Part 5

To everyone’s surprise this huge music festival made a profit, a comparatively small sum, but when added to the proceeds of a benefit concert given for Gilmore, almost $40,000 was presented to him. That he had fairly earned this reward everybody agreed. He immediately went to Europe for a rest, he said, but later it was learned that he had spent much time making contacts with great bands for a bigger and a better Jubilee.

Gilmore who was now acknowledged the country’s greatest bandleader, returned from Europe all agog over another great musical Festival. The siege of Paris and the Franco-Prussian War had ended, so he decided to produce an International Peace Jubilee in Boston. He planned to double the chorus--20,000 instead of 10,000 singers, a band of 2,000 instead of 1,000; and a festival lasting three weeks instead of three days.

His preparations were soon under way. Another enormous auditorium--the first one had burned--and a larger organ were constructed. A bigger drum than at the previous festival was built in Portland, Maine. The heads were 12 feet across and the sides 4 feet high. It was so big that a wall had to be knocked out of the house where it was made in order to get it outside. It was shipped to Boston on an ocean steamer, but only a giant could have struck both sides at once and its thunderous sound was so slow in coming after the beat that it was useless. The World’s Peace Jubilee and International Music Festival was announced for June 17 to July 4, 1872. A whole regiment of soloists was engaged, and Johann Strauss came from Germany to personally conduct the huge orchestra in playing his beautiful _Blue Danube Waltz_. As the high point in the international Music Festival, Gilmore brought the greatest of Europe’s noted bands. The Grenadier Guards from London, from Paris the Garde Republicaine, The Kaiser Franz Grenadier Regiment Band from Berlin and also from that city, The German Emperor’s Imperial Household Cornet Quartette. The Irish National Band came from Dublin and the United States Marine Band from Washington, D. C.

However, in spite of the world’s most glamorous talent, the second great festival was a flat failure. The crowds would not come. One day there were 22,000 performers on the stage and only 7,000 people in the audience. Although _The Anvil Chorus_ was again on the program and also the _Soldiers’ Chorus_ given with red fire and many other embellishments, yet the people stayed away. No one blamed Gilmore, _the unsurpassable_, as he was called. He had done his part and produced every attraction which he had advertised.

Gilmore left Boston almost immediately for New York City. He was then forty-four years old, still fired with ambition and a desire to produce huge, perfect, spectacular performances. His band of one hundred players, always the most talented to be found, was in great demand.

In that year, 1873, Gilmore gave his last “big show,” this year in Chicago. It was a series of grand concerts celebrating the restoration of the city after the great fire. The programs were held in the huge concourse of the new passenger station of the Lake Shore Railroad, a room two blocks long, holding 40,000 people--_and Gilmore filled it_. He added two-hundred musicians to his band, had a chorus of 1,000 singers and to the delight of the audience he again played _The Anvil Chorus_ with firemen, anvils, cannon and bells.

The Gilmore Band in 1875 played at Gilmore’s Gardens in New York City making the unusual record of one-hundred-fifty consecutive concerts to crowded houses. A highlight on the last concert of the season was a cornet quartette by the four greatest cornetists of that time--Arbuckle, Bent, Levy and Gilmore. In 1876 Gilmore and his band starred at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

For thirteen successive summer seasons the Gilmore Band played at New York’s popular Manhattan Beach resort. Gilmore and his noted organization toured the entire United States repeatedly. He was a marvelous organizer, a superfine showman and a good financier and business manager.

As a composer he did not rate high. He is generally given credit for having written the well-known song _When Johnny Comes Marching Home_, although many believed that he was not the author of the composition. That Gilmore was versatile and resourceful everyone admits. In 1890 when his band was asked to play at General Sherman’s funeral, Gilmore revised _Marching Through Georgia_, a rather inside-out-version, making an unusual, unknown funeral dirge, yet which many people felt was vaguely familiar.

