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In his excellent article about Ken Darby for the magazine Films in Review (June–July 1969), Page Cook wrote:

[Ken Darby] was born in Hebron, Nebraska, on May 13, 1909, and was christened Kenneth Lorin. His father, Lorin Edward Darby, had been a barber, carpenter, electrician, butcher, telegraph linesman (he helped string the copper wires between Cheyenne and Denver), and manager of one of the Hested chain of “variety” stores. By example, as well as precept, he taught his son that “you can’t buy security—that comes from inside.”

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It was in the ’40s that The King’s Men were used in Disney’s Pinocchio. Darby’s arrangement of the lovely “When You Wish Upon a Star” helped that song to win an Academy Award, and to become a standard. This led to a five-year contract for Darby as vocal director of the Disney music department, and as a song writer, and to The King’s Men being used in Dumbo. The King’s Men albums of Disney scores were liked by Disney, who also liked the singing in his pictures of The
King’s Men, but he once, Darby says, “told me I would make it quicker without them. But they and I were closer than brothers.”

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