Pee Wee Hunt | |
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Background information | |
Birth name | Walter Gerhardt Hunt |
Born | Mount Healthy, Ohio, U.S. | May 10, 1907
Died | June 22, 1979 Plymouth, Massachusetts, U.S. | (aged 72)
Genres | Jazz |
Occupation(s) | Trombonist, vocalist, bandleader |
Instrument(s) | Trombone |
Walter Gerhardt "Pee Wee" Hunt (May 10, 1907 – June 22, 1979) [1] was an American jazz trombonist, vocalist, and bandleader. [2] Hunt was born in Mount Healthy, Ohio. [3] He developed a musical interest at an early age, as his mother, Sadie, played the banjo and his father, Edgar C., played violin. [1] He had a younger sister, Marian, and younger brother, Raymond. The teenage Hunt was a banjoist with a local band while he was attending college at Ohio State University, [1] where he majored in Electrical Engineering, [4] and during his college years he switched from banjo to trombone. [1] He graduated from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. [4] He joined Jean Goldkette's Orchestra in 1928. [4]
Hunt was the co-founder and featured trombonist with the Casa Loma Orchestra, [1] but he left the group in 1943 to work as a Hollywood radio disc jockey, before joining the Merchant Marine near the end of World War II. [4] He returned to the West Coast music scene in 1946. [1] His " Twelfth Street Rag" was a three million-selling, [2] number one hit in September 1948. [3] He was satirized as Pee Wee Runt and his All-Flea Dixieland Band in Tex Avery's animated MGM cartoon Dixieland Droopy (1954). His second major hit was " Oh!" (1953), his second million-selling disc, which reached number three in the Billboard chart. [5]
At age 72, Hunt died after a long illness in Plymouth, Massachusetts. [1] Hunt and his wife, Ruth, had a daughter, Holly, and a son, Lawrence.