[3] A highlight of his performing career was to play before the Prince and Princess of Wales, about 1880 at Her Majesty's Theatre in London.

[5] Two biographies written during his lifetime are vague about the start of his musical career from 1865 to 1869; authors Edward Le Roy Rice and Samuel Swaim Stewart published generalized timelines of his activities.

[1][4] He was reported by Le Roy Rice to have joined the Campbell and Huntley Minstrels in 1865, and to have played with them for several years.

[6][7] They became Campbell and Huntley's Minstrels in the midst of a November and December fallout between Austin and Hopkins in the newspapers.

[1][17] In early 1873 he joined the McKee and Rogers Company, and afterwards rejoined the Martinetti Troupe.

[1] He left Europe later in 1880 and arrived in Memphis, Tennessee on December 30, to fill out his contract with Mr. Haverly's "New Mastodon Minstrels.

"[19] From 1881 to 1884 Huntley performed with Whitmore and Clark's Minstrels, and later formed a partnership with John H.

[3][1] Lee left for California in June 1887, while Huntley continued to teach and perform.

[3] "Will A. Huntley gave a pleasing musical setting to a number of my songs, which met with favor in several cases and here, I recall another incident.

At first, the manager told him he was afraid a Bowery audience would not stand for his appearing in full evening dress—swallow tails and all—and make the stage, with things thrown, look like a delicatessen shop.

The instrumentation and voicing carries with it a flute obbligato imitating the pretty song and twitter of birds at twilight.

Starting in the mid-1860s, impresario Tony Pastor capitalized on middle class sensibilities and spending power when he began to feature "polite" variety programs in his New York City theatres.

[22] Pastor used the term "vaudeville" in place of "variety" in early 1876,[23] hoping to draw a potential audience from female and family-based shopping traffic uptown by barring liquor in his theatres and bawdy material from his shows.

Some of their advertising posters showed them marching in solidarity, in formal dress and in white face.

From 1887 to 1893, he also performed at concerts organized by Fairbanks and Cole, high-end banjo manufacturers in competition with S. S.

Huntley's compositions were recorded by artists between 1898 and 1926 on Berliner, Victor, Columbia and Edison labels.