Alonzo Elliot

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Alonzo (“Zo”) Elliot (1891 – 1989) was a US American composer and songwriter. He was born in Manchester, New Hampshire and died in Wallingford, Connecticut. Elliot was educated at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, Phillips Academy (Andover, Massachusetts), Yale University, Cambridge University, and Columbia Law School. He also studied music privately with Nadia Boulanger and Leonard Bernstein, among others. His best known composition is There's A Long Long Trail A-Winding, a popular song from the era of World War I. (Elliott wrote the music; the words are by Stoddard King, Elliot's chief collaborator.) He was interested in military music and was the composer of the popular march, “British Eighth” as well as an opera entitled Top Sergeant. As well, he wrote an article on the background of the US Civil War song John Brown's Body (“John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in his grave…” sung to a melody later to become more famous as the melody to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic"); the article purported to show that the John Brown of the song was a soldier in Boston, not the famous abolitionist of the same name.