Singer Marilyn Maye has an enduring love for audiences

Marilyn Maye is nearly unstoppable.

With an illustrious career that includes having appeared on “The Tonight Show” more times than any other singer, the 86-year-old Kansas City legend maintains a busy schedule. She regularly performs in New York cabarets and is soon to travel to Europe for some performances.

On Thursday, Maye comes home to KC for a performance in Helzberg Hall with the Kansas City Symphony conducted by Aram Demirjian.

“I haven’t worked in Kansas City for quite a while now, so it will be a special night to be with new and old friends,” she said.

Maye was born in Wichita, where she started singing when she was 3 years old. At 9 she won a contest in Topeka, which allowed her to be host of a radio show for 13 weeks.

She and her mother eventually moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where she spent her high school years on a radio show on KRNT, “Marilyn Entertains.” After graduating from high school, Maye hit the road, working as staff vocalist for WHAS in Louisville, Ky., and performing around the country in nightclubs and theaters.

“One time I was booked into the Drum Room in Kansas City, and met a man, a dancer, and I married him and settled in Kansas City,” she said. “But then I divorced him and married a wonderful pianist called Sam Tucker. We worked in one club in Kansas City for 11 years, a place called the Colony..

“Steve Allen saw me there and invited me on his television show, which I did many times while I was still appearing at the Colony. The last week before his show went off the air, RCA saw me, and they called me to New York and said they wanted to record me.”

RCA gave Maye the deluxe treatment. The label recorded Maye with a full orchestra and hired arrangers Peter Matz and Don Costa. Matz arranged many of Barbra Streisand’s albums and was conductor and arranger for “The Carol Burnett Show,” and Costa was Frank Sinatra’s arranger.

Maye eventually made seven albums for RCA. She also has many other albums to her credit, on her own and other labels.

“Kansas City was very good to me in those 11 years,” she said. “It was great because my daughter was 4 years old when I started at the Colony, and while she was growing up, we stayed in one place and worked five nights a week.

“In the summertime when she was out of school, we would go to Las Vegas and to Lake Tahoe and work in those places.

“And there’s another place we would go to every summer called Lake Okoboji, a beautiful lake resort in northern Iowa. I’ve sung for four generations there. I know the grandparents and the parents and the kids and their kids.”

For many years, Maye was a fixture on “The Tonight Show.” From 1965 until his retirement in 1992, host Johnny Carson brought her on his show 76 times.

“There’s no singer that’s done ‘The Tonight Show’ that many times,” Maye said. “Johnny often asked me to sing ‘Here’s That Rainy Day.’ That was his favorite song. I did it four times on his show. He seemed to love rain songs because the other one he liked was ‘Come in From the Rain.’”

While Maye’s old-school stylings are not so popular with younger late-night TV hosts, she has maintained an incredibly strong following with audiences of all ages. Connoisseurs of the Great American Songbook pack her concerts in New York, which have received rave reviews from Rex Reed, as well as reviewers from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Even though Maye’s home base is Overland Park, she’s more often found in the clubs of New York. Her touring schedule would be grueling for a 20- or 30-year-old, but she takes it all in stride, and, in fact, enthusiastically rattles off her coming destinations.

“Right after our Kansas City concert, we get on a plane for London, and I’ll be working London the following week,” she said. “Then the minute we’re through there, we’re coming back to New York and I’ll be at Rose Hall at Lincoln Center the following week. Then a one-nighter at 54 Below and a one-nighter at a college in Brooklyn. That’s October.”

Maye attributes her endurance to clean living. She’s never smoked, never drank and takes lots of vitamins.

“I just keep doing what I know how to do,” she said. “The more you keep moving, the more you sing, you keep your voice well-oiled. I coach people, and there will be people who tell me they retired for 15 years when they were raising a family.

“Well, my family was raised while I was singing, and I never retired. I never left. I think that’s a good reason for my still being able to do it. And I love the audiences. That’s my most successful marriage.

“I had three marriages, and none of them really worked. My most successful marriage is with the audience.”

This story was originally published September 27, 2014 at 7:00 PM with the headline "Singer Marilyn Maye has an enduring love for audiences."