Wayne King was born Harold Wayne King in Savanna, Illinois at 600 Bowen Street, February 18, 1901. Wayne was the fourth son of Harvey and Ida King.  He played in the Savanna Town Band when he was eleven years old  with his Uncle Charles Seitzburg and his older brothers Lyle and Fay King. Wayne played clarinet with his brothers and other Savannans in the King Brothers’ Jazz Band.  It was at this time that Blanche Altenbern Lantau, formerly of Lanark, played piano at the Pulford Opera House with Wayne King in Savanna. Frank “Bud” Riddle of Savanna told me in September, 1999 that he remembered when Wayne was a teenager, he climbed over the Riddle’s fence into his mother’s apple tree. Bud says he recalls his mother chasing young Wayne out of the apple tree with a broom. After high school graduation in 1920, probably in the fall of 1921, In 1921, Wayne went to Chicago to work and school at Valparaiso University nearby in Indiana.