Or Bernard ‘Benny’ Herrmann, Daddy’s professor of composition and conducting. Benny wrote the music for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Vertigo, and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver… etc. Daddy led Benny’s FIRST radio performance, and they both conducted each other’s works throughout the thirties and forties.

Take a look at this radio show, played at high school every Tuesday — Bernard Herrmann conducting, Philip James and Alan Lomax commenting. And Alan Lomax, who covered the ‘folk music’ narration, had as regular guests Pete Seeger, Burl Ives, Lead Belly…

Benny wrote many many notes to my Dad:

Or Gunther Schuller. Schuller was a serious classical composer, received Grammys and the Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Foundation Awards, AND he was a jazz French horn player with Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, etc. He considered my Daddy’s music ‘beautiful, poignant.’ He wrote about his school-boy days at the prestigious St. Thomas School, in his 2011 autobiographical book A Life in Pursuit of Music and Beauty:

…I really loved these pieces, and if I had at this long distance to say which more or less modern music of the time I admired most it was Philip James’s music. Alas, he is now virtually forgotten…

‘Alas, he is now virtually forgotten.’ That is why I jot this short biography of him, because he ABSOLUTELY deserves it.

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1890 — Daddy was born in Jersey City, right across the river from New York; his mother was German and his father was Welsh. Yes, they were poor: his father was first a locomotive engineer and then, in later years, security guard at a chocolate factory. 

What is so important is that there were no airplanes back then, and no cars. My Dad talked to me over and over about the streets being quiet. You’d overhear people conversing.

He read a very popular magazine, St. Nicholas — we still have his old copies. It was written for children by great writers — Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain — and it never talked down to them: it was a sort of ‘adult-kids’ magazine.

His sister Mildred became his musical tutor, she taught him to play violin and piano. Daddy always called her a ‘wonderful teacher.’ So he was 17 and he traveled by horse, by train, and by foot all around New Jersey and New York, giving performances on piano — Mr. Philip Wright James. Notice how many ‘horseshoers’ there are:

Besides Mildred, Daddy had lots of musical teachers, but on organ. Years later he wrote an obituary letter about his ‘Bach teacher,’ J. Warren Andrews:

The organ loft BREATHED the spirit of the atelier. Here were organists, not simply made, but moulded into artists; for Mr. Andrews was endowed with the rare gift of imparting the secrets of craftsmanship and the love of the beautiful in music. In every student he tried to see the potential artist, and all were received not so much as students but as fellow workers.

Plain spoken, modest, he preferred whenever possible to expound his theories by example. When I first met Mr. Andrews I played for him a rather over-elaborate and tawdry French composition. On the completion of my performance, without any comment, he sat down and I listened to his performance of the Bach ‘Passacaglia.’ This simple incident was worth many lessons to me, and many wasted moments of discussion, argument, or explanation.

He also spent lots of time with Homer Norris, a well-known teacher who trained him in composition and the ‘art of counterpoint.’ And Homer played organ at J. P. Morgan’s mansion — that was pretty regular back then. Unfortunately automobiles were becoming common, as were accidents, and Homer Norris lost his life by getting run over. Yes, life was noisy then, and it didn’t smell like horses: it smelled of gasoline. Some would say this wasn’t a brand new opportunity: it was simply the beginning of the end.

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Daddy was listening to organ AND orchestral performances all the time. I have dozens of programs from back then, for instance the celebrated Gustav Mahler: conducting one year, dead the next.

He wrote, at first, impassioned romantic anthems and songs. Some of them were Welsh-like tidbits, and some of them were titled Dearie, My Heart Is Like a Sweet-Toned Lute, Little Room o’ Dreams, A Million Little Diamonds, As Now the Sun’s Declining Rays… They were delectably sentimental!

He was just about ALWAYS working on music…

…or just plain RELAXING!

Starting in 1910 he kept a diary. The entry below, for instance, tells how much he accomplished in a day: a lesson; meeting with somebody about conducting ‘light operas;’ performing a service at St. Mark’s Church in the Village; and then seeing the famous Triangle Shirtwaist factory burning down a few blocks away, the ‘most awful fire’ and ‘400 girls killed:’

How times have changed! That’s the firetruck used to battle the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, one of the deadliest industrial disasters in U.S. history; ladders will only reach seven stories high!

