In 1925, Trotter entered the University of North Carolina, where he began his career as a professional musician playing piano for a college band led by Hal Kemp.
[5] Trotter recalled the background to his involvement with Pennies from Heaven in an interview with Canadian broadcaster Gord Atkinson.
After much persuasion, Trotter helped Johnston with the piano parts and fell in love with the score which included Pennies from Heaven, So Do I, and One, Two, Button Your Shoe, and also the Skeleton in the Closet.
Trotter recalled that the day Pennies from Heaven was recorded, the cameras were rolling with the orchestra on stage; it was not prerecorded as would be usual today.
John Scott Trotter considered that Crosby was a past master of lip syncing but it wasn't done in those days.
The Kraft Music Hall went fifty weeks a year and Trotter did one hundred and forty consecutive Thursdays without missing one.
Beginning with It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown in 1966, Trotter arranged and directed music scores for 11 Peanuts television specials and one feature film in conjunction with composer Vince Guaraldi.
[4] Carroll Carroll, who was the chief writer of Kraft Music Hall, recalled Trotter's massive volume and appetite when it came to his everyday life; Trotter, a monolith of a man, stood astride pop and 'long hair' music, as it was then called, like a colossus, and occasionally flew from Hollywood to New Orleans for the weekend (something not done often in the thirties) just to cater to his gourmet tastes with a decent plate of oysters Rockefeller.
During the war, when food writer M. F. K. Fisher was a guest on the show to plug her wartime conservation cookbook, How to Cook a Wolf, she told Bing that her book explained how to use leftovers.
The heartily-fed Trotter stepped to the mike and, in his most polite and gentle North Carolina drawl, asked, 'Pardon me, ma'am, but what are left-overs?