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.