[Dixielandjazz] R.I.P. Kay Davis - Chicago Sun-Times

[Robert Ringwald]

Soprano Was One of Last Links to Duke Ellington
by Maureen O'Donnell
Chicago Sun-Times, February 17, 2012
The death of Kathryn "Kay" Wimp means one of the last links to jazz giant Duke Ellington
is gone.
Mrs. Wimp's classical music training at Northwestern University burnished her silvery
lyric soprano, which "Sir Duke" used to ethereal effect in many recordings.
The Evanston native, who performed with Ellington from 1944 to 1950 as "Kay Davis,"
was part of an unusual dream team he created of three female lead vocalists with
different styles. Most swing bands used just one male and one female singer. It was
a typical innovation by the man widely considered to be the greatest jazz composer-pianist-orchestra
leader of all time.
Ellington's two other key vocalists in the lineup were Joya Sherrill and Maria Ellington
(no relation), who married Nat King Cole.
But Mrs. Wimp stood out. In addition to swingin' songs, Ellington often had her perform
wordless, soaring bell-like filigrees over melodies.
She "was outstanding among them for her classical training and beautiful voice. It
was haunting," said Richard Wang of the Jazz Institute of Chicago, an associate professor
emeritus of music at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
"She sang almost like an opera singer," said Morris Hodara of New York City's Duke
Ellington Society. "Her specialty was really these exotic things that Ellington wrote,
non-lyrical."
Mrs. Wimp died last month at her home in Apopka, Fla., at age 92.
With her death, "There's almost nobody left who was with the orchestra," Hodara said,
particularly from the swing era of the 1930s and 1940s.
She was born Kathryn McDonald in Evanston, the daughter of a chiropractor father
and homemaker mother. Mrs. Wimp's family was musical. Her father sang in church,
and she always remembered performing.
"Marian Anderson and Dorothy Maynor were my idols," Mrs. Wimp said in a 1980 interview
for the Oral History of American Music at Yale University Library.
She graduated from Evanston Township High School and went on to Northwestern, where
she earned a bachelor's degree in music in 1942 and a master's in music in 1943.
Despite the taboos of the time, she sang a duet with a white male partner in the
Waa-Mu show of 1942, according to a 2001 article in Northwestern Magazine.
But though she attended music school at Northwestern, students of color weren't allowed
to live on campus, she told the magazine: "We used to drool over Willard Hall, which
was right across from the music building."
After college, a friend heard Ellington was coming to town and suggested that she
try out for him.
"And I thought: He doesn't want a soprano," she said in the Yale interview.
But she went ahead and auditioned for one of his assistants, and Ellington found
out about a concert she was doing on the South Side.
"He came in at the end of it," said her son, Edward Lawson Wimp. "All the attention
was drawn to the door, and there was Duke Ellington."
He asked her to join the band. And as Ellington rehearsed Al Hibbler on "I Ain't
Got Nothin But the Blues," he heard her magic. When she started humming along, she'd
later tell the Yale historian, he urged her: "Keep that in. Do that."
She can be heard singing on "Creole Love Call," "On a Turquoise Cloud," "Violet Blue,"
and "Translucency," which Maria Muldaur re-recorded in the 1980s.
Videos of her performing -- for instance, online at
http://vintageblackglamour.tumblr.com/post/13681530187
 -- show a stunning woman with a swanlike neck in glittering dresses. (She often
spent time beading gowns backstage, she once told Sweetwater Akiva Springs Magazine,
because she loved fashion. She even named her poodle Coco, after designer Coco Chanel.)
She performed at Carnegie Hall and at the London Palladium with the Nicholas Brothers
and Pearl Bailey.
But the grind of the road was tough in those pre-civil rights era days. "They could
perform in one place, but they couldn't stay there," said her son. "They had to go
to peoples' homes to sleep. They had to go to the back door, and a lot of places,
they couldn't eat."
In Macon, Ga., the band was invited to a restaurant, she told the Yale historian,
but a threatening white lawman told the musicians: "I don't care any more about Duke
Ellington than any other negra." They fled back to their Pullman car.
She left the band to marry Edward D. Wimp. They lived in Chatham and Hyde Park before
moving to Florida.
A trained Cordon Bleu home cook, Mrs. Wimp enjoyed extending coveted invitations
to her dinner parties.
Mrs. Davis is also survived by one grandson. Her funeral was Feb. 10 in Chicago.
At one time, she was upset that Ellington didn't use her more to interpret lyrics
rather than perform wordless singing. But she told the Yale Oral History of American
Music, "Now that I look back, I know that he knew exactly what he was doing. Because
anybody can sing lyrics, you know."


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
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