”
Copyright © 2019, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
America's most popular bandleader of the World War II years was not a musician - in fact, he couldn't even read music.
Yet, Kay Kyser racked up more Top 50 Network Radio seasons, had more hit records, starred in more movies, entertained more Armed Forces personnel and helped sell more War Bonds than any of the Big Band names more readily associated with the era today. (1) Kyser, however, made no effort to perpetuate his fame. He retired to private life in his native North Carolina at age 45 in 1950 and dedicated himself to civic and ministerial work for the remaining 35 years of his life. As a result, his name is hardly recognized today.
The Ol’ Professor, as he was known to his millions of fans, kept his very public life and his very private life totally separate which makes it difficult for any biographer to combine the two into a comprehensive profile. Fortunately, Los Angeles musician/author Steve Beasley has researched and provided much information in his colorful 2009 text which includes interviews with his widow, daughters and former band members. (2)
Who was this enigma whose friendly, down-home personality continually masked a cautious aloofness? Whose tireless work ethic earned a fortune which he quietly shared with charitable causes? Whose exhausting jitterbug routines while fronting his band led to excruciating arthritic pain which eventually shaped his religious faith?
James King Kern Kyser was born on June 18, 1905, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, (60 miles northeast of Raleigh), where his father P.B. Kyser, (originally from the Dutch, Kyzer), was the town druggist and his mother was the first female pharmacist licensed in the state. Coming from a large Baptist family of three sisters and two brothers with intelligent, entrepreneurial roots, young James was a good and popular student who showed organizational skills that nearly led to his election as President of his class at Rocky Mount High School.
The family's alumni and faculty connections led him to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1923. Once again the slim, bespectacled Kyser approached campus life with exuberance, remindful of Harold Lloyd in The Freshman. Kyser became active in fraternity life, student affairs, dramatic productions and was head of the Tar Heel cheerleading squad. It was a full load but the enthusiastic Kyser took it on and made many friends along the way, including musician Hal Kemp.
Kemp’s popular UNC dance band, The Carolina Club Orchestra, had made a name for itself playing the circuit of Southern colleges for several years and touring Europe in the summer of 1924. His 1925 group, featuring future stars Skinnay Ennis, John Scott Trotter and Saxie Dowell, plus the promise of a Brunswick recording contract, inspired Kemp to keep its nucleus together after graduation and go on tour as The Hal Kemp Orchestra. (3)
Before Kemp left Chapel Hill in 1926, he wanted to perpetuate what remained of his student orchestra. He turned to his pal, Kike Kyser, with what turned out to be a great idea. (4) He proposed that his friend reorganize and lead a new edition of The Carolina Club Orchestra - an idea that Kyser at first considered laughable because, as Kemp knew, Kyser was definitely not a musician.
But Kemp saw intangibles in his friend that he could bring to the bandstand - a genuine Southern charm and a cheerleader’s enthusiasm. Kyser, meanwhile, set aside his lack of musical talent and considered his other strengths - a good business sense and organizational skills. He seized the opportunity and attempted to convince the few leftovers from Kemp’s Carolina Club band to take a chance with his new group that began with six players. Key among those few was a saxophone/clarinetist and jazz vocalist from North Carolina, Sully Mason, who would remain with Kyser as a featured performer until 1944. The fledgling Kay Kyser Orchestra began with its leader doing his best as front man with mugging, dance gyrations and jokes to distract dancers from the band's obvious and many early musical shortcomings. Both Kyser and his sidemen were learning by doing.
The band had grown to ten players in the 1927 school year and Kyser’s need for a musical director was answered when a new, 19-year old student on the Chapel Hill campus joined the group. Pianist-arranger George Duning would give the Kyser orchestra its distinctive sound from 1927 until late 1944. (5)
With Duning’s musicianship, Kyser’s showmanship and their partnership in creating a well disciplined ensemble, the band began retracing Hal Kemp’s past booking successes in Southern colleges. Likewise, they began venturing out of their home territory in the late 1920’s after graduation from UNC. Like most bands on their own with little guidance, Kyser's group drifted from date to date for little more than meal and gas money.
Finally, after a date in Pennsylvania, they were approached and signed by a representative for the newly formed Music Corporation of America booking office based at the time in Chicago. MCA began organizing scheduled dates for the band which gave Kyser some breathing room, provided his side men some pocket money and exposed the group to occasional radio dates.
Another key member of the group was added in June, 1931, when West Virginia University law student Merwyn Bogue joined the band as a trumpet player. Before long, Bogue would also become the band’s star comic-vocalist, known to the public as Ish Kabibble, the dim-witted, expressionless stooge to Kyser. Behind the scenes, Bogue was the band’s road manager and paymaster - providing business back-up to Kyser much as Duning lent him musical support.
