Bobby Prince 1945 - 2026

Bobby being humble, game, and funny as our "Please Sponsor a Musician" Poster Boy.

Bobby Prince was, among other things, a composer of music for video games, notably Doom. He was also hilarious, kind, and a great friend. Honor the great man and find out the real facts here. That said, here are some of my favorite memories of him.

"Lovely talking with you, Bobby" is the subject line of the last email thread I had with him. But even more lovely listening to and playing with him.

Bobby used to attend the Project BarBQ audio think-tank conference regularly, and for the other attendees he was a great collaborator, contributor and beautiful spirit, life coach, and jam leader. So much so that we were able to get corporate sponsors to pitch in to make sure that he would attend. The engineers and other "suits" loved to have him and other working musicians on board, but Bobby so personified the benefits of the Artistic Spirit that he consented to be our "poster boy" for our "Sponsor a Musician" campaign. Hence the photo.

Bobby and I shared a room at a conference long ago. Must have been about 30 or so years back. When we discussed parenthood, he said in the most earnest and caring way, "George you gotta be like Santa Claus to those kids. Give them everything." That informed my journey and I wouldn't be surprised if it made my kids lives a tick or two nicer than if he hadn't said it.

He also on that same trip said, in that Huckleberry Hound voice of his, "George have you tried these new three-blade razors? Mach III? Man, my face hasn't been this baby-butt smooth since I was nine years old!" He checked out before I did, (see what I did there?) and left me a brand new razor, the kind I've been using ever since. This caused me to declare from that date that the Mach III razor was the official razor blade of game audio, which it remains to this day.

He did it again a short while later with the Zoom H2 recorder. Called me up just to say "George, have you tried...? They're cheap, they record stereo or quad, they weigh like nothin' and they sound amazing..." Changed my life. For years I always travelled with a Zoom recorder, they were declared "official" for game audio, and I issued them to my teams like 007 was issued his Walther PPK. Nice call, Bobby. If you played games I've done sound for, you've heard sounds I've captured with that little machine.

The last time I jammed with him was in one of our guerilla jams at a hotel at the Game Developer Conference, where we'd take over the piano and just make noise with friends until we'd get kicked out or the piano broke. I got to meet the beautiful Connie, and seeing those two together it was like we could all tell that Bobby was HOME, he was going to be happy for the rest of his life.

In one of my last conversations with him, he was very into ukulele chords and voice leading, it was important to him how much difference it made to play the chords a certain way. He'd been teaching Connie the "right" way to play all those tunes on uke, and of course we know how many thousands of people she's made happy with her lovely, kind performances at Dollywood, always blessing people with her good heart, her little chicken friend, and her banjolele--and as far as I can tell, the "right" chords! If anybody wants a uke chart or two of the ones that Bobby made for Connie, contact me on Facebook and I'll pass them on. They're fun, and he's right, they sound very cool when you follow the right dots. You can pass Bobby's blessings on, too, through your playing, and I think he'd like that.

Music mattered to Bobby, and he always made the world around him brighter with it when he could, either talking about music, advocating it, glorifying it, or best of all, writing tunes or playing them with friends.

For what it's worth, one of his favorite things at Project BarBQ was to try to get a group together to sing cowboy harmonies. I seem to remember "Happy Trails." Happy Trails to you, Bobby. Until we meet again.

Love,

Your Friend Always

George "The Fat Man" Sanger