Oliver Hazard "King" Perry (October 10, 1914, Forrest City, Arkansas

Forrest City, Arkansas

Forrest City is a city in and the county seat of St. Francis County, Arkansas, United States. It was named for General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who used the location as a campsite for a construction crew completing a railroad between Memphis and Little Rock, shortly after the Civil War. The...

 - February 5, 1990, Bakersfield, California

Bakersfield, California

Bakersfield is a city near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley in Kern County, California. It is roughly equidistant between Fresno and Los Angeles, to the north and south respectively....

) was an American jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 saxophonist, clarinetist, arranger, and bandleader

Bandleader

A bandleader is the leader of a band of musicians. The term is most commonly, though not exclusively, used with a group that plays popular music as a small combo or a big band, such as one which plays jazz, blues, rhythm and blues or rock and roll music....

.

Perry played violin as a child, but switched to alto sax when he wished to join a local band. He attended Starr College in West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

, studying piano there, and had his own band in Gary, Indiana

Gary, Indiana

Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. The city is in the southeastern portion of the Chicago metropolitan area and is 25 miles from downtown Chicago. The population is 80,294 at the 2010 census, making it the seventh-largest city in the state. It borders Lake Michigan and is known...

 by 1940. In 1945 he went to Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, appearing in a show with Dorothy Donegan

Dorothy Donegan

Dorothy Donegan was an American classically trained jazz pianist primarily known for performing in the stride piano and boogie-woogie style. She also played bop, swing jazz, and classical music.-Life and career:...

 and Nat King Cole

Nat King Cole

Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...

; while there he made his first recordings as a leader. He led a band called the Pied Pipers through the middle of the 1950s, making many records and touring across the United States multiple times (as well as Canada in 1951). He recorded for Melodisc, United Artists

United Artists

United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....

, Excelsior, De Luxe

De Luxe Records

De Luxe Records was a Linden, New Jersey, United States based record label formed in 1944 by brothers David and Jules Braun. The label flourished in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1947, Syd Nathan, the founder and owner of King Records, purchased a majority interest in De Luxe. In 1949, Nathan moved the...

, Specialty

Specialty Records

Specialty Records was an American record label based in Los Angeles. It was originally launched as Juke Box Records in 1946, but later renamed by its owner Art Rupe when he parted company with a couple of his original partners...

, Dot

Dot Records

Dot Records was an American record label and company that was active between 1950 and 1977. It was founded by Randy Wood. In Gallatin, Tennessee, Wood had earlier started a mail order record shop, known for its radio ads on WLAC in Nashville and its R&B air personality Bill "Hoss" Allen...

, RPM, Lucky

Lucky Records

-Lucky Records - Tokyo:Lucky Records of the 1930s was a record label based in Tokyo, Japan which specialized in issuing United States popular music to the Japanese audience....

, Unique

Unique Recording Studios

Unique Recording Studios was a technologically innovative five room recording studio operating in New York City during the years 1978 to 2004. The business got off the ground as a rehearsal studio with a Tascam 8 track recorder in 1978, but soon expanded to 16, and then 24 tracks with the first...

, Look

Look's Music International

Look's Music International is an independent record label based in Boise, Idaho which is owned and operated by musician and composer Pete Holly...

, and Hollywood

Hollywood Records

Hollywood Records is an American record label owned by Disney Music Group, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company.-History:Hollywood Records was founded in 1989 by then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner with the idea of expanding the music operations of the company and to develop and promote...

 during this period. After ca. 1954 Perry went into a hiatus from music, but returned to play after moving to Bakersfield in 1967. In the 1970s he played as a one-man band

One-man band

A one-man band is a musician who plays a number of musical instruments simultaneously using their hands, feet, limbs, and various mechanical contraptions. The simplest type of "one-man band" — a singer accompanying themselves on acoustic guitar and harmonica mounted in a metal "harp rack" below the...

with organ, saxophone, and percussion. Around this time he also released a number of comedy albums for his own label, Octive.