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The title of
America's
Waltz King"
fairly belongs
to band leader
Wayne King
Wayne King {left) rehearses. Above, with Mrs. King, who a fanner stage star, JDorothy Jams.
fessionally) was born in Savannah, Illinois, in 1901 and when he was only four his mother died. In his mind, he has built up pictures of her, tender, sweetly sentimental, as real as memories. But he speaks of these things only through his music. His father, a railroad employe, found it impossible to keep his little family together, so the two older brothers were sent to live with relatives and he himself kept the baby, Harold Wayne. At seven, the youngster secured his first job and, after that, every minute he could spare from school was spent earning the pennies so sorely needed.
When Wayne was eight, his father took him to El Paso, Texas, but, soon after that, left the youngster on his own. Wayne found some odd jobs to do in a garage, lived there and kept on with school, earning what he could after school hours. In these lean, lonely years
he knew well what it meant to be hungry. Sometimes the only food he had was a bowl of soup and crackers that he earned by working an hour or two in a little Chinese restaurant.
But what courage the lad had ! When he was a little older and could find more work to do in the daytime, he began to go to night school, eager always to get the best education he could.
"When I was sixteen," he contributed, "I managed to save $25X0. I invested it in a wrecked Ford, which my experience as a garage mechanic enabled me to put into pretty good shape and, feeling quite proud of myself, I drove it in to Clinton, Missouri, where my father then was."
It was not Jong; after this that the father brought his son a present: It is the only present Wayne remembers getting, and he has no idea where his father got it or what prompted htm — but what a fateful present it proved to be ! For it was a dartnft!
Lovingly, eagerly, the boy's lean, work-hardened, fingers caressed the instrument.
"I knew nothing about music," he admits, "much less, perhaps, than the average sixteen-year-old. But I managed to pick out a tune — "
The gift was in his fingers, in his soul, but he had no time to study music. Still, he couldn't resist fooling with the thing whenever he had a little spare time.
"I owe my first step up to a (Continued on page 86}