Artists, composers, writers, and architects are possessed with the rare ability to create works that influence people they may never meet, and that influence is certain to continue long after they are gone. Bro. Karl Laurence King, 32°, was one of those. He was a prolific composer of music for concert and military bands writing nearly 300 marches, overtures, and novelty numbers played by bands all over the world.

Bro. King was born on February 1, 1891, in Canton, Ohio. As a young boy, he worked for a short time in the printing business. He got interested in music when he borrowed a trombone from a friend and played with a group his own age known as the Canton Marine Band. He soon bought a cornet for ten dollars. His teacher suggested that he was better suited to play the baritone, and that became his primary instrument.

His interest in music went beyond playing a horn in the band, and he spent considerable time reading books on music theory and studying musical scores. He was only 17 when he wrote his first march. Most people, even those with a musical background, have some difficulty understanding how a composer can write to include all the parts and have them come out to sound like anything. King had the remarkable ability to write almost anywhere without a piano. After he had completed several parts, he would then go to a piano to make certain he had achieved the harmony he wanted.

At age 19, King got a job with Robinson’s Famous Circus as a baritone

player. It was the start of some 10 years with several different circus bands. He worked his way up and became director. While with the Sells Floto Circus, King worked personally with Bro. William Cody, better known as "Buffalo Bill." (See p. 49.) King ended his career as director of the Barnum and Bailey Band. During his time with the circus, he wrote several numbers including his most famous march, "Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite."

He was scheduled to become director of the Army band at Camp Grant, Illinois, in late 1918, but the end of the war came on the very day he was ordered to report. While with the circus, he got married, and his wife played the calliope for a short time with the Barnum and Bailey Band. His rather hectic life with the circus caused him to desire a more subdued existence where he would have more time to write music. An offer from Ft. Dodge, Iowa, to direct a band there provided that opportunity. At 29 years of age, he moved with his wife and young son to Iowa.

Although King had never had any formal education either in directing or in composition, he was adept at both. The band he directed in Ft. Dodge was initially sponsored by a local club and supported by donations. It had a good reputation when King came, and he enhanced it further by attracting fine musicians from outside the community. Local businesses cooperated by providing employment to these incoming musicians.

Prior to coming to Ft. Dodge, King had developed his own publishing company, and he continued to publish his own music in the new location. Repeating his experience as a circus "trooper," the Ft. Dodge Band played at Fairs including the Iowa State Fair. A delegation from South Dakota heard the band and hired it to play at the Corn Palace in September 1921 for the sizeable sum at that time of $5,000. They soon began playing at fairs all around Iowa and nearby states.

In passing the Iowa Band Law of 1922, the Iowa Legislature passed the first legislation of its kind anywhere. That law enabled local communities to levy a small tax of two mills to support a local municipal band. More than 40 states passed similar legislation, and King wrote "The Iowa Band Law" march to commemorate that event.

Much of King’s music was written to honor certain events, schools, colleges, or outstanding musicians. His "King Henry" march honored Henry Fillmore, a contemporary. He wrote marches honoring almost every University in the Big Ten and his "Viking March" became "Indiana, Our Indiana," that university’s school song. King’s music became so popular that bands played entire concerts of his numbers. In 1929, King was elected president of the Iowa Bandmasters Association, and in 1930, he was one of the charter members of the American Bandmasters Association along with such well-known bandmasters as Edwin Franko Goldman, Frank Simon, Arthur Pryor, Herbert L. Clarke, and Ill. John Philip Sousa, 33°.

It is said that King never liked uniformed bandsmen doing rock and roll dances as they progressed down the street, and he never favored the extremely fast tempos in vogue for a while with the university bands. He felt bandsmen should march in dignity and not tiptoe, frantically swinging their horns from side to side.

By 1960, Karl King was in demand as guest conductor of massed bands throughout the country. The largest such gathering was at the University of Michigan where some 13,000 high school musicians played together in Michigan stadium. They played several of his numbers including "Iowa Band Law," "Drake Relays," and "Night in June." In that year, he directed more than 30,000 bandsmen before crowds estimated at 250,000.

Before his passing in 1971, he had received medals and honors from all over the country. Despite the fact he had never gone beyond the eighth grade and had never received a music degree, he was given an honorary Doctorate from Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma, in 1953. That same school had previously provided honorary Doctorates to Edwin F. Goldman, A. A. Harding, and Herbert L. Clarke. He also was made an Honorary Life President in the American Bandmasters Association along with Sousa, Goldman, Harding, and Frank Simon.

Brother Karl King was raised a Master Mason in Canton Lodge No. 60, in Canton, Ohio. He became a member of the Des Moines Scottish Rite Bodies (1951), the York Rite, Za Ga Zig Shrine Temple in Des Moines, and the Red Cross of Constantine.

His music was written for musicians of varying ability from junior high students to accomplished virtuosos. The simplest of his marches brings satisfaction to young musicians who play them, and even seasoned virtuosos are challenged by his "Purple Pageant March," "Melody Shop," or his best-known tune, "Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite."

Don Lavender is a former Secretary Registrar (1974–79) of the Des Moines, Iowa, Scottish Rite Bodies. He is retired from the City of Des Moines Engineering Department and enjoys the hobbies of instrumental music and photography.