Radio mirror (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

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It practically paid for his two years at Valparaiso (Indiana) University by enabling him to play with orchestras at night. Out of Valparaiso, and broke, Wayne headed for Chicago. After trying his fitness at everything from insurance clerk to bank accountant he decided to become a musician. He bought a saxophone in a pawn shop and a book of instructions at a second-hand store on Clarke Street and taught himself to play his sax as well as he played his clarinet. Then he went into the music business with every ounce of capability he had. It was his niche, all right. He had to work night and day and starve a little to accomplish it but within three years he had launched his own orchestra at the Aragon, a Chicago dance hall which his music has now made famous and popular. That was ten years ago; today all of his original musicians but two are still in his organization. Which certainly tells you something about the kind of boss and friend the Waltz King is to his men. YOU see," he explained to me, "the experiences I went through as a youngster gave me a chance to learn what the really good things of this life are, to learn a balance and right sense of values. For years and. years I had absolutely nothing and I found out the things a man wants most when he has nothing — somebody to love and somebody to love him, and the roots a home provides as well as its comforts. Those are what he dreams of most intensely, not fancy careers and sumptuous palaces and power and money. "Then, after my orchestra became a success and before I was married, I had a chance to look at life from the other end. I had plenty of money. I could satisfy every single material whim I had — but my loneliness and dreams didn't change. I could have had a home, but a home is not a home when only one person lives in it. Then I realized that rich or poor the really good things in life are love and a place to house that love and that nothing else is really important. That is a thing I know to be true. For that reason I place my family and my home above everything else. "Live without those things long enough and you'll learn how to value them. That's why I save and invest my money wisely to provide security for my family and that's why I'd rather spend my leisure at home with my family than doing anything else any other place in the world. 'And that," he added, "is also why I play the sort of music I do." Odd, how hungering for a home and love so long can spread an influence into every phase of a man's work. At the very turn of the jazz era ten years ago, when the waltz seemed relegated to historic oblivion by all the bandmasters, Wayne King staked his whole future on the gamble that you and I would listen to waltzes and dance to them and like them again. It wasn't as blind a gamble as it seemed to most of the people in the music business. For Wayne King had lived enough in all degrees of poverty and wealth and high society and low society to learn these things: "The majority of people, when they're out on a party at a night club or dance hall, will request a tune that's new and hot if their friends are listening when they make the request. But if they can write their request on a piece of paper, or speak it into my ear, nine times out of ten it's for a simple beautiful old tune. Why they should feel any embarrassment before their companions in asking for 'Missouri Waltz' I don't know unless they're trying to make an up-to-the-minute impression; but since they do feel embarrassment I give them anyway the soft beautiful tunes that deep in their hearts they really want to hear most of all. "Everything in our world revolves around the home, doesn't it? That's why when I broadcast I play music for people who are at home, music that will help them enjoy their homes. I figure that the people who tune me in are at home because they want to be there, otherwise they'd be out. So I don't try to create the illusion of a night club in every listener's parlor; I simply play the sort of music that I hope fits into every living-room as perfectly as the old sofa dad and mother bought when they were first married." Wayne King's early years of struggle for the worthy things in life have left an indelible mark on the play side of his life as well as in his work. One of his close men friends said to me in complete admiration of the Waltz King, "He's the most all-around temperate fellow I've ever known. He doesn't gamble, he smokes a pipe instead of cigarettes, he doesn't swear. When several of us play golf together and come into the clubhouse afterward for a highball _ King always takes milk with ice cream in it. And he never goes night-clubbing unless one of his friends, Guy Lombardo or Paul Whiteman or someone, is opening somewhere; then he escorts his wife and stays until midnight and they go home. WITH it all he's such a fine fellow, not a prig. All the men who know him intimately love him like a brother." And still another indication: "I'll never cheapen my music," Wayne King told me. "If the times comes when folks no longer want to hear my kind of band I can quit this business cold and be perfectly content. You can't miss something that you've never let go to your head, that you've never regarded as one of the really permanently important things in your life. At any time I have to I can lay down my saxophone and . fill my life with perfect fullness on our farm." The farm that had been drawn on the back of a menu, you see, did become a beautiful actuality. One day Wayne King COMING IN THE DECEMBER ISSUE OF RADIO MIRROR Another installment of that memory-invoking feature, Yesterday's Stars — Where Are They? Read about such favorites as Ben Alley, Goldy and Dusty, Gene and Glenn and Harriet Lee, and many others who gave you hours of pleasure when your first radio set was new. 82