While playing at the St. Louis Exposition, September 24, 1892, Gilmore died suddenly. His wife and only daughter were with him at the time. John Philip Sousa, Gilmore’s good friend, two days later at the opening concert of his great band at Plainfield, New Jersey, played _The Voice of a Departed Soul_, one of Gilmore’s own compositions. This seemed to be an appropriate musical finale to the life of a man who had gloried in producing dramatic and spectacular effects.

ARTHUR PRYOR

The clear, mellow tones of a trombone, playing _Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep_, stilled the noisy crowd until a whisper could be heard. Until that moment no one had paid any attention to the Pryor Band which was serenading General “Black Jack” Logan at the encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic at Denver, Colorado, in 1883.

At the close of the solo General Logan hurried out of the meeting to speak to the bandleader, D. S. Pryor. “Who played that trombone? I want to talk to him.”

Removing his bearskin cap, Maestro Pryor proudly said that it was his son Arthur.

“It is God’s gift, and your son has a great future,” said General Logan. Laying his hand on the bushy locks of the bashful twelve-year-old Arthur, the General advised him, “Make the best use of the divine gift you have, boy.”

This incident made such an impression on Arthur’s father that he decided to give his son a more thorough musical training. He secured a Professor Plato, a renowned harmonist and theorist, to teach him.

Arthur Pryor, born September 22, 1870, in St. Joseph, Missouri, was destined to become a musical prodigy. It was in his blood. Back through the generations in his family ran the musical strain, an unfaltering line. His father, Daniel Pryor, was leader of Pryor’s band and “played all instruments.” His mother was a gifted pianist.

At the age of three Arthur beat the drums with such rhythm and skill that the neighbors in admiration forgot to complain about the noise. At six he was playing the piano. Later he did remarkably well on the cornet, alto horn and bass viol.

When Arthur was eleven he played the valve trombone and made his first appearance in Chicago, Illinois, where he was called “the boy wonder.” Soon the lad and his trombone were in great demand in his part of the country, with or without his father’s band.

Arthur reached another milestone at seventeen when his father gave him a slide trombone which he had accepted in payment of a debt. He devoted endless hours to its study under his father’s teaching, and progressed fast.

In later years, Arthur often laughed about his father, a strict teacher, rapping him on the head with a violin bow when he was slow in these lessons. That punishment was stopped after Mr. Pryor had done great damage to a 100 dollar bow.

But the boy did so well that he had a succession of acclaimed appearances at county fairs and other public gatherings in his part of the country. He soon attracted the attention of Liberati, noted cornet soloist of the time, who hired him for his band at Kansas City, Missouri. Arthur was with Liberati from 1888 till 1890.

The twenty-year-old trombonist was engaged for Patrick Gilmore’s band, but instead he accepted the conductorship of the Stanley Opera Company, going to Denver, Colorado.

Then he received his big chance. The great Sousa had heard stories about “a trombone wizard” from the Middle West and sent for him to join him at once. Arthur headed East with a trombone, a ticket to New York, thirty-five cents in cash and a determination to become a “great” in the musical world.

The first night in New York he slept on a bench in Union Square. But the next day at Sousa’s rehearsal the tall, red-haired young man, wearing clothes that badly needed pressing, astounded the veteran bandsmen by his unusual mastery of the trombone.

Pryor became Sousa’s first trombone player in 1892, and the next year played first solo with him at the Chicago Exposition. From premiere soloist he went on to be Sousa’s assistant conductor also. A warm friendship developed between the two musicians, and they traveled together on three world tours in sixteen countries.

An episode that shows Pryor’s trombone magic happened at a concert at the Enclosed Garden in Berlin. Trombonists of six German regiments were there especially to hear him. Pryor played a selection in which he produced his own bass accompaniment, jumping three or four octaves between notes. The vast audience rose en masse and gave him an unprecedented ovation. After the concert the German trombonists approached a German-speaking member of the band and asked permission to examine the master’s instrument. They spent several minutes looking it over, taking it completely apart in the process. Finally they went away grumbling, “It’s impossible. Just another Yankee trick!”

