I hear talk from time to time of this Kay Kyser man, comrades. What's the story??? Novelty act only, or an overlooked contribution to the history of jazz as well???

A goofball, if you ask me.

Successful radio show, hit pop recordings, but absolutely no jazz value, IMO.

Kayser was a businessman whom a failing band brought in to front and manage the band. He got the band a quiz show on the radio, which was run as something of a joke, and became very popular, due mainly to the ebullient personality of Kayser,, and some of the musicians.Remember radio then was as popular tv is now. I don't know who ran the band musically but despite the fact that it was a better than average pop band, they played very cleanly and well and had very good arrangements and had very good and popular singers. In no way did they touch on the jazz genre, but they managed to have a distinguishing sound (soprano lead for sax section) and some pretty good players. All in all, I liked the band.

Therre's a lot about Kayser in Krin Gabbard's book about Jazz in film called "Jammin' at the Margins".

He is a somewhat-famous alumni of UNC Chapel Hill. I lived in what was said to have been his dorm room my sophomore year.

That was the year I discovered Bird, and Trane, and Miles....perhaps there was a vibe left in the room?

Nah......

So ok, Tiny Grimes' Highlanders looked stupid too, and Lionel Hampton was always doing some goofy stuff, but they could play.

Goofball, I still say. Oop-boop-ditum-datum-watum-CHOO indeed....

My folks used to listen to this guy. The College of Musical Knowledge. Boy, is that clever or what? I saw Kayser in a movie the other night with Bela Lugosi. Something about a touring band being stuck in a weird house, stormy nights, seances, lights going out...the whole nine yards. They played a couple of numbers. Pretty stock stuff. Way more novelty than anything one could consider musically serious.

Up over and out.

Yes, he was as popular as Glenn Miller circa 1940-42. "Pop" big-band culture as opposed to "jazz," although I realize that's a dangerous/reductive comparison to make. I'd like to see that movie!

Did a little research on the Kyser movie. It's called "You'll Find Out". Made in 1940. Not only is Bela Lugosi in it, but Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre as well. The only other names you might recognize are M.A. Bogue who plays a character called Ish Kabibble. I think Kabibble was a Kyser band regular. Ginny Sims also appears and plays herself.

Up over and out.

You're right again--Bogue-Kabibble was a member of the band---trombonist I think.

he's no Martin Denny -

"You'll Find Out" pops up occasionally on TCM. I've seen it there twice. It's pretty much standard comedy haunted house fare, the kind of stuff Abbott and Costello did in their sleep.

when such jokes were popular in the 1960s, one went: "If Sybil Burton (Richard Burton's ex) married Ish Kabibble, her name would be: Sybil Kabibbile."

Kay Kyser's band was in a few films, actually. AMC, back when AMC wasn't crap, used to run the RKO films now and then...TCM does now, as mentioned above.
Part of the allmovie bio....
Though in later years he claimed to dislike moviemaking, Kyser was so anxious to enter films in 1939 that he put a lot of his own money into his first starring film, That's Right, You're Wrong. The film proved to be one of RKO Radio's biggest hits, spawning a series of popular Kyser vehicles: perhaps the best known (but not the best) of these films was You'll Find Out (1940), which was distinguished by the only screen teaming of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre. Not long after completing his final film, Columbia's Carolina Blues (1944), Kyser married his band vocalist Georgia Carroll and began raising a family. He moved his radio show into TV in 1949, by which time his featured singer was a young Mike Douglas. Having promised himself that he'd retire from show business when he'd saved a million dollars, Kay Kyser did just that in 1950, returning to Chapel Hill to devote himself full-time to his family and to the Christian Science movement. — Hal Erickson

Hmmm always wondered who this guy was (not to keenly). Doesn't he appear in the lyrics of a Slim Gaillard song? 'Jumpin' at the Record Shop', or something like that?!?