This music star lived quietly in B.C. for years. His songs live on in a popular video game
The Ink Spots singer Bill Kenny spent much of his later life in Vancouver
Gordon Long remembers his Uncle Bill as a gracious man who loved to paint, play golf and joke around.
His uncle, Bill Kenny, was also a music star who sold millions of records prior to settling in Vancouver, but Long says that never seemed to come up.
"He was our Uncle Bill and the show business part, we never really got into at all," Long said from his home in Maple Ridge, B.C.
Kenny was a member of the Ink Spots, a Black vocal group that recorded several smash hits in the U.S. between the late 1930s and early '50s, breaking down racial barriers along the way.
Long had glimpses of his uncle's musical career. He remembers Kenny bringing him and his brother out on stage during a nightclub performance in Victoria, B.C. He also remembers that Kenny kept performing after surviving a large garage fire that could have killed him.
He's proud of the fact that the Ink Spots have had a surprising afterlife with Kenny's lilting tenor voice featured in movie soundtracks and a popular video game franchise.
"To this day, when I hear an Ink Spots tune in, say, a movie or a commercial or something like that, the first thing that I think of is, that's my Uncle Bill," Long said.
The Ink Spots 'magic'
Austin Casey, a musician from Portland, Ore., calls himself a Bill Kenny super fan. He posts old Ink Spots videos to his YouTube channel, manages a Facebook fan page and has collected information about Kenny's life.
At 31, Casey may seem a bit young to listen to music recorded more than 80 years ago, but he says he regularly hears from Ink Spots fans younger than him.
"The thing about Bill Kenny and the Ink Spots that I think is so special is they create a vibe and a sort of magic … the sound was so different and I think that's why it'll endure forever," he said.
Kenny, who grew up in Baltimore, joined the Ink Spots in 1936. Three years later, they released If I Didn't Care, a smash hit that sold millions of copies.
Their songs often fell into a formula that featured the same guitar intro, Kenny's soaring vocals, and a "talking bass" performed by bandmate Hoppy Jones.
The recipe worked for more than a decade, with the group performing at venues in the southern U.S. that had previously been reserved for white performers. Casey says Kenny was not shy about leveraging his considerable fame to speak out on issues of racial justice.
The group formally broke up in 1954 following personnel changes, a shift in musical tastes and a legal squabble between bandmates over the use of the Ink Spots name.
Casey says Kenny was performing at Vancouver's Cave Supper Club in 1948 when he met Audrey McBurney. After marrying in 1949, the couple lived in the U.S. and spent time in Calgary before eventually settling in Vancouver in the '60s. Using Vancouver as a home base, Kenny continued to perform in Canada and abroad until his death in 1978.
In a 1964 interview with journalist Jim Coleman, Kenny suggested that it was easier to live as an interracial couple in Vancouver than in parts of the U.S.
In 1966, he hosted the The Bill Kenny Show on CBC.
How the Ink Spots became Fallout's 'house band'
Ink Spots music has long been used in TV and movies, often to evoke a bygone era. If I Didn't Care was featured in the opening of the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption.
In recent years their music has played a key role in Fallout, the role-playing video game saga where players battle raiders and ghouls in a post-apocalyptic world set in the 22nd century.
Mark Lampert, who worked as a sound engineer on Fallout games produced by Bethesda Softworks, says the Ink Spots and their trademark guitar intro have been part of the game since its first edition back in 1997. Their sound, he says, was a perfect fit for the game's retro-futuristic esthetic.
"It's almost like a key ingredient.… It would be a shocking void if you didn't hear those guitar notes at the start of one of the Fallout games in some way, shape or form," he said.
Trygge Toven won an Emmy for his work as music supervisor on the debut season of the Amazon Prime Fallout TV series, which featured multiple Ink Spots songs. He says Season 2 is in the works and the inclusion of more of the group's music is "always on the table."
"It's almost like the house band of the series," Toven said from Los Angeles.
Toven says bittersweet songs like I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire and Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall resonate with audiences of any era.
"There is something about Bill's voice, just this melancholy, just the emotion," he said. "It's sweet, but also feels very sorrowful at the same time, and I think that really making music work for TV and film [is] all about connecting to the emotion."
'A fish out of water'
Kenny's life in Vancouver had its own measure of melancholy.
The Vancouver Sun reported that in 1969 Kenny suffered serious burns in a large garage fire.
"There was a gas leak in his old car," said nephew Long. "He went to light a cigar and it just blew up. To this day, I have no idea how he could have possibly survived that."
Kenny was later diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, a rare autoimmune disease that affects the nerves and muscles of people afflicted with it.
Despite his health issues, Kenny continued to perform until his death in 1978 at the age of 63.
Following his passing, radio broadcaster and friend Jack Cullen told the Vancouver Sun that Kenny didn't get enough recognition in his adopted home.
"He sold so many millions of records," Cullen said. "Vancouver was not the place for him. He was like a fish out of water."
Kenny said he hoped his music would have lasting value.
"If a song is worth singing, it should bring pleasure and leave pleasant memories," he told the Victoria Daily Times newspaper in 1965.
Casey says Kenny's music has endured with an assist from an unlikely source — a video game and TV series set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
"It's sort of ironic because Bill was such a peaceful guy," Casey said.
"Anytime something like a video game or a movie, regardless of its nature, ... brings you to something that's more beautiful and more wholesome, I think that's a good thing."
For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.
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