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Matinées were very popular then, especially for kids — and he loved them! He conducted Snow White and Prunella, directed on Broadway by Winthrop Ames in 1912-1913. These plays were starring the ‘inimitable Marguerite Clark.’ Later, films would appear; she’d star in them as well.

Then there was ‘Miss Eady,’ as she was known: Miss Millicent Eady.

She was quite a bit older than he was, born in England in 1876, and she had a real sense of humor — Philip often called her ‘witty.’ She owned a partially-built summer house in Amagansett, NY, along the ocean. Here’s a NY Times article mentioning Millicent — yes, she’s kind of bossy:

And they got married…

They went back to the house summer after summer for years:

His horse, Lloyd George, named after the British Prime Minister.

Then she died, in 1945, and he kept the house until I was a little kid. He used to tell me how she became ‘bedridden,’ and how he’d read her Victorian novels every evening, Trollope, Hardy, Eliot…

And I remember the walks he would take — an old man walking slowly along the beach, alone, with the endless, endless waves…

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He poured himself a drink, sat down — plop — on the recently reupholstered plastic armchair. He asked me if I wanted to hear about the past. Sure, I said — I’d love to hear about World War 1. He chuckled: that would have to wait.

‘I’m thinking about the good times with Victor Herbert…’ And he talked and talked, and poured another drink.

Victor Herbert was a Broadway ‘success story.’ He had heard Daddy conducting up in Boston at the end of the War, and he hired him immediately as musical director. And Daddy led the songs and dances for the show My Golden Girl — ‘A Little Nest for Two,’ ‘Ragtime Terpsichore,’ ‘I’d Like a Honeymoon with You,’ ‘The Jazzy-Jazz Dancing Lesson,’ ‘What Shall We Do If the Moon Goes Out…’ And the two of them went out afterwords, drinking. Daddy claimed that Victor Herbert was indeed a true teacher to him; unfortunately he died of cirrhosis in about four years.

I recently found a rare recording of my father conducting My Golden Girl, with Walter Scanlan — the ‘famous bigamist’ — singing it in 1920:

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But my Dad was much more into ‘serious’ music. He composed the romantic Meditation à Sainte Clotilde and By the Waters of Babylon — and both are played to this day! He founded the New Jersey Orchestra, which is still going strong. Notice how he had to use the high school auditorium for rehearsals AND performances — there was nowhere else in New Jersey for that kind of place. He started with just 19 strings, mainly women, and then it grew into a full-scale orchestra, even using famous soloists like Percy Grainger — a good friend of his — and Pablo Casals:

And I always liked the photo of ‘Miss Sylvia Lent,’ who played several times — she was young and beautiful!

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Now Station WGZBX.

As I said before, Philip James was a music professor, the head of the Music Department at NYU. But he was also a ‘radio guy.’ See what a typical advertisement looked like in the early thirties:

Well, Time Magazine wrote in 1932:

Radio gave U. S. music an added puff last week. Philip James of Manhattan won $5,000 for ‘Station WGZBX,’ a midget symphony which ingeniously describes lobby confusion at a studio, interference, ‘static,’ a slumber hour, and microphone hysteria.‘

And Radio Guide:

‘…he would rather have this honor than be President of the United States.’ I can understand that!

NBC’s president Aylesworth then presented a check to James; $5000 was a LOT of money in 1932: it would be worth $118,300 in 2026.

Here’s how the contest worked:

573 orchestral manuscripts were submitted anonymously by the public. The jury was composed of several ‘famous musicians,’ and five works were selected as finalists and were played, anonymously again, on an NBC broadcast. From there, 150 selected listeners sent in their choices by telegraph, and the single winning composition was played on the radio May 8th, 1932.

