 In his youth he mastered piano, guitar, violin, flute, and slide trombone.He kept his trombone activities a secret at first, as his circumspect religious father James Henry Fillmore (1849–1936)—a composer of gospel songs, often in collaboration with Jessie Brown Pounds
—believed it an uncouth and sinful instrument.Henry's mother secretly bought a used trombone for him and obscured, from Henry's father, the son's learning to play the instrument.