{{Use American English|date=December 2025}} {{Use mdy dates|date=December 2025}} {{Infobox musical artist | name = Monte Kay | image = | caption = | image_size = | birth_name = | alias = | birth_place = New York City, U.S. | birth_date = {{Birth date|1924|09|18}} | death_place = Los Angeles, California, U.S. | death_date = {{Death date and age|1988|05|25|1924|09|18}} | origin = | instrument = | genre = | occupation = Music producer, club manager, television producer | years_active = | label = | past_member_of = {{flatlist| *Miles Davis *Herbie Mann *Stan Getz *Sonny Rollins *Modern Jazz Quartet *Flip Wilson}} | website = | current_members = | past_members = }}
'''Monte Kay''' (September 18, 1924 – May 25, 1988)<ref name='nyt'>The New York Times [https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE4DC1230F93BA15756C0A96E948260 obituary]</ref><ref>The IMDb [https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0443143/ record]</ref> was an American music agent and record producer.
Kay acted as a talent scout and musical director of several night clubs on the New York jazz scene in the late 1940s and 1950s. According to some accounts, during those years, the Caucasian Kay would sometimes introduce himself as a fair-skinned African American.<ref name='Miles'>Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography, Simon and Schuster, 1989, {{ISBN|0-671-63504-2}}.</ref> In May and June 1945, Mal Braveman and Kay's New Jazz Foundation produced concerts at New York's Town Hall that included Dizzy Gillespie, Pearl Bailey, Erroll Garner, Don Byas, Charlie Parker, Max Roach and Sidney Catlett.<ref>{{cite web |title=Dizzy Gillespie - Charlie Parker – Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945 |url=https://www.discogs.com/Dizzy-Gillespie-Charlie-Parker-Town-Hall-New-York-City-June-22-1945/release/11292171 |website=Discogs |accessdate=12 January 2020}}</ref> As the artistic director of the Royal Roost (a jazz venue on 52nd Street) he succeeded in persuading the owner, Ralph Watkins, to hire Miles Davis's nonet—sometimes called the ''"Tuba Band"''—with which Davis was pursuing a project that gave birth to the cool jazz movement later to be called ''Birth of the Cool''. Kay befriended Davis and, during his later marriage to singer and actress Diahann Carroll, was for a time Miles' neighbor.<ref name='Miles'/>
In 1949, he founded the jazz club Birdland (later, he would also open another jazz club, Le Downbeat, in Chicago). During the 1950s, Kay produced several musicians, including Herbie Mann, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins and the Modern Jazz Quartet. In the same period, he married (1956–1963) singer and actress Diahann Carroll. Their daughter, Suzanne Kay, is a journalist and television author.
In 1963, Kay became the manager of the comedian Flip Wilson. The two formed the record label Little David Records, which featured comedy albums by Wilson, George Carlin and others. Kay was executive producer of the TV show ''The Flip Wilson Show''.
Kay died of heart failure in Los Angeles in 1988.
==References== {{reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Kay, Monte}} Category:1924 births Category:1988 deaths Category:Jazz record producers Category:Record producers from California Category:American television producers Category:20th-century American Jews