Sometime during this early period Kyser and Duning chose the band’s permanent theme song, (I’ve Grown So Lonesome) Thinking of You. Originally a ballad written by Walter Donaldson and Paul Ash, the melody was adapted to many tempos and uses over the years by Duning, particularly for use with Kyser’s unique “singing song titles” which the young arranger created to transition between songs in medleys and to identify the band. (6)
MCA kept the band busy with increased bookings which included its first West Coast dates in 1932. The plum of this package was an extended stay at San Francisco’s popular Bal Tabarin nightclub. The engagement was a success lasting several months which solidly established the band as a drawing card in the Bay Area. (7)
When the band returned East, both Duning's musicianship and Kyser's personality were cited Variety’s April 11, 1933, review of an NBC late night remote broadcast by the band: “It’s a large unit, 14 men, and has an unusual instrumental lineup. This, plus novel arrangements and a lilting rhythm produces a brand of music which is distinctive. An individual touch is the leader’s salutation and sign-off, delivered in a rich Southern drawl. He could do his own announcing.”
Already known for its appearances at the Aragon and Trianon ballrooms in Chicago, the band opened its first of several dates at Chicago’s Blackhawk Restaurant in September, 1934. Because the important engagement, with its WGN radio hookup, demanded a female vocalist, Kyser hired Californian Ginny Simms, 21, whom he and Duning had discovered in San Francisco.
Simms remained with the band until the fall of 1941 when she left for a successful Network Radio and film career. Meanwhile, the band’s male vocal star of this period, Harry Babbitt, joined the group in early 1937 at age 23 and stayed until his induction into the Navy in May, 1944.
This WGN broadcast by the early Kyser band from February 6, 1937, is a far cry from the sound that captured America a few years later. Nevertheless, by April, Kyser was appearing on Mutual every Sunday afternoon and night.
Variety reviewed its afternoon broadcast on April 7 1937: “Half hour of Kay Kyser music from the Trianon Ballroom had everything a dance period should have plus the added heart appeal of Easter Sunday. The band leader brought his mother to the microphone and after giving greetings to everybody - including her southern homefolks - hoped nobody forgot his mother on Easter Sunday. This leaves open a possible criticism for using hoke. But there can be no such criticism here, so fast and so sincerely was it done. Kyser organization has a lot to offer. Kyser handles most of the announcing himself in a friendly, easy Southern voice. Vocalists include Ish Kabibble Bogue, comedian, Sully Mason, personality singer, Harry Babbitt and Bill Stoker who do the pop stuff, the singing song titles and double numbers with Nancy Nelson. A swell ballroom pickup showing the orchestra off to its best.” (8)
MCA arranged a 13 week tour for the Kyser band and sold Willys-Overland Automobiles on sponsoring a Sunday half hour broadcast at 9:00 p.m. on 57 Mutual Network stations from whatever city the group was appearing. Kay Kyser’s Surprise Party debuted coast-to-coast on May 2, 1937 from Chicago. Unfortunately, Variety didn’t think much of its first broadcast: “An otherwise pleasant half hour is messed up with too much and badly spotted commercial bally and Ish Kabibble, a carbon copy comic.” The next lengthy paragraph of the review was a critique of the program’s commercials before it returned to the show itself. “Kyser’s band is one of the better dance groups. … Specially arranged songs are well tended in the hands of Virginia Sims (sp) and tenor Harry Babbitt.” (9) Interestingly, not a word was mentioned in the review about Kyser, himself.
Booked back into the Blackhawk in mid-October, 1937, Kyser was charged with attracting crowds into the restaurant on normally slow Monday nights. The band began a new series of late Monday night remotes on October 18, 1937. The 60 minute broadcast at midnight on WGN was dubbed The Midnight Special, inviting entertainers and musicians appearing elsewhere to come by the Blackhawk after hours and join in the show. Despite Kyser‘s offer to pay them after appearing, James Petrillo’s musicians’ union shut down the popular feature down within weeks.
Not one to give up easily, Kyser, conferred with trusted sidemen Sully Mason, Merwyn Bogue and MCA’s young agent, Lew Wasserman, newly assigned to the band. They decided to capitalize on the new trend of radio quiz shows and replace The Midnight Flyer with Kyser hosting a simple quiz game based in music. Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge was born and the first Monday night midnight broadcast on October 18th drew 2,800 pieces of mail.
