Paul Peek
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Paul Edward Peek Jr. (June 23, 1937 – April 3, 2001) was an early
rockabilly Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music. It dates back to the early 1950s in the United States, especially the Southern United States, South. As a genre, it blends the sound of Western music (North America), Western musi ...
pioneer. Peek was born in High Point, North Carolina, and was raised in Greenville, South Carolina. Paul learned to play the guitar, steel guitar, and bass while he was 12 years old. When he was 14 he played in several local country bands. He graduated from Greenville Senior High School in 1955 and performed on steel guitar with Claude Casey and the Sagedusters on WFBC-TV in 1955 on a weekly TV show. In 1956 Paul was recruited as an early member of
Gene Vincent Vincent Eugene Craddock (February 11, 1935 – October 12, 1971), known as Gene Vincent, was an American rock and roll musician who pioneered the style of rockabilly. His 1956 top ten hit with his backing band the Blue Caps, "Be-Bop-a-Lula", is ...
& The Blue Caps, sometimes stealing the limelight. As a member of the Blue Caps, Peek was one of the first rock artists to appear in the movies, appearing in ''
The Girl Can't Help It ''The Girl Can't Help It'' is a 1956 American musical comedy film starring Jayne Mansfield in the lead role, Tom Ewell, Edmond O'Brien, Henry Jones, and Julie London. The picture was produced and directed by Frank Tashlin, with a screenpla ...
'' (1956). Peek had the distinction of being the first artist to record for National Recording Corporation out of Atlanta. In 1958, NRC 001 ("Sweet Skinny Jenny"/"The Rock-A-Round") was recorded at WGST Radio Station. In 1958 Paul recorded a novelty song, "Olds-Mo-William", and performed the song on Dick Clark's Saturday Night "Beech Nut" National TV Show. Because of distribution problems with NRC Records, the recording died before it could become a national hit. He also appeared on New York City's "The Big Beat" with host Alan Freed. Musicians who appeared on Peek's NRC singles included
Joe South Joe South (born Joseph Alfred Souter; February 28, 1940 – September 5, 2012) was an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. Best known for his songwriting, South won the Grammy Award for Grammy Award for Song of the Year, ...
,
Jerry Reed Jerry Reed Hubbard (March 20, 1937 – September 1, 2008), known professionally as Jerry Reed, was an American country singer, guitarist, composer, songwriter and actor who appeared in more than a dozen films. His signature songs included " Gui ...
,
Ray Stevens Harold Ray Ragsdale (born January 24, 1939), known professionally as Ray Stevens, is an American country music, country and pop singer-songwriter and comedian. He is best known for his Grammy-winning recordings "Everything Is Beautiful" and "M ...
, and
Sonny James Jimmie Hugh Loden (May 1, 1928February 22, 2016), known professionally as Sonny James, was an American country music singer and songwriter best known for his 1957 hit, " Young Love", topping both the ''Billboard'' Hot Country and Disk Jockey s ...
. Eskew Reeder, Jr, also known as Esquerita, was a co-writer and piano player on this first single. Reeder, a fellow Carolinian, was instrumental in developing the style popularized by
Little Richard Richard Wayne Penniman (December 5, 1932 – May 9, 2020), known professionally as Little Richard, was an American singer, pianist, and songwriter. He was an influential figure in popular music and culture for seven decades. Described as the "Ar ...
. Esquerita's wild recordings for
Capitol Records Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007), and simply known as Capitol, is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-base ...
are collector's items. The flip side of "Olds-Mo-William", "I'm Not Your Fool Anymore," has a fine vocal group backing up Paul, the members of which are unknown. Peek's NRC recordings were bootlegged in Europe for years, and have now been re-released on CD by NRC. Although Peek recorded for several major labels, some of his most memorable recordings are the NRC singles, "Olds-Mo-William" and "The Rock-A-Round". Peek's biggest sellers were "Brother-In-Law (He's A Moocher)", (1961) produced by Joe South on Fairlane Records (distributed by
King King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...
), reaching No. 84 on the Billboard Hot 100, and "Pin The Tail On The Donkey" (1966), another Joe South Production on CBS Records reaching No. 91 on the chart. In early 1964, local Minneapolis band Gregory Dee & The Avanties had a big regional hit with a version of "Olds-Mo-William". Although his national recording career waned, Peek continued to play music professionally, establishing a stage persona that made him a wildly popular nightclub performer in Atlanta, GA for decades. His Atlanta bands included some of the city's finest sidemen, including local guitar virtuoso Kenneth Watkins. In the early 1980s, he and Dickie Harrell, Bobby Jones, Bubba Facenda, and Johnny Meeks, all former Blue Caps, made the first of several appearances at rockabilly festivals in England. The Blue Caps' popularity was, and is, alive and well in Europe. It was only after his health began to decline that Paul Peek gave up performing publicly. Peek died from
cirrhosis Cirrhosis, also known as liver cirrhosis or hepatic cirrhosis, chronic liver failure or chronic hepatic failure and end-stage liver disease, is a chronic condition of the liver in which the normal functioning tissue, or parenchyma, is replaced ...
in Lithonia, Georgia, on April 3, 2001, at the age of 63. In 2012,
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF), also simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum and hall of fame located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States, on the shore of Lake Erie. The museum documents the history of rock music and th ...
inducted Peek as a member of the Blue Caps by a special committee, aimed at correcting the previous mistake of not including the Blue Caps with Gene Vincent.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Peek, Paul 1937 births 2001 deaths American rockabilly musicians National Recording Corporation artists 20th-century American musicians