Karla Burns: Kiddo, You Can Really Sing
February 27, 2022
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By: Allie Little
Special thank you to Carla Eckels at KMUW and Rick Bumgardner for being so generous with their time and with providing information critical to this blog.
During the 1950s, Wichita, Kansas was making steps to become the city it is today. McConnell Air Force Base replaced what was previously the municipal airport, Pizza Hut was founded at the corner of Bluff St. and Kellogg, and the city was the site of a peaceful sit-in protest at the Dockum Drug Store. The country as a whole would find itself in the middle of a Civil Rights movement by the 1960s, but Wichita’s Dockum Drug Store Sit-In was a communal shift in race relations before the wider country caught on. Born in 1954, Karla Burns grew up in this time of racial change and protest. Influenced by the local African American community, Karla had a drive and resilience of spirit that few other people are able to claim. Her talent for singing and acting made her a captivating force of nature when on a stage of any size, and she shared this quality with one of her greatest influences. Born 60 years apart, Hattie McDaniel and Karla Burns had a connection nearly too powerful for coincidence. The two Wichita-born actresses broke barriers for African American performers in their respective generations and used their fame and recognition to push for better representation for the Black community in media. What’s heartbreaking is that not many people can say they know their stories.
Wichita native, Karla Burns discovered her love of performing at a young age. There was rarely a time when a young Karla wasn’t singing to herself or someone else. Her love of music was encouraged by her entire family, especially her father who was a jazz and gospel pianist. She brought her love of theater and performing along during school and eventually graduated from Wichita West High School eager to pursue music, theater, and math. Interestingly, during her time in high school, she thought she would go to university and graduate as a math major. It took a conversation with the school’s vocal teacher for Karla to set her sights on performing instead of mathematics. Karla remembers her teacher telling her, “Kiddo, you can really sing. You need to know that.”
When choosing a university to attend, Karla had her fair share to choose from. She received scholarships to different schools across the country, but decided to stick close to home and enroll at Wichita State University. Wichita State’s music program had a top-notch reputation, and Burns wanted to learn from the best. At the time Karla enrolled, a degree in music theater did not exist. Students would often choose between music (in the fine arts department) or theater (in the liberal arts department). Instead of choosing one path, Karla was determined to do both and would work on a double major for the duration of her enrollment. Splitting her time between two programs caused a sense of isolation to spread; Either she wasn’t serious enough about music or she was too musical for theater. However, this isolation didn’t prevent her from performing in several stage productions for the University or finding paid performing gigs at various theaters around Wichita.
If Karla Burns got her love of music and performance from her father, she collected her fighting spirit from her mother. Karla remembers her mother saying, “no one is going to give you anything. You have to go, reach out, and grab for it.” It was this spirit that assisted Karla over and over again in her life as she chased for everything she desired. Despite an abundance of setbacks, health problems, and a few unhelpful faculty members, Burns achieved a degree in Music Education as well as a degree in Theater Performance from WSU in 1981.
After graduating from Wichita State, Karla traveled to Oklahoma City and performed in a production of “Show Boat” for the Lyric Theatre at Oklahoma City University for a week and later in Ravenna, Ohio for about two months. This Oscar and Hammerstein musical, originally produced in 1927, follows the lives of multiple performers, stagehands, and boat workers on a show boat called the ‘Cotton Blossom’ as it takes numerous trips up and down the Mississippi River. It wasn’t long before there was talk of “Show Boat” touring nationally. Back in Wichita, Karla recalled phoning the production company daily for months before someone took her call and told her that auditions for the national production would be held in New York City. Each actress auditioning for a role was allowed 16-bars of music to show their best, and hoped it was enough. Karla waited two days at the auditions to sing her short section of score and waited even longer to hear back, because the producers lost her phone number twice. After waiting two weeks with no word, the producers finally were able to inform her that she won the role of Queenie on the national tour of “Show Boat.”
The character of Queenie and that national tour eventually led Burns to the biggest stage in the world, Broadway. Just two years after graduating from Wichita State University, Karla Burns was nominated for a Tony award for Featured Actress - Musical, and there were no signs of her slowing down. She was doing press for national news outlets, performing for royalty around the world, and gaining praise at every stop. She began working steadily on the stage, and in 1991 she was awarded with the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Performance for her role as Queenie in the West End production of “Show Boat.” This award made her the first African American performer to win an Olivier Award, which is presented by the Society of London Theatre and would be the equivalent to Broadway’s Tony awards.
While Karla’s career was reaching levels of acclaim she only had dreamed of, she was not the first prolific African American actress from Wichita to achieve critical praise. Hattie McDaniel was a Wichita native, born in 1893 on Wichita Street. McDaniel is most known for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone with the Wind, in which she was the first Black person to ever be nominated and win an Academy Award. Hattie’s career was never simple, largely due to the racial discrimination prevalent in the largely segregated United States. Before the night of the 1940 Academy Awards ceremony, the press leaked the news that Hattie McDaniel won the award for Best Supporting Actress. Everyone in the room knew the tremendous moment in history this award would be, but Hattie still was forced to sit apart from the other actors in Gone with the Wind. In her acceptance speech, she spoke through tears saying, “I sincerely hope that I shall always be a credit to my race and the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel. And may I say thank you, and God bless you.”