Variety issued this review in late November, 1937: “In two short years Kay Kyser has come a long way as an entertainer and showman. He handles his band and his audience with skill, nicely alternating clowning with good dancapation. Kyser has a winning idea in the new Monday midnight 'Musical Knowledge' stunt. This figures as a good substitute for the former 'Blackhawk Midnight Flyers' guest stunt which the theaters and union stepped in to prevent. The Blackhawk is back to capacity biz besides gathering a host of listeners with its coast-to-coast ride for 60 minutes over Mutual. It’s bringing 1,000 letters a week with the senders getting nothing for their trouble except the possibility of getting their names on the air and a diploma from Kyser’s 'College'.
Agent Wasserman wasted no time in spreading the news to Lord & Thomas, the ad agency for American Tobacco which was having problems with its Wednesday night show on NBC, Dick Powell's Your Hollywood Hit Parade, sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes. (See Dick Powell.)
The agency commissioned Wasserman's proposal of an eight-week test commencing on February 1, 1938. The 45-minute prototype, Kay Kyser’s Musical Class, began for Lucky Strike cigarettes in a Tuesday night trial run at 8:00 p.m. over a limited, two-station network from WGN/Chicago to WOR/New York City. In the first three weeks, Kyser pulled 40,000 letters with proposed questions for his “class” - and this was against the stiff competition of Edward G. Robinson's Big Town on CBS, soap opera Those We Love on Blue and Russ Morgan's popular band on NBC.
The results were enough to convince the company and agency to upgrade Kyser’s Musical Class to the full 77 station NBC network on Wednesday nights at 10:00 replacing Your Hollywood Hit Parade. (10)
But the March 30, 1938, debut of Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge on NBC was almost interrupted by American Tobacco’s autocratic George Washington Hill’s demand that Kyser increase his orchestra from a popular dance band of 14 pieces to a near symphonic size of 50 musicians. Kyser flatly refused. A short stalemate persisted until Hill realized that Kyser stood by his convictions. The strong-willed bandleader from North Carolina had the North Carolina tobacco tycoon in a corner and both knew it. Adding to Kyser's presumed insult to his new sponsor, he refused to smoke cigarettes.
The show went on as planned and Variety reviewed the broadcast in its April 6, 1938 issue: “Kay Kyser’s Kollege (sp) of Musical Knowledge now occupies the Wednesday niche on NBC formerly occupied by Dick Powell. Kyser arrives via Chicago sustainers and a preliminary whirl over Mutual for Luckies. For the NBC getaway the hour was characterized by questions that were too easy and answers that were too literal. General idea, however, remains a bright idea in pop music-cigarette merchandising that should do okay. Most of the broadcast time is devoted to Kyser’s brisk melody for a solid hour.”
Listeners gave their approval with a 10.9 Hooperating and 31st place in the Annual Top 50 for Kyser’s first, abbreviated, 1937-38 season. The Ol’ Professor was just getting warmed up - jumping into the Annual Top Ten at ninth place with a 16.9 rating in 1938-39. (11) In doing so, The College of Musical Knowledge became Wednesday‘s most popular program for the first of three consecutive seasons Kay Kyser, a virtual Network Radio newcomer, outranked Wednesday night programs by veterans Eddie Cantor, Fred Allen, Burns & Allen, Lowell Thomas and Amos & Andy. Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge took eleventh place in the Annual Top 50 for the next three straight seasons until 1943-44 when it peaked at a 20.5 Hooperating. (See Wednesday’s All Time Top Ten.)
A sample of Kyser's fast-paced Lucky Strike hour is posted from December 10, 1941. Coming just three days following the Pearl Harbor attack, this broadcast also includes an update casule from NBC News at its midpoint.
Recording success followed Kyser’s radio popularity with The Umbrella Man which was on Billboard’s charts for eleven weeks in late 1938 reaching Number One in December. Another novelty, Three Little Fishes, was nine weeks on the charts and eventually reached Number One in 1939. (12)
While he racked up high radio ratings, Kyser also set attendance records in stage and ballroom appearances which combined music and abbreviated samples of the quiz game. In March, 1939, he broke the house record at the RKO Palace/Cleveland by grossing $37,000 in one week and followed that with a $50,000 week at the RKO Palace in Detroit. In May,10,000 fans turned out for his NBC broadcast of The College of Musical Knowledge at the Kansas City Municipal Auditorium.
Kay Kyser had built a variety show around his band which defined a new category that appealed to radio and stage audiences alike. The band couldn’t be pigeonholed as a sweet or a swing orchestra because it was equally adept at both styles. But it definitely was a show band fronted by a master showman.
