Post #532473 by JOHN-O on Wed, May 26, 2010 7:02 PM

Polynesians invented Tiki and LOUNGE !!......

Credit Bigbro's "The Sound of Tiki" CD for bringing this significant Las Vegas (and Poly-Pop) fact back to light.

Now when you think of a classic Las Vegas lounge act, who first comes to mind? Well most people would say the Rat Pack but actually they played the "Big Room" (i.e. the Sands' Copa Room). For fans of the mid-century Las Vegas Swing sound, Louis Prima and Keely Smith would be the obvious choice. They were a popular fixture in the Sahara's Casbar Lounge, but they weren't the first to play that kind of venue.

Enter the Mary Kaye Trio.

Mary Kaye, her brother Norman, and (non-sibling) Frank Ross were Las Vegas' first official "lounge act". Mary Kaye ("Ka'aihue") and Norman grew up in St. Louis, Missouri but were both of Hawaiian descent. Mary's father was Hawaiian Hapa Haole performer Johnny Ukelele (who Mary and Norman toured with) and her grandfather was Prince Kuhio, brother of Queen Liliuokalani. That's two generations of Hawaiian "royalty" !!

In the "Sound of Tiki" liner notes, Bigbro writes:

"In 1950, her trio's engagement at the New Frontier Casino's main showroom in Las Vegas was coming to an end, but the owner wanted to keep them on. Mary suggested to add a small stage in the bar and call it a 'Lounge'."

The rest is history. :)

Here's some additional facts that I got in a fascinating book "Cult Vegas" by Mike Weatherford.

• "Norman remembers that chorus girls from neighboring hotels 'would bring the whole line in,' and with the girls came the boys. The trio employed a versatile arsenal to keep the regulars entertained. 'We never did the same act twice,' Mary says. 'We could put any song anywhere. They came back night after night, because they never knew what we were going to do, and we didn't either.'"

• "Mary's progressive guitar playing and their complex vocal harmonies - often compared to the Hi-Lo's - gave the trio the ability to tackle almost any song. But the secret weapon turned out to be Ross' comedy..."

• "Frank Ross was probably the inventor of what they call lounge comedy today... He's the guy who started the whole concept of tumult comedy, of not having routines and jokes... Even the gents who eventually became known as the Rat Pack took a cue from Ross. They used to sit and watch the lounge shows, and started to incorporate spontaneity in the main-room set..."

• "The Mary Kaye Trio soon had all the hotels rethinking their lounges, booking larger and louder outfits to play small stages that had been designed for organists or piano trios...The pump was primed..."

Here's my favorite YouTube clip of the trio. Not Vegas, but it's taken from the movie "Bop Girl Goes Calypso" they appeared in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThhM75nKomA

And you know the whole Tiki/Exotica/Latin connection that's been popular here as of late, here's Mary Kaye performing a Latin number.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9edra7yQFnE

This is a Nevada KNPR radio discussion that followed Mary Kaye's death in Feb 2007. It's pretty comprehensive.

http://www.myspace.com/marykayetrio/music-player?sindex=-1.0&shuffle=false&amix=false&pmix=false&plid=19837&artid=12577907&sseed=0&ptype=3&stime=8.333&ap=1&rpeat=fals

It's too bad there's no recorded footage of them playing in a Vegas lounge, but that can probably be said for all the Vegas lounge acts. :( Oh, to have today's portable technology back then.

Bigbro summarizes it like this:

"Mary Kaye personifies the convergence of American mid-century modernism and Polynesian history... To be descended from Hawaiian royalty and originating from the Las Vegas Lounge tradition clearly makes Mary and her brother, Norman Kaye, inhabitants of the cosmos of Tiki Modern."

So the next time you're enjoying Rat Pack-era Frank, Dino, and/or Sammy, remember the children of "Tiki" were doing it first !!