Meredith Willson- Music Man Bio
A brief biography of Meredith Willson, composer of the classic American musical, The Music Man.
The Music Man is a classic of American musical theater but few people know much about its creator and how his career began.
Born in 1902 in Mason City, Iowa, Meredith Willson was the youngest of three children. His parents, a lawyer and piano teacher had dictated that music was to be his career, learning piano and the flute at a young age. This tutoring eventually led to Willson playing with the John Philip Sousa Band and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1920's. These appearances were followed by many years of work in radio and film, scoring pieces for such notables as George Burns and Charlie Chaplin. In the late 1940's he even starred in his own television show.
Willson is most noted, however, for the composition of the American masterpiece, The Music Man which ran on Broadway for over 1,300 performances beginning in 1957. His expert hand tells the story of a traveling con man that winds up in the small town of River City, Iowa, a town based closely on his own childhood home. There, Professor Harold Hill attempts to swindle the local inhabitants promising to start a boys band, but in the process falls in love with the beautiful Marian Paroo, the local librarian and piano teacher, a role patterned after his mother. The musical concludes with the strains of the immortal Seventy-Six Trombones in a massive parade through the center of town. The musical has become such a staple of American literature that it has spawned two full length motion picture releases and a recent Broadway revival nearly fifty years after the original first opened to packed houses on December 19th, 1957.
Meredith Willson died in 1984 at age 82. During his career his works earned countless awards including nine Tony awards for for the Music Man. He is further immortalized with the dedication of Music Man Square in his home town of Mason City and with his likeness on a postage stamp released by the US Postal Service in 1999.
