Before there was Donnie and Marie, there was The King Family (or the King Sisters, or the King Cousins, in other iterations). The patriarch of this nationally known musical clan, which is still producing musically talented new generations, was William King Driggs (1885-1965). A native of Pleasant Grove, Utah, Driggs moved his young and growing family to California in the 1920s.
In 1936, Driggs teamed up with Lawrence Reeder, a non-Mormon music teacher and conductor (he founded a long-running school of music and drama in the Bay area), to produce The Liahona, a dramatic cantata Driggs had written two years earlier. Reeder was the director of a prominent non-Mormon musical society in Berkeley, the Claremont Choral Club. With the Choral Club supplemented by a local chorus of Latter-day Saint male singers to some 85 voices, the Chorale performed The Liahona in the Oakland Municipal Auditorium on 22 May 1936.
One review of the performance says:
The action of The Liahona commences with the exiles leaving Jerusalem. Three motifs appear in the composition: (1) a minor, sinister theme representing Laman, the rebellious son of the prophet Lehi; (2) a major, religious theme representing Nephi, the righteous son; (3) symbolizing the Liahona.
The Liahona was performed again the next year, according to this notice in the Oakland Tribune of 6 May 1937:
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And all of that is background so you can better appreciate this program from the 1936 performance:
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Photographs: The young family of William King and Pearl Mortensen Driggs;
Lawrence Reeder (left) and William King Driggs (right)
Oakland Municipal Auditorium
Wow! The extensive program notes impressed! I wonder if there are any surviving recordings of the cantata?
Don’t know if it was ever recorded, David, but since writing this last night I’ve discovered it was published on paper, and that there were additional performances in 1949 and 1950, in San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Phoenix (and therefore likely other places), so there’s at least a chance that it was recorded at some point.
I’m afraid I just ordered the only printed copy available at Amazon …
So, was Driggs both composer and librettist? That’s a lot of work for one person to do. I wish he had included more soprano/alto parts (although I know the source material is light on women’s roles).
“On the shores of Irreantum” seems to owe a lot to Longfellow’s Hiawatha (“On the shores of Gitche Gumee, Of the shining Big-Sea-Water … “), but maybe I’m just primed to think that by the first two lines and the trochaic tetrameter.
Yes, Mike, he was responsible for it all.
I wish it had been presented as something more than “brides for brothers,” but for the mid-1930s, maybe we can see something in his presentation of Ishmael’s daughters singing in their own voices, and not just another male role for Ishmael to show up with his filial baggage in tow. (Hey, I’m stretching, I know!)
Impressive! And, on top of everything else, that program appears to have been set with cold lead type. That would explain the lines on the bottom of page six that got jumbled. So some printers’ devils did a lot of work, too.
The St. Matthew Passion, despite really only having major roles for a tenor as Evangelist and a bass as Christ, shows more creativity in providing subject matter for Soprano and Alto arias, two centuries earlier. Of course, it’s profoundly unfair to measure other sacred music by the standard of the St. Matthew Passion — what could possibly measure up? I suppose giving the daughters of Ishmael their own voices is a lot more than many 1930s composers would have done.
Mark, I’d have guessed hot metal typesetting, probably Linotype. Getting the slugs mixed up after casting would still explain the jumbled lines — are there other clues that suggest cold type?
I served my mission in Oakland, and I am delighted to discover more interesting LDS history from that area. This is a gem!
I’m probably just exposing my ignorance, Mike R. I didn’t realize you could jumble the slugs with Linotype.
The LDS “male singers” were part of the Mormon Male Chorus. My mother accompanied this group in the late 1940s or early ’50s. I recognize the names of Denzel Allen and Afton Stout. (And surely LaVarn Thomas in the tenor section has Mormon roots!) A quick Google search shows that groups called “Mormon Male Chorus” were found in other major metropolitan areas across the country.
I operated a Linotype machine in high school. In setting up a page and moving slugs from the bottom of one page to the top of the next, it is easy to get things mixed up. But Linotype slugs fresh from the machine are anything but “cold type”!
No matter how often it happens, I still feel a thrill when someone finds a personal connection to a post like this.
Thanks for all you’ve added, everyone.
Just last night, I tuned in a pirate radio as it broadcast “Paper Roses,” which probably even Marie herself hasn’t thought about in decades. The next song was the recent one that rhymes shoulder, Boulder, and older.
Growing up I certainly saw a lot of the King family, but as a non-member their church affiliation went by unnoticed. When I was in college (and investigating) I met a family named King in the church, and while King may not be an uncommon name, I immediately assumed that the Kings I had listened to for so long were also Mormon. Thank you for confirming my long held assumption.
I liked reading through the libretto, and I would love to hear it performed.