Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 28, Number 11, 1 November 2011 — Cha-Cha-Cha Boom! [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Cha-Cha-Cha Boom!

The Mary Kaye Trio (nee Ka'aihue) pioneered the Las Vegas lounge act, awakening a city that never sleeps By Shannon Wianeeki n 1949, Las Vegas was set to take off. 01d cowpoke-themed resorts along dusty Highway 91 were giving way to glitzy new gambling halls bankrolled by gangsters. Showgirls in feathers and skimpy bikinis strutted across casino stages, where outrageous salaries lured the biggest names in entertainment: Frank Sinatra, Sammy

Davis Jr. and Liberace. But it wasn't until a knockout act with Hawaiian roots stormed the lounge at the Last Frontier that Sin City hit its 24-hour stride. The Mary Kaye Trio epitomized the lounge era: stylish, coy and impossibly energetic. The band's lead singer and guitarist, Mary Kaye, was a bona fide "barn burner" reputedly descended from Hawaiian royalty. Her brother Norman Kaye played bass and wrote snappy songs. The trio's accordionist Frank Ross supplied a steady stream of humor called "madcap-tivating" by reviewers. Relatively unknown today, the trio was the hottest act in the desert in its prime, singlehandedly transforming Vegas into a 'round-the-clock party town. During its 20-year run, the Mary Kaye Trio played the hottest nightclubs around the globe: New York's La Vie en Rose, London's Talk of the Town and the Sydney Opera House. It produced 15 albums and 21 singles and appeared in film and on television: 77 Sunset Strip, Tlie Dinah Shore Show, The Perry Como Show. But it was that Vegas shift in the wee hours, the one that attracted

everyone from Judy Garland to Elvis, that gave the group the most notoriety. The whole thing could have been a llop. The trio was touring the United States when its manager, Billy Burton, landed the band a four-week gig at a Vegas hotel called the Last Frontier. The musicians arrived to discover a hitch: The showroom was already occupied, by a bigger name star who wouldn't budge. The trio - with plenty of pluek and nowhere else to go - asked the management to make room. In a 2003 Vintage Guitar article, Mary described what happened next: "I suggested a stage be built in the bar area, and it could be called a 'lounge.' Jake Kozloff, the owner, and Eddie Fox, the general manager, had it constructed immediately." The trio agreed to play from 1 to 6 a.m. on the new stage. They were the first all-night act in town. "Up until that time there was no such thing as a 'lounge act' in Las Vegas. Not even a lone piano player," writes influential producer Pierre Cossette in his memoir. He

claims he concocted the idea of the lounge act to get out of hot water, since he was the one who'd double-booked the showroom. "The concept was new and scary to everyone," he says. "The casino bosses didn't want to see audiences leaving the big show and walking right through the casino to catch a smaller show in the lounge. I was extremely nervous. The one thing you did not want to do in those days was cross the casino bosses." The gamble paid off. During the trio's first week, Frank Sinatra and the infamous Rat Paek stopped in, leaving behind $120,000 on the tables. Instead of dwindling off after the late show, the high-rolling crowd eame to hear the trio with the Hawaiian crooner and kept the casino cranking through the night. Within weeks, every casino boss in town was building a lounge. The dusk-'til-dawn era was born. For the next 15 years, the Mary Kaye Trio was a Vegas fixture, advertised on nearly every marquee on the Strip. Celebrities flocked to their ultra-late-night shows. According to Cossette, "You couldn't get in | to see the Mary Kaye Trio with a $100 bill." Sinatra and friends, dressed in sharkskin suits and fedoras, heeame regular lounge cats. Sammy Davis Jr., jokingly called the trio's fourth member, tapped congas in the corner. Marlene Dietrich and Lenny Bruce sat ringside, sipping martinis. "The [Mary Kaye Trio] changed the history of Las Vegas," producer George Schlatter told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in February 2007. Schlatter, who went on to heeome the producer of Laugh-In, was a booking agent in the 1950s and saw the trio take Vegas by storm. "They were all over the room, and they were hysterical. Anybody who saw the act realized this was the most sound you ever got out of three pieces." The trio was a tight team. Mary unleashed her versatile voice on jazz standards while the men harmonized at her side. The movie Bop Girl Goes Calypso preserves the scene on film: Mary emerges siren-like from behind her band mates wearing a radiant smile and body-hugging gown that erupts midcalf in tulle and sequins. Swishing the train like a mermaid's tail, she launches into a powerful ballad. In another filmed performance, this one of "Get Happy," Mary leads a conga line through the crowd, warbling and trilling falsetto notes with ease. Alternately passionate and playful, she'd belt out a soulful tune, then scrunch her full eyebrows and giggle, playing off of her band mates'

