Meredith Willson was born in Mason City, Iowa, in 1902. He studied piano and flute at the Damrosch Institute of Musical Art, and by age 19 had become a solo flutist with the New York Philharmonic. He relocated to San Francisco in the mid 1920's, and quickly gained notoriety as the Music Director for KFRC, before becoming NBC's West Coast Music Director in 1932. He was also busy writing original compositions and early motion picture scores.

In this 1936 photo, he's shown rehearsing with Estelle Caen, a gifted young San Francisco pianost, who was preparing to appear on Willson's coast-to-coast broadcast on the NBC Blue Network.