February 21, 2010

This February program recognized the music of the band’s namesake, Karl L. King, in celebration of his birth on February 21, 1891.  The music performed reflected a wide range of King’s musical styles, and was heavily influenced by his career as a circus musician.  When Karl King arrived in Fort Dodge in the fall of 1920 with his wife Ruth and young son Karl, Jr., he was already a well-established conductor, composer and publisher of band music.  He continued to write music along with directing the local Municipal Band for 50 years, and eventually opened his own music store and publishing business here.

Many of Mr. King’s compositions were on this program and several were published exactly 100 years ago, when King was a mere 19 years of age.  He left Canton, Ohio one hot, summer day in 1910 and traveled to Emporia, Kansas, where he had heard the Robinson Famous Circus was looking for a baritone player.  This circus had moved on down the road, but Mr. King caught up with them and thus began his career as a performer, composer, and conductor.

The Gateway City March, published in 1910 by the C. L. Barnhouse Co. in Oskaloosa, Iowa, opened the program.   Other compositions from that same year were also heard during the concert, including the march Ponderoso; a beautiful aerial waltz, Desdemona; a schottische, Dance Of The Imps; and an exciting circus galop, Excelsior.

Other marches on the program included The Black and Gold Line, an unpublished composition written by former conductor Reginald R. Schive and dedicated to the members of the King Band, along with King’s most famous and recognizable march, Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite.

Other types of music performed included an overture, Fountain Of Youth, published in 1924, along with a two-step, Kentucky Sunrise, and a Chinese intermezzo, Ung-Kung-Foy-Ya, both published in 1919.  Karl King was a master at writing beautiful music for many occasions, and the King Band performed his melodious Lover’s Lane romance, which was published in 1925 and dedicated to his wife, Ruth.