Biography

Going Back to "Kollege"

Kay Kyser

View a video clip of Kay Kyser's "Kollege of Musical Knowledge."

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The Blackhawk’s Monday night business was still slow, so the musicians began tossing around ideas for more audience participation. Quiz shows were the new trend, and somebody suggested asking audience members questions about music. Somebody else suggested a classroom setting, noting that the lanky, bespectacled Kyser resembled a professor. It was saxophone player and vocalist Sully Mason, a Durham native who stayed with Kyser his entire 25-year showbiz career, who named the million-dollar idea that made the band famous: Kay Kyser’s "Kollege of Musical Knowledge."

"There was a lot of radio air time from the Blackhawk, and what we didn’t know was that the college kids … were listening and thought we were great," Kyser recalled. "When they came home for the holidays, the Blackhawk turned out to be the hardest tickets in town, and we were on our way."

The "Kollege" became a roaring success in Chicago and continued to be broadcast locally. In 1938 the American Tobacco Company bought the show for Lucky Strike. Airing weekly on NBC, the "Kollege" went nationwide. Kyser – who had been dubbed the "Genius of Jazz" by the New York Times – became famous.

Kay Kyser
Kyser doing a radio show. The band first hit the airwaves in 1937, from the Blackhawk Restaurant in Chicago.

By the summer of 1938, NBC had a ticket waitlist of 60,000, setting a new all-time high. Kyser’s band broke attendance records everywhere they played, and the hour-long show – which eventually moved from radio to television – was rated in the top 10 each of the 13 years it was on the air.

"The ‘Kollege’ was always clean and wholesome, something the whole family would share," Chapel Hill Newspaper Editor Orville Campbell, a Kyser family friend, wrote in 1983.

Each week, 20 million listeners tuned in to hear Kyser’s signature greeting: "Evenin’ folks, how y’all?" They laughed at Ish Kabibble, the sincere but not-so-smart "stoodent" of the Kollege. Audience members tried to win $35 and a diploma by answering questions: "Mrs. Filbert, the opera Aida is located on the River Nile. Mrs. Edgar Greenbower of Ames, Iowa, wants to know what country the Nile flows through… Albania?… That’s right, you’re wrong!"

By 1939, Kyser’s records were best-sellers; by 1940, he began appearing on the big screen. The band starred in seven full-length Hollywood films and appeared in several movie shorts, and was often described as the most lucrative in the history of show business. Time magazine called Kyser the biggest moneymaker in his field in 1941. He grossed more than $1 million that year.

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