Lew Wasserman and MCA took early advantage of the band’s snowballing popularity and signed a multi-picture contract with RKO. The agents smartly provided that Kyser and his band would receive top billing in the films and that Kyser would be a central figure in the plots. The first in the series of seven films, That’s Right, You’re Wrong! premiered on November 15, 1939, at two theaters in Kyser’s hometown, Rocky Mount, North Carolina. (13) Kyser hosted his College of Musical Knowledge broadcast from the local American Tobacco warehouse and a dance for 10,000 was staged afterwards and broadcast over the Blue Network. All proceeds from the events were donated to local charities. The film gathered good reviews and MCA capitalized on the opportunity to book the band into major market theaters where it was showing. The results were predictable new house records.
Sully Mason, Harry Babbitt, Ginny Simms and Merwyn (Ish Kabibble) Bogue join Kyser in the film’s opening number, The Answer Is Love, the first of three film clips in this post. The song also gives Bogue the chance for some serious trumpet playing - first in a muted triple-tonguing trio with Bobby Guy and Pokey Carriere and then in a straight jazz solo.
Note: These video clips require several minutes to download. But they're worth the wait.
American Tobacco cranked up the radio popularity for The College of Musical Knowledge with a unique maneuver on January 4, 1940 when it ordered transcribed repeats of the Wednesday broadcasts on Thursday nights over 19 East Coast Mutual stations. The company reported a month later that its Mutual rating was an additional 40% of its Wednesday night NBC rating in those cities where both broadcasts were heard.
Kyser’s stage appeal remained huge in 1940. His radio troupe broke all house records in its week in May at the Fox Theater/St.Louis, attracting 127,000 customers paying over $43,000. And in November, the gate was over $50,000 at the Roxy Theater in New York City as the band performed five shows a day while its new RKO movie, You’ll Find Out, played on the screen. (14) The combination mystery-comedy-musical directed by David Butler with over-the-top villainy supplied by Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Bela Lugosi, (in a spooky mansion no less), is regarded by many as the best of the seven in which Kyser and his musical gang appeared. As Variety noted, “…Kyser does surprisingly well smacking over comedy lines and situations. He’s relaxed before the camera without any semblance of newcomer self-conscientiousness.”
Kyser commands center stage in this clip from You’ll Find Out, recreating a quiz segment from The College of Musical Knowledge. (The contestants in this scene are played by actors Jeff Corey and Eleanor Lawson.) The Ol’ Professor, in his college cap and gown, mugs his way through the segment with ease. Actually, he was no newcomer to acting, going back to his days at UNC with The Players theatrical group.
With Kyser’s familiar invitation, “C’mon, Chillin, yess dance!” Harry Babbitt provides the singing introduction to one of the five Jimmy McHugh-Johnny Mercer songs in the film, (seen here), Just Like The Fella Once Said. After an instrumental chorus, Ginny, Sully and Ish join Kay and Harry for another of the band’s happy ensemble novelties. The gang had a reason to be happy. Variety estimated that Kay Kyser made over $1.0 Million in 1940, beating out Glenn Miller as the top grossing band in America.
As 1940 rolled into 1941, not even the networks' lengthy boycott of ASCAP music could slow Kay Kyser’s popularity. He had Wednesday’s highest rated radio program, his second movie did great box office, his personal appearances played to capacity crowds and the band continued to produce Billboard charted hit records every year.
Even so, the leader who always seemed to be thinking ahead of the entertainment industry, charted yet another new course on February 26, 1941, (nine months before Pearl Harbor). He originated NBC’s College of Musical Knowledge from the San Diego Marine base. It was the first of many “camp shows” broadcast by many network variety programs during the war. Most of the surviving broadcasts from this period are severely edited Armed Forces Radio half-hour versions of Kyser's World War II remotes from military installations. Two of these shows are posted here from January 27, 1943, and December 6, 1944.
The listening public was aware of Kyser’s string of weekly broadcasts from military camps
and hospitals, but few knew that the band performed hundreds of shows for service personnel that weren’t broadcast or publicized for which Kyser underwrote all the band’s travel expenses. Some published estimates of the band’s gratis performances for war-related causes over the five year period run as high as 1,800 from over 500 locations.
The band’s third RKO film, Playmates, was released at Christmas, 1941, to typically good box office although the nation was still adjusting to the early days of war. (15) Meanwhile, Kyser made peace with the American Federation of Radio Artists, becoming the first Network Radio bandleader to join AFRA after the union demanded that all individuals with regular speaking appearances on radio join its ranks. For good measure, Sully Mason and Merwyn (Ish Kabibble) Bogue also signed with AFTRA which gave them dual memberships with the American Federation of Musicians, much to the annoyance of J.C. Petrillo, who also was beating the war drums against the record industry. Kyser took note of this friction and began preparations to stockpile some arrangements for Columbia Records if a strike neared.
