Herbie Kay Net Worth
Herbie Kay had an estimated net worth of $2 million at the time of his death. He was an American trumpeter and big band leader.
Herbie Kay Bio
Herbie Kay, born Herbert Kaumeyer (1904 – May 11, 1944, Dallas), was an American big band leader and trumpeter.
Kay’s career began in the mid-1920s while he was a student at Northwestern University, where he played in dance bands. From the late 1920s to the early 1940s, he led his own band and performed extensively in the Chicago area, including a long-running residency at the Blackhawk Restaurant.
Kay hired Dorothy Lamour as a vocalist in 1934, and they married in 1935; by 1936, Lamour had moved to Hollywood to pursue a film career, and their marriage ended in 1939.
He recorded for Vocalion and Columbia Records and toured throughout the Western US; his band’s songs included a specially-written novelty dance tune, “Rhythm Steps”.
He led a band of four saxophones, four brass instruments, and three rhythm instruments for the majority of his career. Shirley Lloyd, Fuzzy Combs, King Harvey, and “The Three Kays” were among the singers. In the early 1940s, he disbanded the group and relocated to Dallas, where he died in 1944.
Herbie Kay Cause of death
Herbie’s cause of death was Melanoma on the face / Generalized melanoma, with metastases to the cord, spine, and brain.
Melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, grows in the cells (melanocytes) that produce melanin, the pigment that gives your skin its color. Melanoma can also develop in the eyes and, in rare cases, inside the body, such as the nose or throat.
Herbie Kay age at death
Kay died on 11 May 1944 age 40 years, he passed away at his home in Normandy, Highland Park, Dallas. He was born on 3 Jan 1904 in Chicago.
Herbie Kay Wife
Herbie was married to Dorothy Lamour.
Lamour’s first marriage was to orchestra leader Herbie Kay, with whom she sang in her first orchestra. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1939.
Lamour met J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, early in her career. Hoover pursued a romantic relationship with Lamour, according to Hoover’s biographer Richard Hack, and the two spent a night together in a Washington, D.C. hotel. When asked later if she and Hoover had a sexual relationship, Lamour replied, “I cannot deny it.” Lamour refers to Hoover only as “a lifelong friend” in her autobiography My Side of the Road (1980).
Lamour married Air Force captain and advertising executive William Ross Howard III in Beverly Hills on April 7, 1943. John Ridgely (1946-2018) and Richard Thomson Howard were the couple’s two sons (born 1949).
Lamour and Howard relocated to Sudbrook Park, a Baltimore, Maryland suburb, in 1957. The couple and their two sons moved to Hampton, another Dulaney Valley Baltimore suburb, in 1962, with their oldest son, John, attending Towson High School. She also had a residence in Palm Springs, California. Howard passed away in 1978.
