Still Wild About Harry : Babbitt, a Kyser’s Kollege Graduate, Relives Past With UCI Ensemble

Harry Babbitt says his life in music has traced a circle, from his early years as lead singer with the popular Kay Kyser Orchestra, to a successful career in real estate when the big-band craze fizzled, and now back, in recent years, to song.

“I’m beginning to get fan mail again,” says Babbitt, who will be singing his best-known songs, with the help of the UCI Jazz Ensemble, in ‘40s-style music and dance sessions Friday and Saturday at the Irvine campus. “Isn’t that crazy?”

Ironically, it was the 1985 death of Kyser, his musical mentor, that precipitated Babbitt’s return to music. An agent approached Babbitt that year and urged him to reform the Kyser band, which had broken up in 1949, to capitalize on the resurgent interest in the music of that era. Babbitt obtained rights to the band’s name and catalogue from Kyser’s widow and has been busy ever since, touring with the band, playing cruise ships and appearing at charity gigs.

Kyser, known as the “Old Perfesser,” married swing music and slapstick comedy in his enormously popular radio show “Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge,” which ran from 1933 to 1949.

Babbitt was a young singer in his native St. Louis when Kyser came through on tour in 1938. Babbitt says a lighting man at the show told Kyser, “There’s a kid in town that oughta be singing with you.” A few weeks later, Babbitt got the chance to try out and soon was touring with the band.

Kyser employed a series of singer-comics (Ish Kabibble--Merwyn A. Brogue--probably was the best known) along with Babbitt and other “serious” singers who crooned romantic tunes and, during the war, such patriotic fare as “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition!”

Babbitt was the lead male singer until 1944, when he left the band for two years to serve with the Navy. He sang on such Kyser hits as “Who Wouldn’t Love You,” “Three Little Fishies,” “On a Slow Boat to China” and “Jingle, Jangle, Jingle.”

The band played all the swing hot spots, from the Waldorf in New York to Chicago’s Aragon to the Hollywood Palladium. For years, the Kyser band opened the summer season at the Casino on Catalina Island; Newport Beach’s late, lamented Rendezvous Ballroom was another stop. And even from the road, the band broadcast its “Kollege of Musical Knowledge” twice a day--once for the East Coast, once for the West.

The radio program started in 1933, but reached its popularity peak in the years after Babbitt--whom Kyser dubbed “Handsome Harry”--joined the band. “He always thought of me as his good-luck charm,” Babbitt says. “It was after I joined that things really started to take off for them.”

During the war, the hectic touring pace slowed, and Kyser made Hollywood his base. The band made seven feature films there, with Babbitt usually cast as the romantic singing lead.

After Kyser, faced with health problems and dwindling interest in swing, broke up the band, Babbitt remained in Hollywood and was the host of several radio and television programs. About 30 years ago he left the entertainment business, sold his Brentwood home and moved full time to his vacation beach house in Newport Beach.

The genial Babbitt, a robust 75 (“same age as Sinatra”), says he is constantly reminded these days of his big-band career. Friends call when they spot his old films on cable television; his son sends along re-releases of his old recordings with the Kyser band, cleaned up with the help of digital technology for the CD market.

The old days, says Babbitt, were good to him: “If the good Lord gives me another chance, I hope he puts me with another big band. I wouldn’t change that experience for anything.”

* Harry Babbitt will perform with the UCI Jazz Ensemble at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the UCI Fine Arts Village Theatre. There will be dancing. Admission: $6 to $10, including refreshments. Information: (714) 856-6616.