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Paul Dresser was born Johann Paul Dreiser, Jr. in Terre Haute, Indiana on April 22, 1858. He was an older brother of Theodore Dreiser, who would become a famous novelist. Like many Hoosiers from that part of the state, the Dreiser family was German Catholic. Young Paul spent time studying at St. Meinrad's seminary to become a priest, but his call to music was ultimately stronger than Paul's father's wish to have a priest in the family. Dresser played in medicine and minstrel shows throughout the midwest until finally settling in New York City where he wrote and published music. He became a principal owner of publishing house Howley, Haviland & Dresser and wrote scores of songs, including "On the Banks of the Wabash Far Away," which became Indiana's state song. Dresser was part of Manhattan's Tin Pan Alley music movement.
Despite his early success as a songwriter, Dresser spent as much money as he was able to make during his career, was particularly generous to family and friends, bad at running a business and slow to adapt to America's changing appetite for musical styles. He died peniless at his sister's house in New York City on January 30, 1906 at the age of 47. Dresser's last big hit "My Gal Sal" inspired a movie about his life.
Under construction
PaulDresser.com is under heavy construction at the moment. With the exception of the MySpace link (to the MySpace Indiana page) of interest to anyone Hoosier-oriented, the links on the index to the left point to pages of DenHollinden.com. As work progresses on this site (PaulDresser.com), most of these links and any additional ones that seem appropriate will be to information on Paul Dresser and his music. In the meantime, you can find some additional material at IndianaStateSong.com.
Updates
PaulDresser.com's navigation links were moved from the left-hand side of the page to the right-hand side. This results in a page that's easier to print successfully (i.e., without chopping off anything important on the printed copy) and results in a printed page that's easier to read.
The MySpace link (seen to the right) on PaulDresser.com now points to the MySpace Paul Dresser page: www.myspace.com/PaulDresser instead of to the MySpace Indiana page: www.myspace.com/IndianaStateSong.
Updates to the page are now listed on the new New! page. While the page is still under heavy construction, they will also continue to appear on the home page to make keeping up-to-date with changes to the site as simple as possible while construction continues.
As was stated earlier, all the navigational links, other than the MySpace link, on PaulDresser.com initially pointed to pages of DenHollinden.com. It was also stated that as new PaulDresser.com pages are completed, they will replace the corresponding DenHollinden.com pages in the navigational links. The new information is that as PaulDresser.com pages are completed, they will be identified in the index with a PD: prefix. At the point where there are more PaulDresser.com links than DenHollinden.com links, the PD: prefixes will disappear, and the remaining DenHollinden.com links will be prefixed with DH:.
PaulDresser.com is maintained by another Hoosier German Catholic singer/songwriter/publisher Den Hollinden (ASCAP) who founded Denuine Publishing (ASCAP.) Den Hollinden creates music with a rootsy, traditional sound that paints scenes of Americana, often from his native southern Indiana. Good examples are "The Basketball Song" and "St. Henry Christmas." Hollinden currently lives and works in the Washington, DC area where he was originally stationed for duty in the United States Marine Corps, enlisting at Paul Dresser's Terre Haute, Indiana. Den Hollinden is a recording artist for Denuine Records.
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