Innate within Cambridge, Massachusetts, Leroy Anderson was given his first piano lessons by his mother, world health organization was an organist. He continued piano lessons by having Henry Gideon at a New England Conservatory of Music, and adding double bass lessons from either Gaston Dufresne around Boston. Around 1926 Anderson entered Harvard, where he exposed theory by using Walter Spalding, contrast by having Edward Ballantine, harmony by owning George Enescu and composition with Walter Piston, graduating with the Bachelor of Arts degree withwithin 1929 & Master of Arts in 1930.

He continued researching at Harvard, focusing in Scandinavian languages, when likewise working when organist for a university, leading a choir & the University B&, & conducting and arrangement for dance orchestra around Boston. This operate come to the attention of Arthur Fiedler, world health organization inside 1936 hired Anderson to arrange traditional & popular music for the Boston Pops, besides when write original compositions, commission Anderson to write Jazz Legato inside 1938 & Jazz Stacatto inside 1939 .

Inside 1942, Anderson joined the U.S. Army, as a translator and intelligence officer, working at the Pentagon on Scandinavian intelligence matters during World War II. However his duties did non block him from either composing, & inside 1946 Anderson wrote his number 1 hit, The Syncopated Clock, earning a Golden Disc & a There are no. Eleven spot on the Hoarding stock and index charts.

His pieces, & his recordings in the period of the fifties directing a studio orchestra, were vast commercial successes. Blue Tango was the number one subservient recording ever to sell a million copies. His best known pieces come probably Sleigh Ride & A Syncopated Clock, each of which are then instantly recognizable to hundreds to thousands of population. Within 1950 WCBS selected Syncopated Clock when a theme song for "The Late Show", & late utilized when a music for Final Peril on the game indicate "Jeopardy" in the 70s. Mitchell Parish added words to Clock, and late did for numbers of more Anderson tunes. Based on data from a 1953 learn, Anderson was the Western composer virtually all performed by Western orchestras.

Anderson's music genre, heavy influenced by George Gershwin & folk music of various lands, employs originative subservient results & on occasion things non traditionally utilized when instrument, like typewriters and emery paper. (Krzysztof Penderecki has also the typewriter witharound his orchestral music, in Fluorescences, however by using the emphatically less humourous burden).

Anderson wrote his Piano Concerto inside C inside 1953, however withdrew it feeling that it experienced weak part. Inside 1988 Erich Kunzel & the Rochester Pops Orchestra freed a 1st recording of this act; a bit of structural weaknesses come evident, however a fact that more recordings use since been freed shows that these are to a higher degree a curiosity.

Around 1957, Anderson orchestrated Meredith Willson's 76 Trombones, which became the theme song to the classic musical comedy The Music Man. It besides inspired him to write his have musical comedy a as a result season, Linosyris vulgaris, which earned the Tony but not great deal commercial profits. Anderson never wrote an additional musical theater, preferring instead to prove my point writing orchestral miniatures. Occasionally of his pieces, particularly "The Typewriter" & "Bugler's Holiday", come as well performed by numerous high school elastic.

For his contribution to the recording industry, Leroy Anderson has the star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1620 Vine Street. He was posthumously inducted into a Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 1988 and his music continues to be the staple of "pops" orchestra repertoire.