About This Item
Kay Kyser was a bandleader and radio personality who was hugely popular and maintained a high profile from the mid-'30s through to the early '50s, his radio show incorporating a music quiz under the title of InchKay Kyser's Kollege of Musical KnowledgeInch which he introduced as InchThe Ol' PerfessorInch, giving rise to his image where he appears wearing a mortar-board and academic gown. His orchestra's music, always featuring a variety of resident vocalists, most notably Sully Mason, Harry Babbit, Ginny Simms and Georgia Carroll, as well as saxophonist Jack Martin, stayed firmly in the middle ground of easy-listening popular taste, and did not try to compete with the hot swing orchestras of the era, with a style which barely changed while the fashions of jazz and other areas of pop evolved around him, including sentimental or patriotic wartime hits, novelty material and classic ballads. This great-value 73-track 3-CD set consists entirely of hit records, comprising recordings which are listed as having appeared in one version or another of the popularity charts during the 1930s before the introduction of the Billboard record sales chart in 1940, and after that in the Top 20 of the Billboard chart. It naturally features his No. 1 hits InchThe Umbrella ManInch, InchThree Little FishesInch, InchJingle Jangle JingleInch, InchOle Buttermilk SkyInch and InchWoody WoodpeckerInch, plus many other memorable and evocative Top 5 classics which capture the zeitgeist of the fifteen years or so which spanned WWII and it's aftermath Album Tracks 1. (I've Grown So Lonesome) Thinking of You 2. Star Gazing 3. Did You Mean It' 4. Cause My Baby Says It's So 5. Hark the Sound of Tar Heel Voices 6. Cry, Baby, Cry 7. Music, Maestro, Please! 8. Don't Cross Your Fingers, Cross Your Heart 9. Stop Beatin' Around the Mulberry Bush 10. Ya Got Me 11. The Umbrella Man 12
