Walter Bowman Rogers (October 14, 1865 – December 24, 1939) was an American cornet player, concert band and orchestral conductor and composer, who was responsible for most of the orchestral arrangements on recordings made for the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1904 and 1916. 　　Rogers left Sousa to join the Victor Company, based in Camden, New Jersey, in September 1903 as first cornet of the firm's studio ensembles, then directed by Arthur Pryor. Pryor formed his own concert band in late 1903, and he found the dual responsibilities of conducting his own group and overseeing ensemble recording at Victor too confining to advance his career as a popular bandmaster; thus, Pryor gave over the chief conductorship at Victor to Rogers in September 1904, while still continuing to make occasional recordings under the name "Pryor's Orchestra" and rapidly becoming Victor's leading concert band director with his own band. Rogers became the conductor of the regular Victor house orchestra, and engaged some extra players with whom he had played while under Cappa and Sousa. He arranged and conducted the studio band for almost all of the Victor company's recordings until 1916, for singers including Enrico Caruso, Billy Murray, and Al Jolson.Various combinations of musicians, under Rogers' direction, also recorded under different titles, including the Victor Light Opera Company, the Victor Orchestra, the Victor Concert Orchestra (which included extra players mostly taken from the Philadelphia Orchestra, a practice Victor would continue for decades), the Victor Mixed Chorus, and the Victor Military Band (many of whose recordings from 1912 on were conducted by Edward T. King, who was technically a Victor employee upon the company's acquisition of American Zonophone in 1906). Their most successful recordings included "The Merry Widow Waltz" (from The Merry Widow, performed by the Victor Orchestra, 1907), "The Glow-Worm" (from Paul Lincke's operetta Lysistrata, performed by the Victor Orchestra, 1908), and "The Yama Yama Man" (from The Three Twins, performed by Ada Jones and the Victor Light Opera Co., 1909). On one notable occasion in 1910, when American Quartet member Steve Porter was unavailable for a recording session, Rogers substituted for him in the vocal group.The resultant recording, of "Casey Jones", became "perhaps the first recording to sell over a million copies in American music history". Rogers also recorded many pieces of classical music, in many cases the first time these pieces had been recorded. Many of his recordings were made in competition with those of the Columbia Symphony Orchestra led by Charles A. Prince, and generally Rogers' recordings were more commercially successful than those of his rival.