Kay Kyser repeated as 1941’s highest paid band at over $1.0 Million, again ahead of second place Glenn Milller. But instead of following his film, Playmates, into major theaters and cashing in on the personal appearance money, Kyser and the band left Los Angeles in February, 1942, on a bus tour of 50 military camps that otherwise received little entertainment.
A month after returning from the tour on April 4, 1942, a garage fire destroyed the band’s bus containing 15 years’ worth of arrangements. Arrangers George Duning and Bill Fontaine went to work immediately on a new, updated book while Kay and his troupe filmed their fourth RKO musical comedy, My Favorite Spy, for release in mid-June.
Meanwhile, there was the radio show which was always a major concern. Most of Kyser’s bandsmen could play the lost charts from memory and pick up quickly on any new material given them. But to be safe, Kyser began a series of non-broadcast Monday night “previews” of The College of Musical Knowledge, complete with a studio audience and prizes in an effort to polish the shows.
As the AFM strike loomed inevitable, Duning booked more rehearsal and recording time for new material. Petrillo pulled his union’s musicians from the Columbia Records studios on August 1, 1942 for a staggering total of 27 months. (16) Fortunately for Kyser, his band recorded two of its biggest 1942 hits, Praise The Lord & Pass The Ammunition and The Strip Polka, just under the wire on July 31st.
Kyser directed more and more of his time and attention to entertaining the troops and selling war bonds. He used every opportunity to preach patriotism in his simple, heartfelt terms. His efforts prompted The March of Time to profile him and his war efforts on its NBC program of August 27, 1942. A week later he was named Chairman of The Committee of 25 (leading radio personalities) enlisted by the Office of War Information, (OWI), to maintain morale in local communities. The North Carolina bandleader took the job seriously as the Treasury Department would soon learn.
But business commitments being what they were, Kay and his band filmed two musical comedies in 1943. RKO produced Around The World and loaned the gang to MGM for Swing Fever. The biggest distinction in the band between the two films was the presence of featured vocalist Georgia Carroll whom Kyser signed in March and was given a featured role in Around The World. (17) Oddly, both films were released three weeks apart in November, 1943, which didn’t help the box office appeal of either. The band also made two brief film appearances during the year, one in United Artists’ Stage Door Canteen and a second in Thousands Cheer for MGM.
Despite this over-exposure, Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge remained the important 10:00 to 11:00 crown of NBC’s dominant Wednesday night ratings lineup that included Mr. & Mrs. North, Eddie Cantor’s Time To Smile and Mr. District Attorney. Behind the scenes of all this activity in 1943, Kyser at age 38 was rejected for the draft because of chronic arthritis in his legs. But in his OWI role of service to the country, he was helping to create a Billion dollar project to help fund its involvement in World War II.
The massive logistical undertaking was called The Hollywood Bond Cavalcade, a three-week, coast-to-coast personal appearance tour of 15 cities by Hollywood stars to promote The Third War Loan Drive in September, 1943. (18)
The tour was launched with a special radio program simultaneously broadcast by most stations in the country at 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 8th, headlined by Bing Crosby, Burns & Allen, Dinah Shore, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, Jimmy Durante, Kay Kyser’s orchestra and an address by President Roosevelt. The hour broadcast was immediately followed on NBC stations by the regularly scheduled College of Musical Knowledge which gave Kyser an additional hour to promote the tour of stars which included Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Betty Hutton, James Cagney, Greer Garson, Harpo Marx, Olivia deHavilland, Lucille Ball, Kathryn Grayson, Dick Powell, and Jose Iturbi, plus, of course, Kyser's own troupe.
Variety reported on October 5, 1943, that an accounting firm had determined the box office total in bond sales for the 15 city was almost $1.08 Billion, ($1,079,586,000.00), and this did not include additional Millions of dollars in sales from ancillary events in each city involving the tour’s stars, (luncheons, receptions, cocktail parties, etc.).
Kay Kyser had helped to create the greatest single money raising promotional event of World War II. But it came with a price in pain. The arthritis in his legs increasingly nagged him and became almost intolerable by the conclusion of the bond tour. As a result he was forced to cancel a lucrative week’s appearance at a San Francisco theater. It also gave him thoughts of the relief that wealthy retirement at his young age of 38 offered. But there were still his movie commitments and the weekly NBC contract with American Tobacco that had to be honored.
