In many ways, Harry Partch's hobo music could have faded away after his death in the early morning of September 3, 1974. His music was so intimately connected with his persona (and he secured most of his performances through sheer force of will) that performances could have stopped. He had turned to recordings early in his career as a workable solution for dissemination of his music, but through those albums, the One Voice most associated with the sound of his music was Partch's own. Attempts to perform without his voice could have failed, as the recordings make it sound as though the compositions all arose from his own inflections and cadences. As the coming of the automobile signaled the decline of hobo culture, Partch's death could have marked the decline of his music. As Ben Johnston wrote a few months later, after surveying the fragility of Partch's legacy, “The problem staggers conception.”

However, Partch's hobo music endured. The fascination it held for students, composers, and audience members in the early 1940s continued as the decades rolled by. In the late 1940s while Partch was at Wisconsin, reviews of U.S. Highball marked it as a musically “startling journey,” one of “the best in newer music.”