KING KOLAX
Genres: RnB, Exotica • United States

King Kolax was originally known as William Little. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri on November 6, 1912. (Kolax used to claim 1918 as his birth date. His obituaries in the Chicago Defender and Sun-Times gave away the correct information; his death certificate in the files of the Chicago Federation of Musicians confirms it.) He moved to Chicago with his family at a young age. He attended Douglas Elementary School and Wendell Phillips High School, where he studied under the redoubtable bandmaster Captain Walter Dyett (Dyett moved to DuSable High School, where most people remember him nowadays, when it opened in 1935). Then he received a degree from the Chicago Conservatory of Music. Tenor saxophonist Harold Ousley remembers King Kolax as a ladies' man, full of jokes. King Kolax hit the scene in 1935; he joined Local 208 of the Musicians Union on October 18 of that year. One read more...