George Washington Hill at American Tobacco was looking at his contract, too. Lucky Strike radio advertising money was tight since he signed Jack Benny for $22,500 a week, (plus NBC time charges). (See Lucky Gets Benny.) But the shrewd tobacco titan had a unique clause in the Kyser contract that gave him an out: He enabled himself to “lend-lease” the program to another sponsor for up to two years and then resume sponsorship or drop the show altogether. Hill and his Foote-Cone-Belding agency made their offering known to other major advertisers on October 30, 1944, and two weeks later struck a deal with Colgate-Palmolive-Peet and its Ted Bates agency. (19)
The soap company “leased” Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge from American Tobacco for $11,500 a week plus NBC’s charge for the Wednesday night hour on 138 stations. The switch took place on Wednesday, December 27, 1944, and had little impact on the show’s popularity over the 1944-45 season. Kyser remained Number One in his time period, a strong Number Three on Wednesday night behind Mr. District Attorney and Eddie Cantor, and rose from 16th to 13th in the Annual Top 50. In addition, his final starring film, Carolina Blues, was released to good business at Christmas Week, 1944.
Despite his increasing arthritis pains, Kyser increased his war workload without complaint. On January 31, 1945, he loaded the College of Musical Knowledge troupe for a 6,000 mile, month long tour of service camps and hospitals including four remote broadcasts of their Wednesday night NBC program. Six months later he headed a small group of entertainers including (Private) Merwyn Bogue as Ish Kabibble for a month of entertaining troops in the Philippines.
When the chronically pained Kyser returned from his USO Pacific tour in September he asked for a year’s sabbatical from his College of Musical Knowledge. He reasoned that the band was on a virtual automatic pilot since George Duning had entered the Navy and he had hired Carl Hoff as band director with arrangers Bill Fontaine and Jerry Fielding. Mike Douglas and Lucy Ann Polk handled the vocals nicely and Phil Harris had proved he could handle the important job of hosting The College of Musical Knowledge in his absence. But Colgate felt differently. They paid American Tobacco for Kay Kyser and they wanted Kay Kyser.
Colgate got Kay Kyser and like the showman he was, he delivered with another Top 50 season, albeit dropping 1.9 rating points and falling to 26th place during 1945-46. Nevertheless, each painful day brought him one day closer to retirement.
As biographer Steve Beasley quotes from a 1946 profile in Note magazine headlined: One More Year And I‘m Through! … “The Ol’ Professor seemed tired and discouraged. He’s got over a million dollars saved, one of the prettiest wives in captivity as well as a legion of friends in every state of the union. …. During the war he sacrificed money - and vacations - trouping over three continents to entertain our fighting men. The government credits him with doing more to help morale than any other maestro. But Kay’s feet are broken and weak. He wears special shoes in order to get around. In recent years he has also been afflicted with arthritis - his back, arms and legs frequently trouble him sorely.”
The continual pain and his many appearances at veterans’ hospitals gave Kyser an even closer empathy with the thousands of servicemen and women returning home with war related injuries and illnesses. Learning that his native North Carolina ranked 48th in the country in health care and that a third of its 100 counties had no hospital facilities, he mobilized the state’s Good Health Plan and personally helped raise over a $1.1 Million in the summer of 1946 dedicated to a teaching hospital at UNC and upgraded medical facilities throughout the state.
Meanwhile, Colgate was forced to cut The College of Musical Knowledge to 30 minutes and push it up to 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday when American Tobacco reclaimed the first 30 minutes of its “lend-lease” time on NBC for Frank Morgan’s ill-fated sitcom, The Fabulous Dr. Tweedy. (See Frank Morgan.) With Tweedy’s feeble 9.8 rating as its lead-in, The College of Musical Knowledge sank out of the Annual Top 50 for the first and only time to 65th place in the 1946-47 season, despite the presence of Kyser’s new vocalist, movie star Jane Russell. (20)
Colgate reacted on October 4, 1947, by cancelling Can You Top This? from its five year, Top 50 Saturday night time slot at 9:30. (See Can You Top This?) This enabled the company to shift The Judy Canova Show back half an hour and move Kay Kyser from Wednesday to Saturday nights at 10:00, between NBC’s two country flavored music shows, Canova at 9:30 and The Grand Ol Opry at 10:30.
During this season, The College of Musical Knowledge was revamped in format to the fast paced Comedy of Errors which proved to be an compact, entertaining half-hour as this episode from October 10, 1947 proves.
The maneuver paid off in ratings. The College of Musical Knowledge rebounded 64%, into Saturday’s Top Ten and back into the Annual Top 50 at Number 41 for the 1947-48 Season. Nevertheless, the weekly cost of the show, ($10,000 in production plus NBC’s charge to reach and broadcast on its affiliates), was too high for Colgate, which was looking to television for future. Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge was cancelled on June 26, 1948. Kyser probably welcomed the news.
Kay Kyser was out of prime time but Lew Wasserman and MCA had different ideas about his leaving radio altogether. The agents fashioned together a daytime half-hour quiz for ABC without the band and sold it to Pillsbury and its McCann-Erickson agency for $3,500 a week. Kyser made over $2,000 from that production price and was able to sit down on the job.