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The Mary Kaye Trio featured siblings Mary and Norman Kaye and Frank Ross, left, who lent his musical and comedic skills to the act. The trio played to the ultra-late-night crowds in Las Vegas, attracting a fan base that sparkled with gliterrati from the entertainment world. - Pholo: Couitesy ofJohn Kaye

wisecracks. She was spunky, beautiful and backed by men who adored her. "Comedy was our aee in the hole," Mary told Vintage Guitar in 2006. "Being from a vocal era, it was a given that the vocals were an asset. But the late Frank Ross, the funny man of the trio, was the greatest comedian of our time. I'm not just saying that — it's been stated many times by a lot of the greats in the industry. He was a mentor to both Don Rickles and Shecky Green." Comedian Pete Barbutti said, "Frank Ross was the guy who really started lounge comedy with his off-the-cuff routines. . . . He would react to whatever was going on in the room, whether it was a celebrity, bartender, waitress - everyone was part of the routine. In the middle of the act he'd yell over the audience to a crap table, 'Hey, you with the hockey puek, keep it down!' Before the trio, this just didn't exist." The music-comedy eomho worked. "There is an electricity that certain great performers possess, and the Mary Kaye Trio had it in spades," Robert Smale told the Henderson View in February 2003. "They created a no-holds-barred party atmosphere, and I was an instant fan." Smale liked the band so mueh, he signed on as pianist from 1960 to 1965. "I remember Peggy Lee sitting about two feet from my right elhow," said Smale. "I don't think I played a right note all night, but Mary covered for me with her great guitar playing and eventually I got my chops back." Mary's fellow musicians were definitely impressed by her talents. Judy Garland, one of the trio's most enthusiastic fans would stand up and yell at the audience to shut up when Mary started to sing. Louis Armstrong confided that every night before he performed, he'd warm up his trumpet to Mary's rendition of "My Funny Valentine." A youngster named Elvis hung behind the curtain at the Last Frontier, admiring Mary's guitar playing. "Where'd ya get those grabs?" he'd repeatedly ask. Mary had gotten those grabs the same way that the future rock 'n' roll king got his: She'd taught herself to play, inventing her own chords and creating a unique style. But while Elvis had learned from eavesdropping on his African-American neighbors, Mary had eome by her skill in a distinctly Hawaiian way: by playing alongside her 'ukulelestrumming father. Johnny " 'Ukulele" Ka'aihue was an accomplished performer, rumored to be the son of Prince Jonah Kūhiō. He was raised by hānai (adoptive) parents, Sam and Mary

Ka'aihue, a practice eommon in Hawaiian families. In 1916, at the age of 19, he left Hawai'i to tour the United States with legendary surfer and 01ympic medalist Duke Kahanamoku. After the tour ended, Ka'aihue stayed in the Midwest, popularizing Hawaiian music on the vaudeville circuit. He married Detroit socialite Maude Van Patten, and the eouple had two children, first Norman and then Malia, who was born in January 1924. Maude passed away shortly after Malia was born, and the orphaned children joined their father onstage with 3-year-old Malia dancing hula and 6-year-old Norman playing 'ukulele. The keiki, according to the family history, won every amateur talent contest they entered. By the time she was 10, Malia could play just about any song on 'ukulele or guitar by ear. As the Ka'aihue Trio, the family scored engagements at carnivals and hotels. When World War II broke out, Norman left to serve in the Air Force, and new talent filled his spot: Jules Pursley on bass and funny guy Salvatore Biagio Rossario Blogna, who played the accordion and the crowd, lending his laugh-a-minute humor to the act. In 1 945 the ambitious youngsters struckout on their own, landing gigs around the country as the Mary Ka'aihue Trio. Norman returned from service and resumed his spot alongside his sister. To capture a broader audience, the Hawaiian and Italian performers opted to anglicize their names: Malia and Norman Ka'aihue reinvented themselves as Mary and Norman Kaye and Salvatore Blogna heeame Frank Ross. In 1947 they launched the Mary Kaye Trio as equal partners. Pursley stayed on as road manager with an added interest; he and Mary were married in 1951. Vegas was a wild ride in the '50s. Organized crime was eommonplaee: a fixture of most casinos. Mobsters did business according to their own brand of ethics. Racial prejudice was rampant. AfricanAmerican headliners such as Sammy Davis Jr. and Lena Horne may have packed casino theaters, but they weren't weleome to stay in the hotel rooms upstairs. Instead they were relegated to boarding houses that were located on the city's outskirts. The trio's pal Sinatra was instrumental in desegregating entertainment. In the midst of rough characters and a late-night, booze-soaked lifestyle, the trio was all class. Exceedingly generous, the Kayes embodied their ancestors' spirit of aloha. One example: When Smale fell ill on tour in Arizona, he incurred hospital bills he couldn't afford. The trio paid the debt in full - to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. Mary dealt with her own medical

