Trouping With Karl King
We invite you to join us on a musical journey we call “Trouping with Karl King”. King left his hometown of Canton, Ohio at the age of 19. He had one season of experience playing Baritone with a professional band from Columbus, and had already had several marches accepted for publication. His goal was to earn a living as a professional musician and establish himself as a serious composer of band music.
King answered an ad that had been placed by a small circus needing a Baritone player. That circus was Robinson’s Famous Shows, a small, poorly-funded circus with a particularly unsavory reputation. Its entourage included drifters, short-change artists, card sharks, and pick-pockets. In the circus world, it was more commonly referred to as “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves”. However, for King, it offered not only the chance to play professionally, but to compose music for which there would be a need and which would receive immediate public exposure.
The circus ended its season deep in southern Mississippi. It was early December, in the dead of night, a cold winter rain was falling, and King reflected on his first season of trouping. He had survived bad food, blow-downs, and undependable pay-days, but he had established himself as a talented young composer and had published several marches that have endured today as testimony to his talent. By the light of a kerosene lantern that night, using a wardrobe trunk as a desk, King wrote a tribute to that small circus that had given him his start. We begin with Robinson’s Grand Entree March!
The next season, 1911, King moved on to a larger, more respectable circus, the Yankee Robinson Circus, named after a very famous and respected circus owner, manager, and entrepreneur. Though he had been dead many years, Robinson was still remembered as the man who helped the 5 Ringling Brothers from McGregor, IA get their start in the circus world. While traveling as an advance man for that first Ringling show, Robinson fell ill, passed away, and is buried in Jefferson, IA. King’s bandmaster on that show was a colorful character by the name of Woodring Appolus Van Anda, known better as Woody Van. King and Woody Van hit it off famously, and King dedicated one of his finest bandwagon tempo, pure circus marches to his friend and leader. Next up is Woody Van’s March!
The next year, 1912, King moved on once again, this time to one of the largest and most successful shows on the road, the Sells-Floto Circus, owned by the publisher of the Denver Post newspaper. King, by this time, had dozens of compositions in publication. While in the Sells-Floto Band, King wrote an overture that became one of his best-selling compositions. It was not only popular in the circus world, but it became a particular favorite in the fledgling school band market, both as a concert feature and as a contest piece. At this time, we would like to play Karl King’s overture, The Princess of India.
In 1913, Karl King reached the pinnacle of success as a player when he was hired to play Baritone in the Barnum and Bailey Greatest Show on Earth band. Here King not only played with the finest musicians for some of the greatest circus acts of all time, but he composed special music for many of them, making life-long friends in the process. Ragtime was the popular music of the day, and particularly fit circus comedy acts such as clowns. King wrote this particular ragtime number, Ragged Rozy, and dedicated it to a very talented drummer in the Barnum and Bailey Band by the name of Charles Rozell.
In 1914, Karl King received an opportunity he could not refuse. He was hired to return to the Sells-Floto Circus as conductor, at age 23 the youngest leader ever of this most prestigious circus band, in which he had played during the 1912 season. For that occasion, he composed Sells-Floto Triumphal March, and published it in April, 1914. It was most likely written by King during the off-season after he had completed the 1913 season playing with the Barnum and Bailey Circus Band. The Sells-Floto Circus had just acquired Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which was struggling financially, and it’s reasonable to assume that King wanted to pay tribute to his new employer as well as to establish himself as their bandmaster with this march.
In 1916, after three years with the Sells Floto-Buffalo Bill Show, Karl King returned to Canton, Ohio, fully intending to retire from the rigors of circus life. He had proposed marriage to Ruth Lovett, and he was planning a life away from the circus, which included getting married, settling down, raising a family, directing a good band, and establishing his own music publishing company.
Once again fate in the form of opportunity changed those plans. He received a call from John Ringling, offering him the job of bandmaster of the Barnum and Bailey Greatest Show on Earth, the very top job in the circus world. At age 26, he would become the youngest ever to hold that position. The bandmaster was responsible not only for directing the band, but for hiring the musicians to accompany the finest circus acts in the world.
One of the most famous of these acts was the death-defying aerial performance of Lillian Leitzel, still considered the greatest female aerialist of all time. For her act, Karl King wrote a beautiful, lyrical waltz, In Old Portugal, which Leitzel used for her accompaniment the rest of her career, including her last performance in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1931, when a 25-cent brass swivel broke and she fell, sustaining injuries that resulted in her death two days later.
Karl King was a master at writing music for various types of acts during the nine years he spent trouping with different circuses. During the 1917 and 1918 seasons, he was bandmaster of the most famous circus of the day, the Barnum and Bailey Circus. On that show, there was a group of Chinese acrobats and jugglers. Karl King wrote this eastern inspired intermezzo, Ung-Kung-Foy-Ya for that group. During the finale of their act, they would suspend themselves by their braided ponytails, or queues, and would hang and spin their bodies above the center ring. Quite an impressive feat!
The circus galop is synonymous with excitement. It was used to accompany excitement or to create excitement. And what could be more exciting in the circus than to see the wild tigers and lions perform. Karl King dedicated this galop to perhaps the greatest of the wild animal trainers, Clyde Beatty. We can almost smell the cotton candy and sawdust already! Let’s roll in The Big Cage!
© K. L. King Music House (SESAC); © renewed.
Used with permission of C. L. Barnhouse Co.
Our concluding selection was written back in 1913 when King, just 22 years old, was a Baritone player with the Barnum and Bailey Circus Band. King would go on to compose some 300 works, including almost 200 marches, but this particular selection would become his masterpiece! Critically acclaimed as one of the finest American marches, it also is rated as one of the most popular and often- recorded marches ever written. We close this experience with Karl King’s classic, Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite March.
Credits
Program Notes - Karl King Municipal Band - Fort Doge, IA
Images - Karl L. King Museum - Fort Dodge, IA
Narration - elevenlabs.io
In Old Portugal Score - C.L. Barnhouse Co.
The Big Cage Score - © K. L. King Music House (SESAC); © renewed. Used with permission of C. L. Barnhouse Co.
All Other Scores - bandmusicpdf.org