Daniel Roth Papers

Daniel Roth was born in Eufaula in 1917 and traveled to Columbus to attend religious school. Graduating from Eufaula High School in 1935 with a state trumpet performance championship, Roth attended college at Auburn and joined a dance band known as the Auburn Cavaliers. The group performed frequently and traveled throughout the Southeast and the Midwest during the summers, booking shows in a variety of cities. By 1939, the band and its members had left Auburn to begin playing shows in Virgina and other Mid-Atlantic states. When "Colonel" Manney Prager became the Cavaliers' bandleader in 1940, the group began playing regularly at a Memphis hotel, where Roth honed his arranging and composition skills. World War II interrupted the band's schedule, and Roth returned home to enlist in the U.S. Army at Fort Benning in 1942. Selected for flight navigation school, Roth also used his talents to collaborate with another cadet to write "The Navigator Song", a song which provided both instruction and pride for fellow Army Air Forces navigators. Just a few months after the song's debut in 1943, Roth was killed while flying a mission over the Marshall Islands and was posthumously awarded the Distinguishing Flying Cross.