emergencies on the road. She was onstage in St. Louis, Missouri, when she went into labor with her first child, Jay. "I'm not sure how long she convalesced before she got back onstage, but I was always with them," recalls Jay Kaye, who is now a musician himself. He and his sister, Donna, who followed four years later, remembers running through the cavernous back halls of the casinos, watched over by nannies; brother Jeff followed two years after Donna. Jay also remembers accompanying his mother on her first trip to Hawai'i. The trio performed at the Hihon Hawaiian Village, where Louis Armstrong was also performing; oeean liners in Pearl Harbor welcomed the arrival with banners. "My mom was proud of her roots," says Jay. "She spoke Hawaiian, though she lost a lot of it. She made a point of telling me that we were of royal Hawaiian heritage. When we were in Hawai'i, she introduced me to loads of relatives. An Unele Moki up in the hills behind Waiklkl." TomMoffatt, a Honolulu concert promoter

since the 1950s, recalls seeing Mary and her trio in the early '60s. "They were great," he says. "They had a very modern sound, a good blend of voices. She was a great singer, very attractive. She had quite the hourglass figure. I was in awe of them. They were Hawaiians who had made it." The trio was voted best jazz act in the country in 1957 and 1962 in the Playboy AllStar Jazz Poll. Mary Kaye's Hawaiian heritage wasn't her only connection to royalty. Fans also SEE MARY KAYE TRI0 ON PAGE 30

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Mary's daughter ūonna Pursley-Rodriguez says her mother's live renditions of 'My Funny Valentine' was otherwordly. "I've never heard anyone do it so welh" Pholo: Couitesy ofJohn Kaye

MARY KAYE TRI0 Continued from page 29

dubbed her the "First Lady of Rock and Roll" after she became the first female singer in history to have a rock hit. Mary's career was at its peak when rock was emerging as a new genre, and in 1959 heavyhitting producer Don Ralke took Mary's recording of "You Can't Be True, Dear," labeled it rock 'n' roll and distributed it nationwide. It landed on the nascent Billboard rock chart. And then there was the guitar, Fender's first custom Stratocaster, a terrific blond ash model with gold hardware. Fender asked the trio to debut it. Mary posed with it in a Fender advertisement and in the film Cha-Cha-Cha Boom!, solidifying her rock credentials. Customers flooded music stores

with requests for the "guitar that Mary played." Today the instrument, nicknamed the "Mary Kaye Strat," remains one of the most valuable collectible guitars on the market. It originally cost $330; it now fetches $50,000. Ironically, Mary didn't own the coveted Strat until decades later. The crew that delivered it to the photo shoot mistakenly returned it to Fender - twice. Mary didn't make a fuss; she preferred playing her customized John D'Angelico guitars anyhow. She commissioned her first D'Angelico for $495, a princely sum in 1955. The master craftsman inscribed her name in pearl on the fretboard he measured to fit her hand. He also outfitted one of her acoustic instruments with electric components, ushering her into the new age of music. Not to be entirely outdone, Fender kept the Mary Kaye Trio well supplied with amplifiers. And finally, in

