Hi, all!  There was a request yesterday, and also a few years ago in
MMDigest, for information on Horace O. Prell, who arranged rolls for
US Music in the 1920s.  So, what better way to spend a Monday Memorial
Day holiday than having a look through Ancestry.com and other Internet
resources?  Here's the result of an hour's work:

  Horace Ober Prell: 15 February 1891 (South Bend, Indiana) --
  January 1970 (Southampton, New York)

Horace Ober Prell was the son of Horace H. Prell, a grocer in Indiana
(b. Wisconsin, Oct. 1861), and Barbara Prell (b. Germany, April 1861).
By 1910, his father was not working, and both Horace and his younger
brother Carl (b. Nov. 1898) were employed as delivery men, Horace
delivering for a meat market.

By 1916, the younger Horace was living in Chicago and was working as
an arranger in the office of Harry Alford, probably the best-known
arranger of popular music in that period in that location.  Horace's
1917 draft registration card shows him as a music arranger, working
for Harry L. Alford.  He is tall, medium build, has blue eyes and is
balding slightly.  Horace had married Marie Reither Davis (b. May 22,
1893 in St. Louis, Missouri) on 21 April 1914 in Chicago.  Horace and
Marie apparently never had any children.

Horace started arranging music rolls around 1919 for the US Music Roll
Co. in Chicago.  His biography is given in a publicity piece that
appeared in slightly different forms in Presto (March 28, 1925) and in
Music Trade Review (April 4, 1925).  The article includes a photo of
Prell along with photos and biographies of other US Music arrangers.

http://presto.arcade-museum.com/PRESTO-1925-2018/index.php?page_no=18&fname=PRESTO-1925-2018-18.pdf 
http://mtr.arcade-museum.com/MTR-1925-80-14/index.php?page_no=07&frame=MTR-1925-80-14-07.pdf 

Horace and Marie went to Europe at least twice in the 1920s, returning
to the US on Nov. 3, 1925 and on Oct. 18, 1927.

In addition to his arranging work, Prell also composed some music.
Some of the marches he composed evidently attained some popularity.

In 1926, US Music was bought up by QRS and apparently Prell didn't
continue to arrange rolls for the company after that.  Nothing has been
found yet concerning Prell's later career.  Evidently at some point
after 1930 (in 1930, the Prells were enumerated in Chicago) he moved to
New York, because he registered for a Social Security number there in
the 1951-1953 period.

Horace O. Prell died in January 1970 in Southampton, Long Island, New
York.  (His younger brother Carl had died in South Bend, Indiana, on
May 17, 1968.)

Best regards,
Bob Pinsker
San Diego, California