Pee Wee Hunt

Pee Wee Hunt joined his band for some lighthearted antics during a 1948 Capitol recording date. Their tongue-in-cheek rendition of “Twelfth Street Rag” adopted the loose, unpolished style of novice Dixielanders and jazz insurgents still rooted in 1921 conventions. Label executives embraced the results, authorized its release, and watched in astonishment as the track turned into a substantial commercial success.

Before this unplanned moment, Hunt had built his name chiefly through a lengthy association with the Casa Loma Orchestra. Music ran in the family: his father played violin and his mother played guitar. He first took up the banjo at seventeen, soon doubled on trombone in neighborhood groups, and eventually abandoned the banjo altogether.

A spell with Jean Goldkette’s Orchestra placed him in Kansas City from 1927 to 1928, after Bix Beiderbecke’s time there. He also performed with the Hollywood Theatre Orchestra in Detroit. In 1929 he became one of the founding members of the Casa Loma Orchestra, the unit that Glen Gray would later lead.

Hunt supplied occasional trombone solos but drew the most notice for his affable, sometimes comic vocals. He stayed fourteen years before leaving in May 1943 and settling in Los Angeles. There he worked briefly as a disc jockey, served in the U.S. Merchant Marine, and assembled his own Dixieland band in 1946.

The hit status of “Twelfth Street Rag” kept him returning to the Capitol studios for additional sessions through 1962, yet no later release matched its impact. Hunt remained active on the scene well into the 1970s.