Luise King Rey, 83; Singer in the King Sisters Quartet

Luise King Rey, an original member of the harmonious big-band singing group known for nearly six decades as the King Sisters, has died. She was 83.

Rey, married for 60 years to the group’s bandleader, Alvino Rey, died Aug. 4 at her home in Sandy, Utah, her sister, Donna Conkling of Sacramento, said Tuesday.

Popular in live performances at Los Angeles’ Paramount Theater and New York’s Biltmore Hotel, the sisters sang with bands led by Horace Heidt, Rey and Artie Shaw and on the radio with Kay Kyser. Their stardom waned after World War II, but they stayed in the public eye through records, occasional appearances and the 1960s ABC television program “The King Family.”

They were known for their technical accomplishments, including their intricate four-part harmony, well ahead of quartets of the 1950s such as the Four Freshmen.

The King Sisters’ best-known hits included “The Hut-Sut Song,” “Rose O’Day,” “My Devotion,” “I’ll Get By,” “It’s Love-Love-Love,” “Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet,” “The Trolley Song” and “Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week).”

They won a Grammy for their recording of “Imagination.” In 1995, Capitol Records released a compact disc called “Spotlight on the King Sisters” as part of its series honoring “The Great Ladies of Song.”

The King Sisters also appeared in several 1940s movies including “Sing Your Worries Away,” “Meet the People,” “The Thrill of a Romance” and “Cuban Pete.”

Born in Payson, Utah, Rey was one of six daughters and two sons of music teacher William King Driggs and his wife, Pearl. Driggs gave each of his children a musical instrument--Rey got an accordion--and taught them to play it. He started their careers by booking them for appearances around the West as “The Driggs Family of Entertainers.”

During the Depression, Rey and two other sisters, Alyce and Maxine, spun off into “The Boswell Sisters” to increase the family income. (Alyce King Clarke died last year in Los Angeles at 80.) When Maxine retired, they recruited sisters Donna and Yvonne. Adding another sister, Marilyn, and a friend, they adopted their father’s middle name and first billed themselves as the Six King Sisters.

Eventually the group jelled into a durable quartet featuring Alyce, Luise, Donna and Yvonne and known simply as the King Sisters.

They sang with Heidt in Chicago, where they met Rey, then Heidt’s electric guitarist. When Rey left to form his own band, the sisters went with him, and Luise eventually married him. When Alvino Rey broke up his band to join the Navy in 1943, the group worked with Shaw and Kyser.

They sang on major radio variety programs in the late 1930s and 1940s and, as television evolved, on shows hosted by Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin.

Ever “the girl singer” as she described herself, Rey gave her last performance at a Utah centennial celebration last year.

In addition to her husband, Rey is survived by three children, Robert and Jon of Salt Lake City and Liza Butler of Houston; four sisters, Maxine Thomas and Marilyn King of Los Angeles, and Conkling and Yvonne Burch of Sacramento; six grandchildren and one great-grandson.