During these years Pryor was christened “the trombone king” and in Germany he was called “the Paganini of the slide trombone.” He estimated that he had played 10,000 solos while he was with Sousa.

Pryor’s association with Sousa ended in 1902. Samuel D. Pryor had recently died, and Arthur took over the band which his father had started one year before Arthur’s birth. With the reorganized band, now made up of some of America’s most talented musicians, Arthur Pryor appeared at the Majestic Theater in New York on November 15, 1903, for his band’s premiere concert.

For the next thirty years Pryor’s band was an internationally known American institution. Critics were lavish in their praise of this group’s simple but original and telling melody. The Pryor organization played at Asbury Park, New Jersey, for nineteen successive summers. From 1904 to 1909 it made six coast-to-coast tours; and for ten straight winters up to 1926, it played at the Royal Palm Park in Miami, Florida. It appeared for ten spring seasons at Willow Grove Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and at expositions, state fairs and many public conventions.

Besides, Pryor led his band in various theater and radio engagements, the latter sponsored by General Motors, General Electric, Goodyear Tire and other companies. One popular broadcast, known as the _Schradertown Band_ carried two comics, Gus and Louis, so-called proprietors of the Schradertown Garage.

Pryor was very active in making recordings, notably for the Victor Company. For thirty-one years he was organizer and director of various bands and orchestras making Victor records.

Arthur Pryor was the author of more than 300 compositions, including three light operas, _Jingaboo_, _On the Eve of Her Wedding Day_, and _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_. Originality, beauty of melody and exceptionally fine and effective arrangements characterize his compositions, many of which were sung, whistled and played over the whole country. _On Jersey Shore_ was a great favorite, particularly with his New Jersey audiences who rose to a man when it was played. _Razzazza Mazzazza_, _Irish King_, _Goody Two Shoes_, and _Southern Hospitality_ were always encore winners. But _The Whistler and His Dog_, a novelty two-step became a craze everywhere. Audiences demanded it, and whistled it and kept time with their feet to the lively, catchy tune.

Although Pryor remained identified with his band until his death, he virtually retired in 1938. He was always proud of his birthplace, St. “Joe,” Missouri, but New Jersey had been “home” for a long time. Here he lived with his wife, the former Maude Russell, whom he had married in 1895. Their two sons, Arthur, Jr., a bandsman and New York advertising executive, and Roger, orchestra leader and movie actor carry on the inherited musical strain.

Typical of the popularity of the genial, kindly Arthur Pryor was his election in 1933 as freeholder of Monmouth County with 5,000 votes over a veteran politician.

Arthur Pryor, noted bandmaster, composer, and greatest trombone player the world ever had, died June 18, 1942, at his home, in West Long Branch, New Jersey. But his music, which for more than fifty years had set the feet of millions of people throughout the world to marching, lives on.

PATRICK CONWAY

“Don’t worry, Mother,” said fifteen-year old Patrick Conway. “I’ll go to work at the carriage factory and make some money for you.”

Patrick’s father, Martin Conway, had just died, leaving five children and no money. There had never been much money in the Conway home and Patrick had never known his father to be well. Martin Conway while living in Ireland, had served in the British army and had been wounded at Sebastopol during the Crimean War. In 1863 he had brought his wife and baby girl to America, the land of his dreams. He proved his loyalty to his new country by joining the Navy and fighting in the Civil War. Tuberculosis developed and finally caused his death.

Patrick was born July 4, 1865 in Troy, New York. His life, even as a child, was not a carefree one in this home where there was both poverty and illness.

At the time of his father’s death Patrick was an honor student at Homer Academy in Homer, New York, where the family had moved. He willingly gave up his school work for a while in order to help the family. Three of the children were ill with tuberculosis and died within a few years after their father’s death.

Little did Patrick know that he would find his job at the carriage factory a dual one. When Charlie Bates, one of the workers who led the Homer Band learned of Patsy’s interest in the cornet, he said, “So you would like to play the cornet? If you will come to my house after work I’ll give you lessons.... Maybe you can be in the band some day.”

