[Dixielandjazz] Eddie Peabody-- from On this Day in Jazz Age Music

[Norman Vickers]

Top:  DJML & Musicians & Jazzfans lists

From: Norman Vickers, Jazz Society of Pensacola

 

 

Here is an excerpt from "ON this day in Jazz Age Music" about Eddie Peabody.

 

I found this bio interesting.  My friend Henry Grad was trombonist/vocalist
with a territory band before WWII.  When the that band broke up because of
the war and draft, Henry joined Russ Morgan band for some months before the
draft board caught up with him.

 

Henry was in the Navy and went for training at Great Lakes, IL where bands
were being formed.  Said that Peabody was the commanding officer of that
unit.  Grad's opinion was that Peabody was a bit pedantic.  Said that
because of the great assortment of musical arrangers, Peabody got some great
arrangements that he was able to use after the war was over.

 

Thought you might be interested in Peabody's bio.

-=-------

 

 

 http://www.weirdwildrealm.com/filmimages/banjoland-1928.jpg
1902
Eddie Peabody, banjo
b. Reading, MA, USA
d. Nov. 7, 1970 in Covington, KY, USA
Age 68.
Known as "The Banjo King".

Biography
~by Eugene Chadbourne 
An old movie is flickering across a television screen late at night. Mickey
Rooney is cuddling up to Judy Garland, a banjo on his knee. He strums the
opening to "Swanee," hitting a few fancy licks. Certainly that can't be
Rooney playing the banjo. Who is it, really? None other than Eddie Peabody,
one of the few on this instrument who can make a serious claim to being the
most famous banjo player of all time. No, that would be Earl Scruggs, some
listeners who like to wallow in bluegrass might object. Or Bela Fleck,
younger banjo fans would argue. It is surely true that the fingerpicking
style of five-string bluegrass banjo playing has taken hold as the dominant
approach to this instrument, the sound involved in every breakout mainstream
hit using banjo, especially film soundtracks such as Bonnie and Clyde or
Deliverance. 

But there was a time when the plectrum tenor or four-string banjo style was
hitting big on the music scene, and Peabody was considered the king of this
particular style as well as one of the main developers of so many banjo
techniques and styles associated with the plectrum. (That's a pick that the
player holds between his fingers, as opposed to the bluegrass method of
playing with fingerpicks tightly wrapped around one's fingers, or the old
Appalachian style of playing with bare fingers, knuckles, etc.) Peabody's
career stretched over two world wars. He developed much of his stagecraft
during the heyday of vaudeville, and was able to keep working with his banjo
during the economically severe days of the Depression. A musical instrument
was first thrust into his hands by his mother, who noticed the rowdy little
boy would keep quiet if he was allowed to fiddle with the strings of a
mandolin. 

He began playing professionally upon his release from the Navy at the end of
World War I. At this time he was quite the multi-instrumentalist, playing up
to 30 different stringed instruments in his stage show, but always noticing
that when he played the banjo the audience would tend to go wild. No fool
he, Peabody kept fattening up the banjo's share of the proceedings until all
he was carrying around was the banjo case. Showmanship was a big part of the
act as well as musicality. One of his early triumphs was basically stealing
the show from one of the era's biggest stars, Rudy Vallee at a packed-out
show in San Francisco. Peabody entered the stage by sliding down a giant
prop of a banjo neck, wearing an eye-boggling blazer, and pants large enough
for a medium-sized giraffe. 

During this period his act became more and more extravagant, and he had
plenty of opportunities to fiddle with it (or more accurately pick at it)
because bookings were coming in 52 weeks of the year. He not only was
playing all the top vaudeville houses, the banjoist was doing command
performances for the likes of the Duke of Windsor, King Gustav of Sweden,
King George of England, and Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. Instrument
inventing was a hobby during the odd spare hour. A forgotten curiosity that
Peabody came up with was the banjoline, which was kind of a combination of a
banjo and a lap steel or Hawaiian guitar. The neck of this instrument was
fashioned after a banjo. There was also a unique sound design involving the
doubling of the third and fourth strings, one set in unison and the other an
octave apart, while the first and second strings were not doubled. The
instrument was available briefly from both the Rickenbacker and Fender
guitar kingdoms. 

Peabody is often credited with inventing the idea of playing the banjo with
a soft pick instead of the fingers, however it is hard to imagine other
players not having tried something like this from time to time. Musicians
playing instruments in the banjo family on other continents such as Africa
and Asia definitely have made use of different types of plectrums throughout
history. Peabody's use of a pick to play the fiddle was definitely unusual,
however, and country fiddlers that use this gimmick tend to credit the idea
to Peabody. His playing itself made it onto many radio and television
broadcasts as well as films, starting with some of the very first sound
pictures in 1926. The medium was a natural for exploiting routines he had
established in his stage act. In the 1937 movie Hula Heaven, Peabody
performs the chestnut "I'm an Old Cowhand" with a line of hula girls passing
off different instruments to him. He begins the song on harp guitar, then
switches to both mandolin and the eentsy mandola before winding up the
number on banjo. 

He began recording for the Dot label in 1924 and made a series of sides
including two albums exclusively featuring the banjoline. Some of the
best-sellers were Eddie Peabody Plays and When You're Smiling. Although he
recorded literally hundreds of songs, some of his favorite numbers include
"Hello Sandy," "Whoopee," and "Here Comes Charlie." His concert appearances
took him all over the world and he frequently performed for servicemen at
military bases. 


There are several different memoirs written by soldiers stationed overseas
in World War II that describe just such Peabody performances. He was known
for his dedication to the banjo and for taking time out of his schedule to
visit banjo students at music academies. Part of this might have been a
mercenary interest on his part, because yet another of his tricks was to
play a couple of numbers on several different banjos during the course of a
show, then sell the instruments offstage for a fat profit at the end of the
night to pickers eager to own an instrument that "Eddie Peabody had played."


He collapsed onstage at a nightclub in Kentucky in November of 1970, and
died of a stroke only eight hours later. Banjoist Lowell Schreyer published
a biography, The Eddie Peabody Story. Peabody himself would no doubt enjoy
the fact that one of the most enduring legends about him is a famous blooper
that came out of the mouth of a radio announcer one evening in the '30s:
"Ladies and gentlemen...Now Eddie Playbody will pee for you." 

 http://www.redhotjazz.com/EddiePeabody2.jpg
 <http://www.redhotjazz.com/peabody.html> Eddie Peabody on Red Hot Jazz

 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Peabody> Eddie Peabody - Wikipedia

 <http://www.spaceagepop.com/peabody.htm> Eddie Peabody

 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulz3Dxz2Xv8> Hal Kemp Band w. Eddie Peabody
1928 (VIDEO)