Frank W. Meacham was born in Brooklyn, New York on May 31, 1856. While still a child his family moved to nearby New York City and Meacham spent his entire career there. He started composing at age 10, at first mainly writing songs, but soon mastered the art of arranging, a talent which led to a successful 30-year career in New York as a commercial composer and arranger. He became known as one of the best arrangers of ballad music in the United States, and also wrote numerous songs “for hire” as a ghost writer for other composers. He published several dozen original piano pieces which have fallen into obscurity, but, more importantly, he also wrote and arranged several marches for the Gilmore Band. His fame today rests solely on “American Patrol.” Composed in 1885 as a piano solo, it gained immediate popularity and was later arranged for wind band and published by Carl Fischer in 1891. Since then it has become a staple of concert band repertoire. The work starts with a soft drum cadence, and skillfully intersperses several original tunes by Meacham with three well-known patriotic songs - “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” “Yankee Doodle,” and “Dixie.” This new edition by Richard W. Sargeant Jr., based on the 1891 first edition, includes the extended instrumentation as found in the Gilmore Band during its final years and is presented in an easy-to-read format for use as either a study score or a performance score.
