music written specifically for the circus. It would soon be adopted as the theme of the circus. His first full-time conducting job was in 1914 through 1915 with the Sells Floto Circus and Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show combined shows band. He became bandmaster for the Sells-Floto Circus in 1915 and was bandmaster of the Barnum and Bailey Circus band 1917–1918. In his final band, he included his wife Ruth (Lovett) as the calliope performer. He had married Ruth November 17, 1916. In an interview in the last year of his life, King stated that his proudest moment was conducting the Barnum and Bailey band in Madison Square Garden. Life after circus bands King hoped to join John Philip Sousa at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station during World War I. With no openings on his staff at the time, Sousa suggested King apply to the army as bandmaster at Camp Grant. The war ended on his reporting date so King did not serve on active duty. King remained in Canton as director of the local band. He began a music publishing business, the K.L. King Music House in 1919, the same year his only child Karl L. King, Jr. was born. The first publication of his new music company was "Broadway One-Step". After a year in Canton where he directed the Grand Army Band (1919) King settled down in Fort Dodge, Iowa. This was in 1920 (age 29) and for the next fifty-one years he conducted the Fort Dodge Municipal Band, which featured future American Bandmasters Association president Joseph Hermann on clarinet. The band became known as King's Band. King was instrumental in the passage of the Iowa Band Law in 1921, which allowed cities to levy a local tax for maintenance of a band. He commemorated this with one of his marches, "Iowa Band Law". In 1960, King would direct "Iowa Band Law" with the largest mass band ever assembled: 188 high school bands and nearly 13,000 musicians at a nationally televised University of Michigan football game. He was given a testimonial dinner for 250 people in 1951 at the age of 59 where band directors including Glenn Cliffe Bainum, Albert Austin Harding, Paul V. Yoder, and William H. Santelmann attended (as well as William S. Beardsley, the governor of Iowa). BBC Karl King died on March 31, 1971 of acute diverticulitis at age 80 in a Fort