Instead of becoming a hero, Hattie McDaniel became a polarizing figure in the Black community. The role of Mammy was often criticized as just another maid to wealthy white people in the long list of Black maids and servants that Hollywood continued to portray. The Black community demanded better representation, and Mammy felt like a step backwards. Publicly Hattie’s response to this criticism was “I can be a maid for $7 a week, or I can play a maid for $700 a week.” Privately though, Hattie was very active in demanding better representation for the Black community in films and television, as well as standing against racial segregation in housing developments in Los Angeles. Despite her polarizing status, Hattie McDaniel is remembered as a kind, graceful, and strong soul and one of Wichita’s finest former residents. Near her childhood home on Wichita St. stands a marker honoring her legacy and the impact she still has on so many young people.
A spiritual kinship between Hattie McDaniel and Karla Burns was inevitable. Hattie died only two years before Karla was born, as if the universe couldn’t live without the warmth in both their souls. During the 1990s, Burns traveled the country with a one-woman show titled “Hi-Hat Hattie” which chronicled moments in Hattie McDaniel’s life. Burns felt a connection to Hattie at a young age. In an interview with KMUW’s Carla Eckels, Burns stated “she was brilliant, brilliant…She was everything I knew that I wanted to be heading into my education. She was the one that I thought about. She was the one that I wanted to fashion my life after.” Besides growing up barely 10 blocks apart, the two women also pioneered the same characters for different generations. While Karla became incredibly familiar with the role of Queenie in various “Show Boat” revivals, Hattie McDaniel portrayed the character for the Show Boat film in 1936. Similar to Hattie’s view on the character of Mammy in Gone with the Wind, Karla believed in the importance of playing roles like Queenie or Mammy from a historical context. A close friend of Karla’s, Rick Bumgardner once stated in an interview, “when she got the opportunity to put a rag on her head, she didn’t feel she was putting people down. She felt she was portraying strong women and reminding our nation of its past.” Keeping the memory of this icon alive was a passion Karla carried through her life, so she would speak of Hattie in every interview or lecture that came her direction.
“I want to tell all the world about her.” - Karla Burns on Hattie McDaniel
After many years on the biggest and most prestigious stages in the world, Karla Burns found her way back to Wichita. She used her incredible talent and experience to teach singing and music to children from around the area. It was this focus on sharing her extensive knowledge that motivated her alma mater Wichita State University to grant her an honorary doctorate of philosophy in 2016, and a spot in the College of Fine Arts Hall of Fame. In 2013, the City of Wichita honored her achievements and contribution to the area by dedicating the week of December 17th - December 24th as Karla Burns Week. Many of the theater venues around Wichita have been graced with a Karla Burns performance in their history, including The Forum Theatre, the Gridiron, and Roxy’s Downtown. She performed around the Wichita area until her final performance at Roxy’s Downtown in 2020.
Due to her performances being mostly on stage, it can be difficult to find videos of Karla performing. Luckily on December 18, 2013, the City of Wichita posted this video to their YouTube channel wishing all Wichitans a happy holiday season. This 3 minute and 47 second video is a recording of Karla Burns singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at city hall. Her voice fills the room and nearly overpowers the small dynamic microphone in her hand. Her talent is clearly too much for the room she stands in, and every audience member is captivated. From this video, it’s easy to see the spark of charm and warmth she brought to all her performances. After the song ends, the camera pulls back to reveal the audience. About 30 people are scattered around the room and giving a standing ovation to the performer they had the privilege of watching. Among the claps and cheers, Karla says “Merry Christmas, and I love you.”
During an interview in 2019 with Carla Eckels from KMUW, Karla Burns was asked what she wanted her legacy to be. In true Hattie McDaniel’s fashion, Karla initially responded with “that I did my best and let God do the rest,” a phrase that McDaniel favored as well. She then followed that up with, “I would like to be known that I’m honest in what I love and what God has given me, that I have used this journey to be the best that I can be.” And finally, she ended with, “I just hope they remember.”
Karla Burns died on June 4th, 2021.
Karla is remembered in the community as a kind and giving woman, deserving of honor and attention. In available interviews, her humor and warmth radiate through the screen. In her obituary posted by Jackson Mortuary, Karla is summarized perfectly as “...truly a treasure from Kansas. She, like Dorothy Gale in the Wizard of Oz, left Kansas in a tornado of talent and landed in the colorful world of New York City and got there by traveling down her own yellow brick road. Along the way she picked up more brains, heart and courage than anyone could imagine. After a whirlwind of adventure, she clicked her heels together and came back to Kansas, because, ‘after all, there’s no place like home.’"
While gathering information about this blog, I found myself overwhelmed with emotion at many points. Having grown up in this area my entire life and being a fan of performance and pop culture, I was shocked by my utter lack of knowledge about these two legendary figures. When I discovered the existence of Karla Burns Week, I felt ashamed for having not celebrated this woman while she was alive. Karla called this city her home with pride, and it is the responsibility of the citizens of Wichita to make sure these women remain celebrated. Put Karla Burns week in your calendar, visit Hattie McDaniel’s birthplace, and appreciate the kindness and grace that these women shared with this community.
https://www.thejacksonmortuary.com/obituary/karla-burns
https://www.kmuw.org/arts/2021-06-10/her-spirit-was-bright-it-was-happy-remembering-wichita-icon-karla-burns
