James Sanderson (musician)

The tune for "Hail to the Chief", the presidential anthem of the United States, is attributed to him, taken from a Scottish Gaelic melody.

[4] Sanderson worked closely with John Cartwright Cross, who usually provided words for a long series of burlettas, melodramas and pantomimes.

Cross devised a way for the Royal Circus, which became the Surrey Theatre, to get round restrictions on the classic plays they could show: it involved rendering the lines into rhymed couplets, and adding musical accompaniment.

[2] Sanderson began as a composer with instrumental accompaniment to William Collins's Ode on the Passions, which George Frederick Cooke recited at his benefit in Chester.

A ballad, Bound 'Prentice to a Waterman, sung in the drama Sir Francis Drake (1800), was regularly introduced into nautical plays for half a century.