Kay Starr (Katherine Laverne Starks, July 21, 1922 – November 3, 2016) was … Read Full Bio ↴Kay Starr (Katherine Laverne Starks, July 21, 1922 – November 3, 2016) was an American pop and jazz singer who enjoyed considerable success in the 1940s and 1950s.

Kay Starr was successful in every field of music she tried, jazz, country and pop. But her roots were in jazz, Billie Holiday, considered by many the greatest jazz singer of all time, called Starr "the only white woman who could sing the blues."
She is best remembered for introducing two songs that became #1 hits in the 1950s, "Wheel of Fortune" and "The Rock And Roll Waltz".

Kay Starr was born 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, the family moved to Dallas, Texas.

While her father worked for the Automatic Sprinkler Company, her mother raised chickens, and Kay used to sing to the chickens in the coop. As a result of the fact that her aunt, Nora, was impressed by her singing, she began to sing at the age of seven on a Dallas radio station, WRR, first in a talent competition where she finished third one week and won every week thereafter, then with her own weekly fifteen minute show. She sang pop and "hillbilly" songs with a piano accompaniment. By the age of ten, she was making $3 a night, a lot of money in the Depression days.

As a result of her father's changing jobs, her family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, and she continued performing on the radio, singing "Western swing music," still mostly a mix of country and pop. It was while she was on the Memphis radio station WMPS that, as a result of misspellings in her fan mail, she and her parents decided to give her the name "Kay Starr". At the age of fifteen, 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 her on the radio, and suggested her to Venuti. Because she was still in junior high school, her parents insisted that Venuti take her home no later than midnight.

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, which was less suited for Kay's vocal range.

Oh Lonesome Me
Kay Starr Lyrics

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Everybody's going out and having fun
I'm just a fool for staying home and having none
I can't get over how she set me free
Oh lonesome me

A bad mistake I'm making bout just hanging round
I know that I should have some fun an paint the town
A love sick fool that's blind and just can't see

Oh lonesome me

I'll bet she's not like me
She's out an fancy free
Flirting with the boys with all her charms
But I still love her so
And brother don't you know
I'd welcome her right back here in my arms

Well there must be some way
I can lose these lonesome blue
Forget about the past and find somebody new
I've thought of everything from A to Z
Oh lonesome me

(Ba-de-op-bop-bop)
(Ba-de-op-bop-bop)
(Oh lonesome me)

Well I bet she's not like me
She's out and fancy free
Flirting with the boys with all her charms
But I still love her so
And brother don't you know
I'd welcome her right back into my arms

Well there must be some way
I can lose these lonesome blues
Forget about the past and find somebody new
I've thought of everything from A to Z

Oh lonesome me
Oh lonesome me

Overall Meaning

The opening lines of Kay Starr's "Oh Lonesome Me" tell the story of a person who is feeling left out because he is not out there socializing with other people. The singer seems to be struggling to get over a past relationship, and he questions why he has chosen to stay at home instead of going to have fun. The lyrics tell of the pain that the individual is going through as he tries to deal with the emotional turmoil of reconciling with the end of the relationship.

The song describes the singer as a "love-sick fool" who is blind and just can't see his faults. The singer is portrayed as somebody who is so caught up in his own feelings that he can't see reason or accept that the person he is looking for may no longer be interested in him. By the end of the song, the singer realizes that he needs to move on and find somebody new to take his mind off of his previous love interest.

Oh Lonesome MeKay Starr Lyrics

Oh Lonesome Me
Kay Starr Lyrics