The wise Leopold Stokowski (juror) sent Dad a letter:

I enjoyed conducting your work and hope you will let me conduct another some day. I especially enjoyed the great beauty and depth of feeling of the third movement and the plastic quality of all four movements. It is a pleasure to find an American composer who has freed himself from the academic dogmas of form and has the power to create his own forms.

Here are two small sections from Station WGZBX. He definitely had a sense of humor: in addition to the large orchestration he included Chinese temple blocks, Indian tom-tom, high tension buzzer, lion roar, wind machine, fire siren, voice of a Robot or electrically amplified speaking voice…

Besides WGZBX Daddy had a regular radio show on WOR, once a week for seven years. He had a special guest on each one of his shows, composers like Aaron Copland or great instrumentalists.

He also had his hand on another show, on CBS. It kind of reminds me of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts — but without TV:

In fact, the Bernstein program was already named: here’s a New York Philharmonic performance of a Young People’s Concerts, December 1944 — while the Second World War is still going strong. Leo Lerman, by the way, is fun reading:

Commercial television was almost here, but Daddy didn’t think much of it. Oh, he watched the soap opera General Hospital for a couple of years, and the mystery Perry Mason, and Ed Sullivan and Leonard Bernstein, and the news… but then he limped around and stopped watching it altogether.

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I’m ready to write about it, about World War 1 and Daddy — but first dance, improvisational movement. Yes, he talked a lot about dance, and how important it was. Here he is conducting Anita Zahn, of the Elizabeth Duncan School:

And the correspondent goes on to say:

In fact my Dad even spent lots of time with the celebrated dancer Agnes deMille, driving her out to his summer home in Amagansett:

And I, too, have felt how important dance IS, especially improvised. For years I have worked with a wonderful dancer, Marita Kennedy-Castro, who not only teaches me but dances to my music!

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OK, NOW World War 1:

It’s hard to put into words just how horrible it was. Gasoline trucks and tanks were brand new, submarines were even newer. New airplanes were designed for battling, bombs were thrown from the sky. And telephone lines were laid out all over France: they allowed communication from General to General. Yes, World War 1 was ALL new and horrible.

And the funny thing is that white men invented it.

Music helped a bit:

I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother’s darling boy?

Uh-oh! Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed that:

…the foolish people who applaud a song entitled ‘I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier’ are just the people who would also in their hearts applaud a song entitled ‘I Didn’t Raise My Girl to Be a Mother.’

And parodies of the song came out as well: ‘I Did Not Raise My Boy to Be a Coward,’ ‘I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier, but I’ll Send My Girl to Be a Nurse,’ ‘I Didn’t Raise My Dog to Be a Sausage’… and on and ON!

So my father was drafted in October of 1917, 77th Division, 308th Infantry. He had no choice but in getting drafted.

The 77th Division was popularly known as the ‘Metropolitan Division,’ made up of New York City soldiers; its members spoke at least 42 different languages. They were stationed at Camp Upton on Long Island, in Yaphank, NY. Irving Berlin was also a draftee there; he wrote the wartime musical Yip, Yip, Yaphank, including the song ‘Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.’

And my Dad wrote his own song, sent it from the barracks at Christmas time:

Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace; east, west, north and south, let the long quarrel cease —

He wrote in his diary:

‘Sounds unpatriotic but I don’t think I could kill any man no matter how sinful his country.’

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Six months, and then he would stay in France for exactly a year. The parting ship to Europe was EXTREMELY overcrowded:

Quite rough, cold and penetrating. We were nearly frozen. About 50% of the boat are sea sick. I have felt very well although at time a grinding spell comes over me due to the awful conditions of our sleeping quarters. Men packed like sardines on the deck… some of them vomiting all about..

The dishes and table linen are filthy. Where we sleep is below the steerage (the old baggage hold). Water, dampness, smells, foul air and rats ever-present. At night about 12 a drunken soldier, dirty as an ocean can be, slept next to me and nearly vomited in my face. Coughing, spitting on my pillow until I threw him over on his side…

At 6:30 we played Retreat and gave a little concert: a despondent fellow committed suicide by jumping over board…

I was put on deck until nine… In the foam of the sweeping ocean the phosphorus was wonderful. I felt as if I was drifting in a fairy boat, the most lovely clouds and twirling stars… 

And arrival in France:

The diaries were handed out, small blank pages to the soldiers. They also contained an ‘at the front’ section with, for instance, ‘asphyxiating shells’ and ‘aerial torpedos’ and, of course, ‘courage.’