So Patrick worked all day learning the trade of carriage trimming, and walked six miles every evening to take his lessons. But that never seemed to tire him.

Later he joined the band and returned to school for part time work. After he was graduated from Homer Academy at the age of eighteen, he began playing with “Happy Bill Daniel’s Country Band Orchestra” where he gained valuable experience. This proved to be the beginning of his career as a bandsman.

But he needed money to help the family and to continue his studies in music. As soon as he had accumulated enough cash he bought a small cigar factory, which was soon a thriving little business. He left the making of fine cigars and the management of the factory to his brother Martin, so that he could devote his time to his music and study. He enrolled at Ithaca Conservatory of Music and at Cornell University.

“Patsy” continued his band work along with his college work. While he was playing for dances at the old Glen Haven Hotel, he met pretty Alice Randall. He decided at once, “That is the girl I am going to marry.”

After their marriage they lived in Courtland, New York, where their son Paul was born. Then they moved to Ithaca in 1895 when Patrick accepted an offer to teach music at Cornell University. He organized the Cornell Cadet Band and directed it for thirteen years.

Meantime about 1900, the city of Ithaca asked Patrick to start a city band. With the financial backing of Ebenezer Treman, one of the civic minded, wealthy merchants of the town, Patrick was able to bring some of the finest musicians in the world to Ithaca. Some of these musicians took their families and lived there, playing in the old Lyceum Theater Orchestra during the winter season when the band was not on tour.

This band played in practically every music and amusement center in the country. They went on many tours such as: the Buffalo Exposition; the St. Louis World’s Fair; the Cincinnati Zoo; Riverview park, Chicago; the Corn palace at Mitchell, South Dakota; and state fairs in the western states.

About 1904 Patrick’s engagements at Willow Grove Park, a popular resort near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and at Young’s Pier at Atlantic City, New Jersey began. These continued for many years.

In 1908 Patrick took over the Ithaca Band and gave it the name, “Patrick Conway and his Band.” People who had never heard of Ithaca began to hear about the band which took prizes at concerts given in various cities of the East. An old Ithacan used to reminisce, “Some bands wouldn’t even enter if they knew ‘Patsy’ and his bunch of terrors had.”

The next move was to Syracuse, New York. By that time Conway was making transcontinental tours with fifty or sixty men in the band as well as a dozen fine soloists.

In 1915 he played a long engagement at the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. His friend Sousa was there at the same time, and on one occasion they each conducted part of a great concert in which both bands were massed.

In Syracuse during the winter months Conway organized and conducted the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra as well as a theater orchestra. He also did some composing but published only one march. His band made a number of records for Victor.

During World War I Patrick Conway was commissioned as Captain in the U. S. Army Air Force and sent to Waco, Texas to establish the first Air Force Band. At the same time Sousa was starting the Navy Band at Great Lakes Training Station.

Sorrow came into Patrick and Alice Conway’s lives when their son Paul died at the age of twenty-six. Paul, a pianist of great promise, had also played an instrument in his father’s band until his health failed following an accident when he was eighteen.

The family moved back to Ithaca in 1922. Patrick was made dean of the Conway Band School which was affiliated with the Ithaca Conservatory of Music. During the school year he trained a remarkably fine student band. He took a number of these boys with the big band on the summer tours. How the boys worked for that privilege!

During the winter he went into New York to hear good music and to broadcast on the General Motors Family Hour with Mary Garden, Nora Bayes, and other celebrities. He organized and rehearsed amateur symphony orchestras made up of business and professional men and women in several small cities of New York.

Bandmaster Patrick Conway, like his Irish friends, Patrick Gilmore and Victor Herbert, had two gifts often said to be peculiar to their nationality--the gift of music and the gift of making friends. But Patrick Conway had still another rare gift--that of inspiring his students with his own ideals. Countless young men turned to musical careers after finding a master teacher and a loyal friend in “Patsy” as they affectionately called him.

