Henry Filmore Arrangements

I think we all are interested in people with a sense of humor - usually these people are obscure and ordinary, but in this case it's someone who was famous, at least in the field of band composers. Henry Fillmore wrote sometimes humorous, but always difficult rags, marches and jazzy things in the early 1900's. They often featured trombones. According to Herb Brock, staff writer for gabbf.com, Filmore was born in 1881 and lived to the age of 75. He wrote under many funny pseudonyms such as Gus Beans, Will Huff and Henrietta Moore. Two of his wonderful marches by his real name that I have played in several bands are "Men of Ohio" and "Klaxon", the latter featuring an "ooOO-ga" horn also known as a klaxon horn in the middle and was a fast moving march, almost to circus speed. Early in his life, Fillmore had run away and joined the circus to play in the band, so he was surely influenced by that. You can tell from his music and from reading his bio that he was always joking and doing unconventional things, and kidding his more serious colleagues. I often play in the Babcock Cornet Band, which existed all the way back to civil war times. We have some old-time musical gems in our library, one of them is a lyre sized booklet of Filmore Trombone marches that feature the trombones smearing with their slides. This book is: "TROMBONE FAMILY ~ A collection of 15 Original and Humorous Trombone Novelties for Band." It has no copyright or date on it, but probably this was published between 1908 and 1920. The titles to these pieces, and the whole book is not "PC" or Politically Correct by today's standards, since it uses black pigeon English and minstrel type images. The marches themselves are real crowd pleasers, with the trombones smearing and sliding all through them in a sort of raucous manner. Here are some title clips

Here are all 15 titles: Miss Trombone - A Slippery Rag Teddy Trombone - A Brother to Miss Trombone. Lassus Trombone - De Cullud Valet to Miss Trombone Pahson Trombone - Lassus Trombone's "Ole Man" Sally Trombone - Pahson Trombone's Eldest Gal. Some Crow Slim Trombone - Sally Trombone's City Cousin - The Jazzin' One Step Kid Mose Trombone - He's Slim Trombone's Buddy Shoutin' Liza Trombone - One Step - Mose Trombone's Ah-finity "Hot" Trombone - He's Jes a fren'ob Shoutin' Liza Trombone Bones Trombone - He's jus' as warm as Hot Trombone Dusty Trombone - March or One Step - He's de next door Neighbor to Bones Trombone Bull Trombone - A Cullud Toreador - March and One Step Lucky Trombone - He's de thirteenth member ov de fambly - March Ham Trombone - A Cullud Bahbaque - Novelty March Boss Trombone - He's De Head Man - Novelty March Here is a simple arrangement of Lassus in Real Audio© from a publisher.

Fillmore had a lot of fun with his music, but he was also well known fora series of instruction books he published, and many many other works. However, as I said above, he never settled for the ordinary. He reportedly married an exotic dancer.