Henry Fillmore

American trombonist, composer, publisher, music educator and bandmaster, born December 3, 1881 in Cincinnati, Ohio and died December 7, 1956 in Miami, Florida. He is the son of James Henry Fillmore Sr. (composer of hymns and gospel songs) and heir to the Fillmore Bros. Company, publisher of hymnals and music.

Fillmore published his first march, "Hingham" (named after a line of brass instruments), at age 18, in 1899. He studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, then worked for several years as a circus bandmaster. In the 1920s, he returned to Cincinnati where he turned the Shriners Temple Band into one of the best marching bands in the country.

In 1938, told that he only had a few more months to live, Fillmore retired to Miami, Florida. He kept busy working with high school bands and writing marches, eventually proving his doctor's diagnosis wrong. During this period, Fillmore penned the official fight song of the University of Miami, "Miami U How-De-Doo," the march "Orange Bowl" written for the same university's marching band, the Band of the Hour, and the march "Men of Florida", written for the University of Florida marching band. In 1956, Fillmore received an honorary Doctorate of Music from the University of Miami in recognition of his contributions.

Fillmore composed around 250 songs, many of them marches and screamers (circus marches), some published under pseudonyms that he selected based on the piece's level of difficulty or genre, such as Gus Beans, Harold Bennett (easy), Ray Hall, Harry Hartley (solos), Al Hayes (slightly more advanced), and Henrietta Moore (twilight songs).