ISBN10: 0934426198, ISBN13: 9780934426190, [publisher: Brand: Southeast Missouri State University] Softcover First Edition In Meredith Wilson's The Music Man Professor Harold Hill and his "Seventy-Six Trombones" made their appearance in River City, Iowa, in the summer of 1912. It was also in the summer of 1912 when nine-year-old Raymond F. Meyer moved with his parents from Oak Ridge to Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Here on the west bank of the Mississippi for seventy-six more years Missouri's "Mr. Music Man" has played, taught, and introduced music to the residents of southeast Missouri adn southern Illinois. In this volume Mr. Meyer recounts his early years as a jazz musician, directing and playing in a jazz band during and immediately after World War I, before Americans knew of Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, or Duke Ellington. From impromptu lunch-time sessions in a Cape Girardeau high school gymnasium, a group of school pals, dubbed the "Agony Four," evolved into the "Agony Five" and the "Melody Kings," playing regular dance dates throughout the region. As the organizer and leader of the first jazz band in the area Meyer significantly contributed to the introduction of a new cultural era in the backwoods of southeast Missouri and southern Illinois. His writings provide insight and understanding of early jazz and the region of southeast Missouri and southern Ill ...

ISBN10: 0934426198, ISBN13: 9780934426190, [publisher: Center for Regional History and Cultural Heritage/Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, MO] Softcover Octavo, 158 pages. Signed by the author inside the front cover and on the title page with a drawing. Firm binding; no loose pages. Book and cover with minor wear, including some sticker damage on front cover. Lightly tanned pages; a few dog-eared. Edited and with an introduction by Dr. Frank Nickell.
[Pittsburg, KS, U.S.A.] [Publication Year: 1989]
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