User:Rickray777/Walter b. rogers

Walter B. Rogers (born October 14, 1865 in Delphi, Indiana; died December 24, 1939 in Brooklyn, New York) received his first musical instruction on the violin through his father, picking up the cornet afterwards. At age 17, he entered the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Rogers paid for his classes by performing in various orchestras and bands throughout the Indianapolis area; but in 1886, he was lured away to New York to play in Capp's Seventh Regiment Band. Around 1900 he joined up with John Philip Sousa's Band, splitting the cornet solo duties with the already-established megastar Herbert L. Clarke. It was expected that some professional jealousy would break out between them; but fortunately, it didn't happen that way -- Clarke had only praise for Rogers.

Rogers spent very little time with Sousa. In 1904, he signed a contract as musical director for the Victor Talking Machine Company; its studio being located in Camden, New Jersey. Rogers led the studio band for most of Victor's recordings from that time onwards, right up until his resignation in 1916. This included the bulk of the accompaniment for singers ranging from tenor Enrico Caruso to comedian Billy Murray; but he also recorded a number of pieces from the standard orchestral repertoire (often in shortened versions), in many cases making the first recordings of such works. In doing so, he often went head-to-head with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra (led by Charles A. Prince), in most cases outselling Prince's versions of the same music. However, it was in recordings of light classics and band literature that Rogers truly excelled; his recordings of pieces such as Glow Worm, A Hunt in the Black Forest, and In a Clock Store remain classics of such early orchestral recordings; these were among the highest-selling instrumental records of that time period.

In 1916, he left Victor to become a musical director at Paroquette, a start-up record company headed by singer Henry Burr and banjoist Fred van Eps -- which issued 7" Par-O-Ket and Angelophone records. This concern went under by the beginning of 1918; but Rogers got a fresh start at Brunswick Records, leading a military band limited mostly to the marches and descriptive specialties with which he felt most comfortable.  The Brunswick Band may have been his best; he used the same band on Paramount, and possibly other labels as well.  Rogers continued to record with his Brunswick Band, until that label was absorbed in a hostile takeover by ARC (American Record Company) in 1927.  By this time he had already begun to vary his activities through teaching and playing in Brooklyn, New York.  Retiring in 1932, he died at the age of 74 on Christmas Eve, 1939.

It is difficult to gauge his total recorded output, as the recordings on which he worked as an accompanist numbered somewhere in the thousands. The works under his own name as leader (or some generic designation, such as Victor Orchestra), while not quite as numerous, is still considerable and under-researched. Nonetheless, there are few orchestral leaders from before 1915 which count as "giants" in the recording industry, Rogers being among the most important of them all (apart from Prince, Arthur Pryor, and Arthur Nikisch). Rogers was also a composer (mostly of cornet solos and ensembles); A Soldier's Dream may be his best-known work.

Source: http://www.allmusic.com -- paraphrased from the entry for Walter B. Rogers already published there; it is copyrighted 2010 by the Rovi Corporation.