Howard Barlow music manuscript, Little violin piece , 1920

Howard Barlow was born on May 1, 1892, in Plain City, Ohio to Earl W. Barlow and Nettle Dunham. The family farmed the Darby Plains area, and ran a wood-working business. When the family's Plain City furniture factory burned down in 1893, Barlow's family moved to Urbana, Ohio. The family briefly relocated to Denver, Colorado, where Barlow completed high school. Finally, in 1912, the family moved to Portland, Oregon, where Howard and his sister Ruth matriculated at Reed College.

While at Reed, Barlow founded the Glee Club and was elected as its conductor. In 1915, upon winning a scholarship to Columbia University to study music, Barlow traveled to New York City, where he had the opportunity to conduct while continuing his studies. In 1917, during World War I, Barlow was assigned to be music director at Camp Greene in Charlotte, North Carolina; he was ultimately sent to France where he served first as an infantry sergeant, eventually working in the Army's Division of Criminal Investigation.

After the war, Barlow returned to New York and found opportunities to conduct both choral groups and orchestras. In 1923, Barlow founded the American National Orchestra, an orchestra which employed only American-born musicians. Barlow then spent several years as music director of Neighborhood Playhouse. In 1927, Arthur Judson and several other entrepreneurs initiated the Columbia Broadcasting System. Judson selected Barlow as the new network's music director, and Barlow conducted an orchestral concert as the first broadcast on Sunday, September 18, 1927.

In 1943, Barlow resigned from Columbia Broadcasting and accepted the conductorship of the foremost weekly radio show of classical /semiclassical music, the Voice of Firestone on NBC. Seven years later, in 1950, Barlow guided the program from radio into to television; it was the first music program to present its soloists in staged settings.

In 1965, he and his wife of thirty-nine years, Jeannette Thomas, moved from their home in Westchester, New York to Bethel, Connecticut. Barlow died on January 31, 1972, at Danbury, Connecticut.

[Source: James A. Pegolotti, "Howard Barlow (1892-1972) -- Radio Pioneer." Barlow of Barlow Newsletter, May 1994.]