Variety welcomed the new format for the Ol’ Professor in its review of Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Fun & Knowledge’s premiere on October 4, 1948, at 11:00 a.m.: “Shuffled from his prominent nighttime spot last season to an across the board morning airer this fall, Kay Kyser is one of the earliest to feel the impact of the networks’ current weight shifting of top personalities. Kyser, however, should make capital of this deal by quickly establishing his program as the bright segment of the late morning airlanes. One of the most adroit emcees before a mike, is sparking this non-musical quiz show into first class entertainment.”
The problem was that ABC slotted the new Kay Kyser show opposite the second half of powerful Arthur Godfrey Time on CBS. After 13 weeks Pillsbury moved Kyser to 4:00 p.m. to complete ABC’s 90 minute afternoon audience participation block with Ladies Be Seated and Art Linkletter’s House Party. His band still sold records, too, accounting for two Number One discs in 1948, On A Slowboat To China and The Woody Woodpecker Song. Despite this continued popularity, Kay Kyser left Network Radio for once and for all on July 29, 1949.
Before leaving California and settling in North Carolina with Georgia and his daughters, Kyser gave himself one more act of philanthropy to perform in 1948 when he learned of the fundraising needs of the recently built St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. He took it upon himself to combine forces with the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus and his many friends in the film business to produce a Celebrity Circus event starring a number of Hollywood personalities. Combined with other activities, Kyser was credited with helping raise $500,000 for the hospital’s new Veterans’ Memorial Wing. The institution showed its gratitude by dedicating its medical library in his honor.
The next few months proved to be yet another of Kyser’s premature retreats into retirement. MCA convinced him to interrupt his quiet life in North Carolina, reunite the band and move into the television lights for a Thursday night adaptation of The College of Musical Knowledge on NBC-TV.
The Ford Dealers and their J. Walter Thompson agency made the move worthwhile with a sponsorship that guaranteed a production budget of $25,000 week for 39 weeks. Kyser ‘s hour debuted on December 1, 1949 and ran its first 26 weeks to good reception, seemingly returning the car dealers’ big investment. That was confirmed by C.E. Hooper’s twelve-city survey in October, 1950, which ranked Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge Number Eight of all television shows with a 25.2 rating. But that wasn’t good enough for the Ford Dealers which announced in the trade press that they were cancelling the show at the end of its 13-week cycle on December 28th and replacing it with comedian Jack Haley’s variety show for $10,000 a week less than Kyser’s price.
Kay Kyser gladly became “just another” resident of Chapel Hill in early 1951 and finally found relief from his chronic arthritis pains through rest and prayer. He had become a disciple of Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science movement. He began spreading the gospel of his recovered health on speaking tours and 20 years later he led the faith’s film and broadcast division. His work for Christian Science climaxed in 1983 when he served one year as its Worldwide President.
With renewed energy remindful of his younger years, Kyser took on more civic duties. He was instrumental in helping UNC obtain a public television station and equip the facility. He was involved in scholarship funding for the university, in the state's traffic safety campaigns and in North Carolina's Good Health Plan which had prospered and expanded in creating hospital and teaching facilities with Kyser’s help. (21)
A full and active life behind him, Kay Kyser suffered a fatal heart attack on July 23, 1985. He had just turned 80 and was in his Chapel Hill office when stricken. Of course we’ll never know, but would anyone be surprised if his final utterance wasn’t a soft chuckle and, “So long, evvahbody…”
(1) Kay Kyser registered ten Top 50 Seasons on NBC from 1938-39 to 1944-45 - six of them in the Top 15 and two of them in the Top Ten. No other Network Radio bandleader - Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo or Wayne King - could match this record.
2) See Kay Kyser, The Ol’ Professor of Swing! America’s Forgotten Superstar by Steven Beasley - ISBN: 978-0-615-31983-4. Beasley also maintains the excellent website www.kaykyser.net.
(3) Hal Kemp led one of America's most popular bands via his Brunswick records and nightly broadcasts on powerful WGN/Chicago from 1932 to 1934 originating at the Blackhawk Restaurant. Kemp was killed in a December, 1940 auto accident at age 36 and his orchestra disbanded. Skinnay Ennis later gained fame as bandleader of Bob Hope’s NBC Radio show from 1938-43, while John Scott Trotter became Bing Crosby’s musical director from 1937-54, and Saxie Dowell formed his own band in 1940..
(4) For his first few years at UNC, the guileless James Kyser’s fraternity brothers nicknamed him Kike. When he finally learned it was a derogatory synonym for “Jew,” he promptly changed it to Kay.