Daddy started writing:

It is interesting to note how we get the facility of telling the difference between shells, bombs and planes by the sounds. It may be a musician’s ear…

I notice the youngsters here all sing our popular songs in English such as ‘They Go Wild, Simply Wild Over Me,’ ‘Over There,’ ‘Darktown Strutter’s Ball,’ etc., but they sing them so quickly and with such rhythm that it makes them sound like old folksongs of France. These children are certainly born with rhythm…

He eventually became a celebrated conductor of the band ‘Pershing’s Own,’ but first he was a ‘stretcher-bearer,’ cleaning up and burying dead bodies:

We had been ordered to bury the dead which are still remaining here, and there are hundreds of bodies which have been left for weeks without burial. Sanitation squads have been overworked as well as all the chaplains… About 8:00 in the morning we started in digging graves, making and marking crosses and then burying the men who were principally Germans. I hope I shall forget the horrible sights. Nearly all were in bits from machine gun fire and we had to collect them in blankets, some rotted, some almost skeletons, find their identification tags with long nippers of pliers and finally bury them with prayers etc. The stench was horrible to say the least.

And he wrote an article for the U.S. public, entitled Heroes Who Know It Not:

Every stretcher-bearer and ambulance driver at the front in this war should have been decorated with a war cross. I have seen them at the front in rags and covered with dripping crimson; worn for the want of sleep, rest, and food, waiting to go with the infantry ever faithful…

A stretcher-bearer is master of himself after he is ordered to the front. This is why they are not recognized more, for only a wounded man can tell what has been done for him by these workers, and one in great pain can hardly be expected to remember the identity of those who succored them; so few stretcher-bearers are recommended for citations, crosses, or honor metals. But the memories, thanks and blessings of thousands and thousands of wounded and dying men, and the keen satisfaction of having helped to save a life, are a greater value to the stretcher-bearers.

And yet another article:

He’s probably talking about the ‘Lost Battalion’ in the Meuse-Argonne region. About 197 soldiers were killed and more than 150 missing or taken prisoner; after that about 194 men were rescued. Charles Whittlesey, leader of the battle, was one of the more famous WW1 soldiers at that time; he received the Medal of Honor. But unfortunately he committed suicide by jumping off ship in 1921. Here he is in my father’s address book diary, 1919:

And here he is in a small portion of my father’s Symphony #1, depicting the marching horrors of World War 1:

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OK: eventually, after endless deaths AND band leading, he got back to the U.S. with a completely worn-out look, with a look of sadness…

Now his job was different. Glenn Watkins wrote in Proof Through the Night: Music and the Great War —

In April 1919 Philip James returned to the United States as conductor and commanding officer of the Allied Expeditionary Headquarters Band, now known as ‘General Pershing’s Band.’ He led the band on a nineteen-city Victory Loan tour… James’s concerts were wildly received as emblematic of America’s contribution to final victory in the Great War.

Here he is conducting in NY; and in the second picture he is waiting for the daily train: he is the short fellow with a lighter costume, holding some clothing draped over his left arm — just like at today’s airport. And every one of those musicians — some of them had once been in the NY Philharmonic or the Metropolitan Opera — were returning soldiers, marked by ‘the hell of War.’

Here are just a few of his diaries in America, once he got back. For instance May 1, the very first of the ‘Red Scares.’ There were two deaths, forty-plus accidents, and 116 people arrested:

Thursday May 1 – 1919 — May Day in Cleveland, Ohio. We arrived at the Hotel Statler, Cleveland in the morning. After I cleaned up I started to go to the Armory to arrange for the concerts. However in leaving the hotel in the AM a pot of flowers was thrown at me from above. The pot just missed me but I was covered with dirt. I was hissed by persons on the streets and one woman stopped me and asked if I knew why we fought Germany. ‘President Wilson had better get back to the US or we will have a red flag on the White House.’ In the afternoon things got worse and the town was placed under the protection of the State Militia. Tanks were used in the streets and I actually saw one woman ground to pieces by a tank. In the midst of the rioting I received an order from the Commanding General of the area to give up the concerts and leave town at once which we did under the protection of the Militia, so we got on our train and started east.

