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 Ralph S. Peer
A Life of Infinite Variety and Many Achievements
by Richard M. Sudhalter
If one abiding paradox surrounds the life of Ralph Sylvester Peer, it is this: that a man so indispensable to the story of 20th Century vernacular music should remain so little known to the public.
Consider the evidence: histories of popular and country music, jazz and the blues, as well as the recording and music publishing industries, abound with his innovations and discoveries. Peer figures centrally in the lives of performers as disparate as the Carter Family and "singing brakeman" Jimmie Rodgers, of Thomas "Fats" Waller and Kansas City bandleader Bennie Moten, of Latin American legends Alberto Dominguez and Agustin Lara, and of blues icons Sleepy John Estes and Bukka White. Success might have been longer coming to "Star Dust" composer Hoagy Carmichael but for Peer's foresight in publishing and promoting his work; song standards from France, Italy, Germany, England, Mexico, Brazil, and other countries might have been far slower reaching the international audiences they now command.
In short, historical research finds Ralph Peer everywhere, driving the main action from a position usually just offstage, slightly out of camera range. And ironically enough, that may be the way he preferred it. From all indications, Peer considered himself a businessman, working behind the scenes in living embodiment of Calvin Coolidge's 1925 declaration that, "The chief business of the American people is business."
He was born May 22, 1892, in Independence, Missouri, the suburb of Kansas City best known as the birthplace of President Harry S. Truman. His father, Abram Peer, was a storekeeper, dealing in furniture, sewing machines and - significantly for the boy - Columbia Graphophones and records. A vaguely Horatio Alger flavor hangs over accounts of young Ralph, age ten, working weekends in Abram's stock room and learning the operation quickly enough to handle re-orders of machines, parts, and records. "Naturally I went in and out of Kansas City," he told interviewer Lillian Borgeson in 1959, a year before his death. "There was an interurban electrical line running back and forth, a 45-minute trip. I would go in to pick up a package of records, for example, or some repair parts."
Self-possessed and personable, the lad was soon a frequent and welcome visitor at Columbia's Kansas City offices and warehouse, and before long began filling in during summer months for vacationing stock and shipping clerks. Married directly out of high school and in need of a steady job, he knocked on the door he knew best, easily landing a full-time position with Columbia. "I worked very hard for them for a number of years," he recalled, and his enthusiasm and industry won rapid promotions to credit manager, retail manager, and finally a transfer to Chicago, Columbia's largest regional office.
Shortly after President Woodrow Wilson took the United States into World War I, young Peer went to sea in the Merchant Marine, catching his first taste of Britain and France and establishing an international outlook which would serve him well in coming years. By 1920 he was back in the United States, again with Columbia. When his old Chicago boss, W. S. Fuhri, moved to the smaller but livelier General Phonograph Corporation, young Peer followed him.
General had launched its OKeh label in 1918 with a selection of standard ballads, sacred music, marching bands, and light classical pieces. It also showed marked interest in the music of black Americans, particularly the blues and the emergent novelty called jazz. On the advice of house pianist-songwriter Perry Bradford, OKeh in early 1920 recorded black vaudeville singer Mamie Smith performing two numbers, one of them composed by Bradford himself. The record was an almost immediate success, prompting OKeh to schedule another Mamie Smith date. On August 10th, when the singer and a small backup band assembled in front of OKeh's acoustical recording horns, young Ralph Peer was there as assistant to musical supervisor Fred Hager.
"Crazy Blues," made that day, was a breakthrough, a runaway million-seller that revealed a fresh market for what Peer soon began calling "race" records, performances by black artists specifically targeted at black buyers. By the following summer he was running OKeh's new 8000 "race" series, and General Phonograph had captured a market that enabled it to compete significantly with industry leaders Columbia and Victor. By 1923, Peer and Hager had recorded such nascent artists as singer Sara Martin and young Harlem pianist Fats Waller, pupil and protège of the respected James P. Johnson.
Then, one morning that March, destiny strolled into Peer's West 45th Street Manhattan office in the person of a Virginia mill hand who introduced himself as William Henry Whittier and touted himself as "the world's greatest harmonica player." Peer, intrigued by such bravado, recorded a few test selections at Okeh's Union Square studio. "He was a great harmonica player," he recalled later. "No doubt about that."
By year's end OKeh had released performances by Whittier and by Atlanta-based "Fiddlin' John" Carson, among others, and launched yet another specialty record series, designated "hillbilly" by Peer and bearing its own catalogue numbers. Together with the company's already thriving business in ethnic and nationality-oriented records, the new lines propelled Okeh - and Ralph Peer - into the most important phase of his early career. Country music had arrived.
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