Mary Kaye, who blazed dual trails as an early female electric guitarist and pioneer of the swingin' 1950s Vegas lounge scene, died Saturday in Las Vegas of heart and respiratory failure after years of declining health. She was 83.

With her brother Norman Kaye and late comedian Frank Ross, she was part of the Mary Kaye Trio, the first group to make the casino lounge a focal point of Las Vegas entertainment. The trio began working the casinos in the late 1940s and remained a major draw until they broke up in 1966.

After Kaye was featured in a 1956 ad for Fender guitars, the blond guitar with gold trim she was pictured with became informally known as the "Mary Kaye Stratocaster." The name still holds among guitar collectors, and in 2005, Fender introduced the "Fender Custom Shop Mary Kaye Tribute Stratocaster."

Kaye recorded several albums both with the trio and as a solo artist. She sang the theme song for the 1957 Sophia Loren movie "Boy on a Dolphin," and voiced the 1959 rock single "You Can't Be True Dear." The trio also appeared in the low-budget 1956 movie "Cha Cha Cha Boom!"

But the trio's legacy would be its live act, which defined the Vegas lounge combination of impeccable musicianship and off-the-cuff comedy well before Louis Prima came to town in late 1954.

"They changed the history of Las Vegas," said George Schlatter, a booking agent in the 1950s who went on to become more famous as the TV producer of "Laugh-In." "They were all over the room and they were hysterical. Anybody who ever saw the act realized this was the most sound you ever got out of three pieces."

In 2004, Mary Kaye recalled, "I've been working since I was 9. I was my father's favorite guitar player."

She was born into a show business family as Mary Ka'aihue on Jan. 9, 1924. Her father had blood ties to the Hawaiian royal family but raised the family in St. Louis. She taught herself to play guitar as a child and was featured in her father's band, Johnny Ka'aihue's Royal Hawaiians, by the time she was 12.

After World War II, she and her brother formed a splinter group that eventually became the Mary Kaye Trio. In the summer of 1953, the group was so well-received at the Last Frontier that management wanted to hold them over after a four-week engagement. But the big room was promised to another act, so Mary Kaye remembered suggesting a move to the bar.

"We'll put a stage and a big heavy drape around the stage so that the music won't interfere with the gamblers. ... And I said, 'We won't call it a bar, we'll call it a lounge,' " she recalled in a 2004 interview with Nevada Magazine.

Within a year, the lounge was the gathering point of visiting celebrities including Milton Berle and Howard Hughes. Sammy Davis Jr. was playing congas onstage with them before he caught a late ride to Los Angeles and lost his eye in a November 1954 auto accident.

"Elvis was my biggest fan," she once recalled. "He said, 'Mary, how'd you learn to play those grabs?' He would come and stand behind a pillar where nobody could see him."

The trio was featured at the Sahara, Tropicana and other lounges before fatigue took its toll in 1966. "Sometimes you can burn yourself out," she noted in 1996.

She continued to perform as a solo act in the 1970s.

Services are pending.

Kaye is survived by her brother Norman Kaye of Las Vegas; and three children: Jeffrey Pursley of Calabasas, Calif.; Donna Ramirez of Las Vegas; and Jaye Kaye of Mallorca, Spain.