David Wendel Guion

David W. Guion (December 15, 1892, Ballinger, Texas – October 17, 1981), Texan composer, was best known for his arrangements of cowboy tunes, African American spirituals, and original compositions often inspired by the soundscape of west Texas.

David Wendel Guion (some sources show him as David Wendel Fentress Guion) was born in Ballinger, Texas on December 15, 1892 to John I. and Armour Fentress Guion. Guion began to play the piano at an early age. He was intrigued by the cowboys, former cattle drivers, who worked on his father's ranch, and also by the spirituals that he heard whenever a family servant brought him to the services of an African-American church. As a young boy, he was sent by train each Saturday to San Angelo, where he took piano lessons with Charles Finger, who later became a prolific author and literary magazine editor. In the fall of 1907 he studied at the Whipple Academy in Jacksonville, Illinois, after which he continued his studies in Fort Worth at Polytechnic College (now Texas Wesleyan University) under Wilbur MacDonald. After MacDonald's death in 1912, Guion went to Vienna, where he studied at the Imperial Academy of Music with Leopold Godowsky until the spring of 1914. Returning to Texas, Guion taught piano at Daniel Baker College (now Howard Payne University) in Brownwood, and also turned his attention to composition. One of his first major successes, a virtuosic arrangement of "Turkey in the Straw", was performed by many famous pianists, most notably Percy Grainger.

After Guion's father died in 1920, the family left Ballinger and moved to Dallas. Guion's father, John Isaac Guion II, was the son of a Mississippi governor (John I. Guion), and served as President of the Board of Directors at A&M College (now Texas A&M University), where Guion Hall was built in his honor. In the following decade, David Guion taught at Southern Methodist University, various private music schools in Dallas, Chicago Musical College, and in summer programs at Estes Park, Colorado. He won first prize in rodeos at Estes Park and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Guion was married briefly to Marion Ayers, daughter of the owner of a Dallas department store.

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