(5) George Duning left Kyser for the Navy in 1944. When released from the service in 1946, he became a noted composer/arranger for Columbia Pictures. Duning is best remembered for his five Academy Award nominated films, among them From Here To Eternity, The Eddy Duchin Story and Picnic.
(6) The Sammy Kaye and Blue Barron orchestras also used the “singing song title” vehicle. Angered by the copy-cat practice, Kay Kyser’s agent, MCA, bought a full page in the trade press in late May, 1935, crediting Kyser as the originator of “singing song titles” sung by the band’s vocalist at the beginning of songs. The band began using the vehicle on records in 1935.
(7) Kyser showed his gratitude to the Bal Tabarin in 1939 when the band returned, performed for a week at union scale and broke all Bay Area nightclub records by attracting 10,000 patrons.
(8) Ginny Simms was obviously on temporary leave from the group.
(9) Ginny Simms was still known in some quarters as Virginia in 1937. Harry Babbitt was a baratone, not a tenor.
(10) American Tobacco resisted using the word “College” in the show’s title because competitor R.J. Reynolds’ Camel cigarettes sponsored Jack Oakie’s College on NBC. When Reynolds cancelled Oakie on March 22, 1938, Kyser’s show immediately became known as The College of Musical Knowledge.
(11) Kay Kyser’s NBC show was simulcast on WHN/New York City from August 24, 1938, to December 20, 1939. American Tobacco also sponsored Thursday night transcribed repeats of Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge on WOR/Newark during the summer of 1939.
(12) Multiple hit years followed for Kyser in the decade. In 1940: Playmates, (14 chart weeks to Number Two) and Ferryboat Serenade, (Twelve chart weeks to Number Six). In 1941: Til Reveille , (15 weeks to Number One) and Alexander The Swoose, (Four weeks to Number Three). In 1942: (I Got Spurs That) Jingle, Jangle, Jingle, (13 weeks to Number One), Praise The Lord & Pass The Ammunition, (14 weeks to Number One), Who Wouldn’t Love You? (23 weeks to Number One), The Strip Polka, (Eleven weeks to Number One), The White Cliffs of Dover, (13 weeks to Number One), He Wears A Pair of Silver Wings, (14 weeks to Number One), and Johnny Doughboy Found A Rose In Ireland, (17 weeks to Number Two). In 1943: Let’s Get Lost, (Eleven weeks to Number Four). In 1945: Bell Bottom Trousers, (Ten weeks to Number Three). In 1946: Ole Buttermilk Sky, (19 weeks to Number One) and The Old Lamplighter, (13 weeks to Number Three). In 1948: On A Slow Boat To China, (Seven weeks to Number One) and The Woody Woodpecker Song, (15 weeks to Number One).
(13) "That’s Right, You’re Wrong!" was a catch phrase made popular by Kyser in the quiz segments of The College of Musical Knowledge.
(14) Kyser’s band also played for dancing nightly at the Waldorf Plaza during its week’s engagement at the Roxy, in addition to its Wednesday night NBC broadcast. Variety’s review of the Roxy stage show on November 20th noted the week to be, “…a grueling grind,” but added, “…the band gives an excellent account of itself with a skillful blend of current pops, expertly orchestrated for ensemble performance or solo vocalizing by Ginny Simms, Harry Babbitt, the comedic “Ish Kabibble” and Sully Mason.”
(15) Playmates was Ginny Simms' last film with Kyser. She was replaced in the orchestra by Dorothy Dunne & Trudy Irwin and later with Julie Conway and Gloria Wood. Georgia Carroll, the eventual Mrs. Kay Kyser, joined the band in Spring, 1943.
(16) Smaller record companies settled with the AFM a year earlier but Columbia and RCA held out until November 11, 1944.
(17) Kay Kyser, 39, and Georgia Carroll, 24, were married in Las Vegas on June 8, 1944. It was the only marriage for each and lasted until his death 40 years later. The couple had three daughters.
(18) The Hollywood Bond Cavalcade began in Washington, D.C. on September 8, 1943. It proceeded to Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis-St.Paul, St. Louis, New Orleans, Dallas, San Francisco and Los Angeles, completing the tour on September 26th.
(19) Standard Brands later “leased” Fred Allen’s Sunday night NBC program to Ford. The network banned the practice in 1948.
(20) Jane Russell was Kay Kyser’s featured vocalist for the one season. Meanwhile, Georgia Carroll, (Mrs. Kay Kyser), who left the band and retired, give birth to their first daughter, Kimberly, in June, 1946.
(21) Biographer Steve Beasley quotes Kyser’s Chapel Hill friend Orville Campbell, “Isn’t it ironic that Kay had no use for these hospitals but he knew the people needed them.”
Copyright © 2019, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
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