Meredith Willson (1902-1984)

"Think, my friends, how could any pool table hope to compete with a gold trombone?" This question, posed by the confidence trickster/bandleader Harold Hill in The Music Man, goes to the heart of Meredith Willson's good-natured musical vision of America. In the world according to Willson, seventy-six trombones really did lead the big parade, and a gold trombone was the key to human happiness.

Meredith Willson was born in rural Iowa in 1902. He was already a virtuoso flautist and piccolo player when he enrolled at New York's Institute of Music (later the Juilliard School). During his student years, from 1921-23, he was principal flautist with the famous Sousa Band, led by John Philip Sousa (1854-1932), the great bandmaster and composer of patriotic marches. From 1924-1929, he played flute with the New York Philharmonic, under Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957).

Seeing the early popular potential in the new medium of radio, Willson quit orchestral life and went west to become concert director with KFRC, San Francisco. His career flourished, and he quickly became Musical Director for NBC, first in San Francisco, then in Hollywood. At NBC, he worked on some of the most popular shows of what has since become regarded as radio's Golden Age. He was MD of Carefree Carnival (1933-36), Maxwell House Coffee Time (1940-49), and The Big Show (1950-53). During World War II, he served as Musical Director for the Armed Forces Radio Service.

Willson's career had already shown great versatility by the middle of the 1950s. As well as his pioneering and immensely popular radio work, he had written the scores for both Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940) and Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1941). But nothing had really prepared the American public for the drive, energy, and sheer pizzazz of The Music Man, which opened on Broadway on December 19, 1957, and ran for 1375 performances. Set in the rural town of River City, Iowa, the play starred Robert Preston as the fast-talking confidence man "Professor" Harold Hill, and Barbara Cook as the demure River City librarian, Marian Paroo. Professor Hill's con is to sell band instruments to the trusting country folk of River City with the promise of assembling a boys' band. Of course, he intends to skip town long before anyone ever hears a note from the band. But Hill falls for Marian and gives up his devious ways and settles down to lead a simple, honest life in River City.

The story touched a chord in the heart of America. From the deeply romantic "Till There Was You," to the sharply witty "Ya Got Trouble," to the show-stopping "Seventy-Six Trombones," the songs are terrific. Preston reprised his star performance in the fine 1962 movie, and the Beatles brought "Till There Was You" to a new audience when they included it on their 1963 album, With the Beatles.

Willson followed this smash hit in 1960 with The Unsinkable Molly Brown, a musical retelling of the legend of the girl who learned to pilot a Mississippi riverboat and became a heroine on the Titanic. An attractive but lesser work, it ran for 532 performances. Here's Love, a reworking of the Christmas yarn Miracle on 34th Street, folded after 338 performances, and contained the hit song "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas."

Meredith Willson wrote a novel and three books of memoirs. But He Doesn't Know the Territory (1959) tells the story of the creation of his masterpiece, The Music Man.

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