Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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PRYOR, Arthur

(b 22 September 1870, St Joseph MO; d 18 June 1942, West Long Beach NJ) Trombonist, composer, bandleader. He played several instruments, but had turned pro on trombone by age 15; he was conductor of an opera company in Denver, then joined John Philip Sousa's world-famous concert band in 1892, rising to assistant conductor. Pryor composed and performed ragtime and cakewalk pieces, one of the first 'legit' musicians to do so, and played the trombone in the 'smear' style that soon became synonymous with New Orleans jazz. The band's tours of Europe did much to popularize ragtime. He conducted Sousa's band on a great many recordings, including his own 'Trombone Sneeze' and 'A Coon Band Contest'; the bass line of the latter (in piano score) is labelled at one point 'trombone solo'. In 1903 he formed his own band and recorded for Victor, where he became a music director. He was a founder member of ASCAP and composed several operettas.

Of hundreds of Pryor tunes the best-known was 'The Whistler And His Dog', which remained popular through much of the 20th century. Pryor's son Roger (1901-74) used it as his theme when he was a bandleader in the 1930s. It was heard in the Bing Crosby film The Emperor Waltz (1948), and beginning in 1955 'Officer Joe' Bolton used it as the theme of his kiddie TV show on WPIX in New York City, where he showed Little Rascals films and later the Three Stooges, so a great many children heard the tune constantly for many years.

Rick Benjamin discovered Pryor's library of arrangements in New Jersey in 1985 and made two CDs of them with the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra (Juilliard students). Archeophone Records has released Echoes From Asbury Park, a compilation of 25 original recordings made in 1903-13, compiled and with notes by trombonist and Pryor expert David Sager; most of the unusually fine transfers were done by Doug Benson, and the audio restoration by Richard Martin.