Eugene Cole "Gene" Quaw was born in Belgrade, Montana on March 6, 1891. His family moved to Bozeman around 1896 and Gene attended local schools before graduating from Montana State College (Montana State University) in 1910. While growing up he worked as a piano player at the Bozeman Opera House under musical director Louis Leo Howard and early displayed a talent for music composition. Gene worked as a band leader and composer after his graduation from college in Bozeman and also studied at the University of Minnesota, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Arizona, and Louisiana State University where he worked as the recreation director for twenty years until his retirement in 1961. During the 1920s, he conducted a dance orchestra for several summers at Yellowstone National Park, and he also worked for the Paramount motion picture company as a composer for cartoon features. Gene's published musical scores include: Under Any Old Moon at All (1909), Twilight Time (1920), Old Man Jazz (1920), Nobody Else (1923), The Rose of Sigma Chi (1924), Yellowstone (1937) Song of the Engineers (1942), and Dream Girl of Sigma Chi (1948). Gene Quaw died in Bozeman, Montana on December 17, 1968.
From the guide to the Gene Quaw Collection, 1921-1951, (Montana State University-Bozeman Library, Merrill G Burlingame Special Collections)
