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.
