William Horace Bailey was born January 30, 1910, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He began playing music at age five and quickly became proficient in many instruments, including piano and violin. He graduated magna cum laude from Pomona College in Claremont, California with a Bachelor of Arts in 1929. He played in a Southern California music organizations for many years before earning a Master of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. He taught music and conducted the civil orchestra at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida for six years, before moving to Walla Walla, Washington in August 1945 for a one-year assignment at the Whitman College music department. He taught there for over thirty years, from 1945 through 1975, working as an instructor of string instruments and music theory, and as the conductor of the Walla Walla Symphony Orchestra. He was a prolific composer, with more than seventy compositions credited to him. He died on April 15, 1977 at the age of 67.