Conway was a striking figure as he directed his boys in almost faultless renditions of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Greig, Debussy and other great composers. The simplicity that characterized him was evident in his manner of conducting. He believed, “The conductor’s motions are intended as signs and suggestions to his musicians--nothing more. He doesn’t need to do a thing to entertain his audience. His band is there for that purpose, and the more he devotes himself to directing, the better the band will succeed in its purpose.”

A Conway band was equally at home with military selections and popular music. No leader of that day knew better how to make programs that the public wanted and yet make them like only the best.

If Conway had any leisure time, he knew what to do with it. Reading or hiking with one of his dogs as a companion were popular pastimes. He collected authentic stories about early days in the West.

His favorite sports were boxing and baseball. Each year at the opening game at the New York Polo Grounds he took a small band to play for his old friend, John J. (Muggsie) McGraw.

Patrick Conway died at Ithaca, June 10, 1929, at the height of his usefulness. At the time of his death the _Ithaca Journal News_ paid the following tribute: “It is no small thing to have gladdened the hearts of the people, to have lifted them repeatedly above the mundane and trivial, to have made them forget the heat of the working day in the exaltation of good music. This was Patrick Conway’s contribution to his time, and for it he has earned the heartfelt gratitude of more than one generation. His own tradition of uncompromising musicianship, his belief in offering the best to popular audiences will be carried on by those who have learned from him.”

EDWIN FRANKO GOLDMAN

“What do you want to play young fellow?” asked the instructor of the grade school band, turning to the applicant next in line.

“The cornet, sir,” replied the boy.

“You’re pretty young, aren’t you?” said the teacher, looking closely at the small, bright-eyed lad.

“I’ll soon be nine, sir,” the youngster replied, eagerly, though he was really stretching a point.

“Well, we’ll try you on an alto horn in the second alto section. What’s your name?”

“Edwin Goldman, sir.”

Just two weeks later Edwin was asked to remain after band practice. “What’s the matter boy?” asked the bandleader, “You don’t seem to be able to play.”

“It’s hard to read that second part, sir,” said Edwin. “I’d rather learn to play the cornet.”

“You’d better wait a year or two. I told you before that you are too young. That’s all. Turn in your instrument.”

Eddie rushed out of the room fearing his tears would be discovered, while the young teacher hurriedly wrote “No talent” after the name of Edwin Goldman.

However the boy’s keen disappointment was so evident that two weeks later the teacher said, “Well, Edwin, I’ll give you another try--on the cornet this time--we’ll see what you can do.”

Edwin quickly showed what he could do. He made such amazing progress that it was evident he had his full share of his family’s talent.

Edwin Franko Goldman was born in Louisville, Kentucky, January 1, 1878. He had a rare heritage in a fine musical and cultural background.

Edwin’s mother, Selma Franko, came of a line of famous musicians. She was the oldest of sixteen children, and so many in that large family were musical that eight grand pianos were kept in their home to allow all who wished to practice. Selma, a talented violinist and pianist, was one of the five Franko children who toured the United States and Europe as young musical prodigies.

David Goldman, the father of Edwin, was also a brilliant pianist and violinist, but as an amateur only. He devoted his life to the profession of law. He was highly educated, widely traveled and very prominent in his field. Having descended from such a family, it is small wonder that from his earliest boyhood young Edwin dreamed that some day he would become a great musician.

The Goldman family moved to Evansville, Indiana, later to Terre Haute. When Edwin was eight years old they left the middle west to live in New York City.

Through his admittance to the public school band Edwin had obtained possession of a cornet. His faithful practicing nearly drove the neighborhood to distraction. Even his devoted family protested at the labored trills, runs and scales. But deaf to all criticism, the boy persisted. Before very long Edwin was asked to play at all the neighborhood parties, and his music was the pride of his school. He was voted the most popular boy in his class and received a prize for excellent playing when he was graduated.