Arthur Pryor's "lost" scores
Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2023 5:49 pm
Arthur Pryor was a prolific band composer, according to Wikipedia, writing around 300 works; including a staple of trombone literature: The Blue Bells of Scotland. Unfortunately, many of these valuable scores have been lost, and much of the surviving literature has missing parts, or are missing specific arrangements.
However, there is one person, who allegedly possesses many, if not all, of these lost scores. His name being Rick Benjamin, of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. Rick Benjamin discovered around 3000 works which were part Arthur Pryor's personal collection, many of these works are from other composers as well (including famous composers of the time such as Scott Joplin, John Philip Sousa, etc.). Rick Benjamin has recorded many of these works with his Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, although Arthur Pryor himself recorded just as many, if not more of these works with his own band, which you can easily find on archive.org or youtube.com.
Despite possibly owning some of the only surviving scores of these works in the world, Rick Benjamin, to my knowledge, has never released these public-domain scores to the public. So Arthur Pryor's scores will still remain lost, forever remaining forgotten until perhaps one day Rick Benjamin might decide to release them.
I don't know, I thought this was kind of interesting. Maybe I will try and convince him to release the scores to the public, but I'm doubtful XD
However, there is one person, who allegedly possesses many, if not all, of these lost scores. His name being Rick Benjamin, of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. Rick Benjamin discovered around 3000 works which were part Arthur Pryor's personal collection, many of these works are from other composers as well (including famous composers of the time such as Scott Joplin, John Philip Sousa, etc.). Rick Benjamin has recorded many of these works with his Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, although Arthur Pryor himself recorded just as many, if not more of these works with his own band, which you can easily find on archive.org or youtube.com.
Despite possibly owning some of the only surviving scores of these works in the world, Rick Benjamin, to my knowledge, has never released these public-domain scores to the public. So Arthur Pryor's scores will still remain lost, forever remaining forgotten until perhaps one day Rick Benjamin might decide to release them.
I don't know, I thought this was kind of interesting. Maybe I will try and convince him to release the scores to the public, but I'm doubtful XD