|
|
|
 |
 |
Eddie Peabody
1902 - 1970 Performance Hall of Fame 1999 Edwin Ellsworth "Eddie" Peabody�s first instrument was a mandolin belonging to his father who at one time owned a music store. Peabody frequently joked, "... my mother used to give me my father�s mandolin to keep me quiet."He was five at the time. Four years later he took up the violin and gave his first public performance at age nine. His interest in stringed instruments continued through grammar school and high school, as he taught himself by picking an instrument up and figuring out the fingering and the chords. At 14 he left public school in Lynn, Massachusetts and "fibbed" about his age to enlist in the Navy in WWI. He was soon a popular entertainer of his fellow submariners who called him "Happiness Boy" for his performances with mandolin, guitar, violin and banjo. When he left the Navy in 1921 at Long Beach, California, he was a first class quartermaster and ready to start in show business. While he was best known as a plectrum banjoist, Peabody�s first theater act was doing tricks on the violin and other stringed instruments. However, it was his banjo playing that stopped the show. He got on the Pantages theatre circuit with the Earl Fuller Band and eventually ended up in Cleveland, Ohio around 1923. There he appeared with the Austin Wylie dance band and the Phil Spitalny orchestra. His frequent solos on steel guitar, violin and banjo, and his appearances on radio station WJAM operated by Willard Storage Batteries resulted in his unique style of playing the plectrum banjo. In the mid-1920s Peabody moved to New York where he recorded and organized his own band. When the American Record Corporation signed him to a long term contract, a flood of recordings on a many labels (Regal, Banner, Oriole, Domino, Cameo, etc.) followed. The development of his famous personal style of playing is apparent from the velocity recordings through the improved technology of orthophonic recordings. He made some of the first talking picture shorts in 1926 with the invention of Vitaphone for Warner Brothers. At about the same time he also had a part in developing the Vegavox banjo for the Vega Co. in Boston. It was an association that lasted for the rest of his career. In 1928 he opened a long engagement at the Paramount Theatre in New York City. He was a popular entertainer from his personal appearances, phonograph records, broadcasts from Radio City and the Vitaphone film shorts. He was also a frequent guest on the Rudy Vallee-Fleischan Hour radio show where he appeared with such greats as George Gershwin. In 1934 Peabody secured his first major part in a feature film when he teamed with Lee Tracey in "The Lemon Drop Kid". The two did a double banjo act with each fingering the other�s banjo, which had been a feature on the Rudy Vallee show. He also spent extensive time abroad touring Great Britain, Ireland, France and Germany. Back in the States he had a weekly spot on the "National Barn Dance" from Chicago. When WWII broke out, Peabody returned to active service with the Navy. He was musical director at the Great Lakes Naval Centre near Chicago and toured the Pacific to entertain the troops. He retired from the Naval Reserve in 1964 as a full captain. Peabody returned to the entertainment circuits after the war playing the best hotel, theatre and club dates, doing network television and recording for Dot records. At an age when he could have retired, he toured major cities of the country with "America Sings" in 1969. In 1970 he was touring the country with a show that was a combination of reminiscences of his show business years, many of the plectrum banjo solos he made famous and his arrangements of current hits of the day. While performing on his beloved instrument in Covington, Kentucky on November 6, 1970, he had a stroke and died the next day. His influence as a performer, teacher and exponent of the banjo cannot be underestimated, nor can his standard before the public. "In half a century of show business," he�d say, "I�ve never done a show you couldn�t bring a child to."
|
|
              |
||||
