Born and raised in
Pleasant Grove, Utah, the King sisters were part of the
Driggs family of entertainers. They were members of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Their father was William King Driggs. Their first professional job was with a Salt Lake City radio station, from which they graduated to a station in Oakland, California. In the early 1930s sisters Luise, Maxine, and Alyce formed a vocal trio along the lines of their idols, the
Boswell Sisters, and traveled to San Francisco to audition for radio station
KGO (to replace the Boswell Sisters themselves, who were leaving the station). After this, Maxine retired to home life in Oakland and sisters Donna and Yvonne were added to the roster. In 1935, the King Sisters accepted a job with bandleader
Horace Heidt. Their employment was on-again, off-again, with the sisters leaving the band in November 1935 to return to their home state, only to be rehired by Heidt the next year. In the following years, the sisters sang separately and together with the bands of
Artie Shaw's Old Gold program and
Charlie Barnet and Al Pearce series. They turned down a request to be the vocal group for the
Glenn Miller Orchestra. They recorded for
Bluebird Records, a sub-label of
RCA Victor and the same label as Miller, and also had their first hit with a vocal version of Miller's hit "
In the Mood". In 1937, Luise married Horace Heidt's guitarist,
Alvino Rey. Rey left the Heidt orchestra to form his own band, and the King Sisters became Rey's resident vocalists. Most vintage-movie fans know the group as The Four King Sisters: Yvonne, Luise, Alyce, and Donna. The foursome made their first appearance in the 1939 musical
Second Fiddle (1939) and went on to be featured in a number of 1940s Hollywood films, both feature-length and short-subject musicals, as well as three-minute
Soundies musicals filmed for coin-operated film jukeboxes. During
World War II, they appeared regularly on
Kay Kyser's radio series. In late 1953, Alyce, Yvonne, and Marilyn joined ''
Gene Autry's Melody Ranch'' on
CBS Radio as the Gene Autry Blue Jeans, replacing the Pinafores (Eunice, Beulah, and Ione Kettle), and continued there along with Alvino Rey until the program's end in early May 1956. In 1965, the King Sisters began hosting their own
ABC TV series,
The King Family Show, which featured family members including Alyce's husband, actor
Robert Clarke, and her sons Ric de Azevedo, pianist-arranger
Lex de Azevedo, and
Cam Clarke, as well as other talent. The show ran from 1965 to 1966, with a 1969 revival. A second generation of the King Family, the
Four King Cousins, carries on the musical tradition. More prominently, Luise's grandsons
Win and
William Butler are also musicians as part of the rock band
Arcade Fire. ==Deaths==