Or Boston; this is where Victor Herbert first heard him playing:

Monday May 5 – 1919 — Boston. I rushed back and then started our parade preceded by mounted police instead of my marching band — they provided an open car for me to ride in at the very head of the line. We reached the State House and I was presented to Governor Calvin Coolidge and a State Senator… We played to thousands and thousands at that spot and after some more marching we stopped at the City Hall where I was presented to Mayor James Michael Curley who, among other remarks, made some uncomplimentary ones about Governor Coolidge.

And then Daddy was having to deal with Congress as the Commanding Officer:

Sunday May 11 – 1919 — Working my head off getting a payroll for the men and issuing passes. The payroll is difficult for it involves insurance and allotment. Washington is like an old mausoleum and the War Department clerks are so stupid. Saturday I went to a special meeting in the Congress where they were debating and discussing ‘Shall the soldier be issued one shirt or two and should he wear one while the other is being washed in an exchange laundry or should he have but one and wash that when he can and thereby making use of the 1/6 of the unconsumed portion of the cooks ten-day ration of soap…’

Yes, ‘Washington is like an old mausoleum and the War Department clerks are so stupid.’

And remember that the War, with its bombs and tanks and gasoline everywhere, was caused by men: white men had invented it.

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Here he is, close to death, with his wife Helga:

I wasn’t very proud of him during that time. First of all,  I didn’t KNOW that he was a fantastic musician; I thought I was somehow as good as him. I wanted to be one of ‘the moderns,’ a John Cage, or a John Coltrane. And boy, was I cynical!

I didn’t come to see him much; I was living in New York or around sunny America while he spent his days dying. It wasn’t until I had the stroke that I suddenly realized how important my father had been, how utterly important. I reached out looking for interviews, newspaper articles, and the music… and his past leaped forward: it seemed ALIVE now! This is the only piece he had commercially LP released, in the early fifties, and it rings true to my ears:

The well-known composer/conductor Howard Hanson wrote this about him — a shortened version — after he died:

Philip James, distinguished composer, conductor, scholar, and beloved teacher died at his home on November 1, 1975, at the age of 85. I am honored to be invited to pay him this too long delayed tribute.  

As a young man, in the days in which it was a misdemeanor, if not a felony, for an American to aspire to the post of orchestral conductor, he began as a conductor of the Victor Herbert Opera Company. He founded the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, conducted the Brooklyn Orchestral Society, and later became conductor of the Bamberger Little Symphony where he contributed greatly to American music and to music in America through his radio programs, particularly on Station WOR. He appeared as guest conductor with some of the country’s most famous orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Symphony orchestras, the National Symphony of Washington, and the N.B.C. orchestra. 

Over the years I have conducted many of his works but I came to know him best through a performance of his latest symphony. He was already, as I remember, in his eightieth year, when a former student brought me the news that this work had never been performed. I asked to see the score and immediately arranged for a premiere at our next Festival of American Music. He came, with his charming family, for the rehearsals and concert and it was for me a delightful and rewarding experience. 

We, as composers, are a strange crew—and, as a composer, I humbly confess to my own faults. We are endowed with the famous composers’ syndrome, “What have you done for me lately?” Philip James was not such a one. He was a scholar but he was also modest, generous, humane. I hesitate to use the word, but he was a sweet man, in every sense a gentleman. It is not difficult to understand why his students had for him such esteem and affection. He must have been in every respect that unique individual, a great teacher. 

Ah, yes! So please, please excuse me, Daddy — you are the kind who just forgives and forgives and forgives! I don’t bother saying ‘good-bye’ to you now; I proudly say ‘hello’!