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George
Hamilton Green
(1893-1970)
 Xylophone
virtuoso George Hamilton Green was born in Omaha, Nebraska
on May 23, 1893. His grandfather, Joseph Green, was
a violinist and violin maker in New York City, but when
he moved to Omaha, he became a conductor and baritone
horn soloist. George Hamilton Green’s father (G.
H. Green, Sr.) followed his father in becoming a coronet
soloist, arranger, and conductor of the Seventh Ward
Silver Cornet Band.
George and his older brother Joseph, also an accomplished
xylophonist, began their musical training at the piano.
However, they soon convinced their father to purchase
them a xylophone, “a small, awkward-looking instrument
of two octaves, some of the bars being more narrow than
others. It had no resonators and no stand … [but]
it seemed wonderful, the most marvelous thing we had
ever seen.” The boys soon built a replica so they
could both practice at the same time.
George began playing solos with his father’s band
at age twelve and was playing vaudeville engagements
by the summer of 1912. From Chicago, he moved to New
York in 1915 and quickly earned rave reviews for “his
touch, his attack, his technique, and his powers of
interpretation.” Praising their new Edison artist
in 1917, the Edison Phonograph Monthly proclaimed:
“Critics who are familiar with the possibilities
of the xylophone concede that George Hamilton Green
of Chicago is one of, if not the greatest xylophone
players in the world.”
 In
addition to almost single-handedly inventing xylophone
technique, Green developed an extensive popular recital
repertoire for the instrument. By 1916, Green claimed
a repertoire of nearly three hundred standard overtures,
rhapsodies, fantasies, concert waltzes, transcriptions
of violin concerto and concert piano pieces. His list
of original works includes novelties, salon waltzes,
popular dance tunes, a remarkable collection of ragtime
tunes – all illustrating his inimitable technique
and a highly original musical mind. Many of these works
were quickly published and some are still available
in modern editions.
George Hamilton Green’s recording career began
in 1917 with a series of six xylophone solos for Edison,
and he remained with the company until 1928. Before
their recording careers were over, he and his brother
Joe recorded over 150 “sides” as leaders of
their own groups, recording under various ensemble names,
for all the record labels, including the big three –
Edison, Victor, and Columbia. He was able to improvise
intricate obbligato lines, as well as highly syncopated
novelty ragtime rhythms, both of which give his recordings
a great vitality.
Photo
reproduced from Composers and Artists whose Art is
Re-Created by Edison's New Art (c. 1920), Thomas
A. Edison, Inc. Gerhardt Collection
Photos
courtesy James A. Strain
With
his brother Joe, he was a founding member of the Green
Brothers’ Xylophone Orchestra and the Green
Brothers Novelty Band (Orchestra). Their brother,
Lewis, born in 1910, joined the Novelty Band
in 1928 to play banjo and guitar. The Green brothers’
xylophone playing and drumming would be heard in the
waltzes, one-steps, two-steps, and the fox-trots of
a number of top recording bands, including Earl Fuller’s
Rector House Orchestra, Fred Van Eps quartet, and
the Yerkes Jazarimba Orchestra, directed by another
popular xylophone player, Harry A. Yerkes. Green also
performed with Victor Arden (piano) and F. Wheeler Wadsworth
(alto saxophone) as the All Star Trio.
George Green co-authored a correspondence course for
marimba and xylophone with Joseph, which they sold by
mail order. Each of the fifty lessons cost one dollar.
At one time, their correspondence course attracted an
international enrollment of over 1500 students. Complete
editions of the lessons are now prized among collectors.
George Hamilton Green was a mysterious genius with a
complex personality. Toward the end of the xylophone’s
“Golden Age,” he joined the staff of a major
broadcasting network, but in the middle of a radio program
in 1946, Green put down his mallets and walked out of
the studio. Apparently he never played the xylophone
in public again.
Nevertheless, he spent another twenty-four years as
a productive, creative artist. Always a talented visual
artist, his cartoons and illustrations appeared regularly
in such journals as the Saturday Evening Post
and Collier’s until his death in 1970. He
was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of
Fame in 1983.
Cartoon
reprinted from Leedy Drum Topics (April 1927)
This
information is taken from the liner notes of the Eastman
Marimba Band’s “Nola” (Mercury Recording
SRI 75108, 1976). See also William Cahn's The Xylophone
in Acoustic Recordings, and other sources collected
by Edwin Gerhardt.
Photo
reproduced from 1925 Leedy Xylophones and Marimbas
catalog. Gerhardt Collection
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