2002, Fender presented a specially made Mary Kay Stratocaster to the woman who'd made it famous just by association. In 2005, Fender reissued a tribute-edition "Mary Kaye Strat," marking her endorsement by the company and elevating her to the ranks of guitar greats like Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. Mary's outfits were as glamorous as her guitars. Liberace famously called her the second-best-dressed performer in Vegas - after himself, of course. By the mid-'60s the trio was the highest-paid band in Sin City, collecting $250,000 for a 22-week engagement at the Sahara. Mary looked every ineh the part. A bona fide "barn burner" (Rat Paek lingo for a well-dressed woman), she had a closet full of finery. Her heavily embellished costumes weighed 40 pounds or more; one sequined affair topped a hundred pounds. To enable Mary to perform in such regalia, her husband wheeled her on and off stage on a dolly. Daughter Donna PursleyRodriguez still owns some of her mother's couture gowns. "Other people wanted dresses from (Spanish dressmaker) Goya," remembers Pursley-Rodriguez, "but she was so busy sewing for my mom, she didn't have time." Behind the beautiful fagade, however, trouble was brewing. Mary's husband, Jules Pursley, drank heavily and was violently jealous. The eouple made a series of poor ūnaneial investments, and an accountant embezzled most of the Trio's earnings to pay his own gambling debts. An expose published in 1963, The Green Felt Jungle, revealed Sin City's sordid underbelly, outing mobsters and drug addicts and implicating many of the trio's fans in illieiī activities. Mary was named as regular at a high-class lesbian bar - shocking for the time. Already on rocky territory, she and Jules divorced in 1966. Their son Jay, who was 12 years old at the time, remembers, "We went from living in a really posh area to a ghetto on the other

side of the tracks." In January 1965 the Mary Kaye Trio played its last show to a packed house at the Tropicana in Vegas. Afterward, Mary said, she and Charlton Heston cried together in her dressing room. "I never thought the band would end," she told Guitar Player in 2006. Every source gives a different account of why the trio split up: Norman Kaye left to pursue a real estate career. Frank Ross quit to start a comedy act with Blackie Hunt, and he ended his career with Hunt in an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Certainly after the trio's beloved manager, Billy Burton, died in 1962, competitive egos started to emerge. Mary left Vegas for a time, continuing to play music with various combos. In the 1970s she worked with Nadine Jansen, an incredible talent who played the trumpet with one hand and the piano with the other. "My mother grew in musicianship after the trio broke up. She developed more of a jazz feeling," says PursleyRodriguez. "When I was 18 or 19 years old, that's when my mom was at her height of singing. The version of 'My Funny Valentine' that's on the album is commercial. The one that she used to play live was unbelievable. I've never heard anyone do it so well." Mary never recaptured the wild buzz of the trio. She tried her hand as an entrepreneur, opening a restaurant in Hollywood and starting a porcelain doll company. She helped her son Jay launeh his music career. In her later years she raised money for diabetes research by performing benefit concerts. Today albums by the Mary Kaye Trio are rare collectibles. Only a handful of YouTube videos exist, and though they are testament to the band's exuberant energy, they fail to fully convey the creativity, the polished talent and the sheer stamina required to keep a town like Vegas hopping night after night for two decades. Given the Mary Kaye Trio's enormous inAuenee, how could its

music have faded into obscurity so quickly? "It's not that odd that they slipped through the cracks," says Norman's son, musician John Kaye. "They broke up three years after the Beatles broke out. A lot of bands that were huge got overshadowed by the British Invasion." University of Hawai'i music instructor Jay Junker agrees. "This happened to a lot of pop artists of the pre-rock era, who for one reason or another were not considered 'hip' by the critics," he says. "Some get rediscovered later, while others are mostly passed by no matter how good they were or how popular they onee were." Before Beatlemania fully eclipsed the lounge cats' reign, Mary and the trio visited London for a performance at the Talk of the Town nightclub. They socialized with the shaggy-haired lads from Liverpool at a party held in their honor. She met Queen Elizabeth II - one member of royalty visiting another. Their outfits alone must've been something to witness. Mary died at age 83 in 2007. That night, she had planned to perform for her nursing home. She'd only been there a few weeks, but she'd already teamed up with another musician and comedian. Right up until the end, she was working. With unflappable grace and poise, she rose from her start as a novelty act to become one of America's highest-paid performers. And by winning over the world with an identity of her own invention, this powerful, gifted Hawaiian woman helped pave the way for the next generation of female stars. ■ Award-winn ing writer and editor Shannon Wianeeki investigates the natural and cultural history of Hawai'i for publications worldwide. Find more ofher work at shannonwianecki.com and @ swianecki. This article originally appeared in the August/September 2011 issue ofUam Hou! magazine.

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A young Mary and Norman Kaye with their father Johnny " 'Ukulele" Ka'aihue, who was reportedly descended from Hawaiian royalty. - Pholo: Couitesy ofJohn Kaye