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Pee Wee King
(1914 - 2000)
As an instrumentalist, bandleader, actor, songwriter, and business man, Pee Wee King has had a long and varied career. Born Julius Frank Kuczynski in 1914 in Wisconsin, he learned concertina, fiddle and accordian while playing in his father's polka band. After graduation, while fronting his own band, he met Gene Autry; the future cowboy star was hosting his own program on Chicago's WLS and offered King an opportunity to back him. By 1934, Autry and King moved to WHAS Louisville, but after less than a year, Autry departed for Hollywood.
After a year spent playing with Frankie More's Log Cabin Boys, Pee Wee King formed his own Golden West Cowboys with vocalist Texas Daisy, fiddler Abner Sims and guitarist Curly Rhodes. King ran a tight ship, organizing arrangements and intricate stage shows which promoted the band well around the Louisville area. By 1937, the Golden West Cowboys had accepted a spot on the Grand Ole Opry.
During the early-to-mid-'40s, King's band proved an important breeding ground for vocalists; in the span of just five years, Eddy Arnold, Milton Estes, Cowboy Copas and Tommy Sosebee all spent time with the Golden West Cowboys. Redd Stewart, who had joined in 1937 and outlasted them all, became the star of the show on King's charting hits, beginning with the number-three hit "Tennessee Waltz" in 1948. During the next six years, the Golden West Cowboys hit the Top 15 ten times in succession. King's only number one, "Slow Poke," was a giant hit in 1951 -- it spent 15 weeks at number one and crossed over to number one pop as well (for three weeks).
Although Pee Wee King remained leader of this very popular Western Swing band well into the 1950s, eventually the Rock ‘N’ Roll craze spelt the end for his kind of music. At the end of the 1950s, he broke up his band but continued to tour with Redd Stewart in Minnie Pearl’s Roadshow, continuing to run the show after she retired in 1964 until 1968. In the 1970s, he devoted himself to business interests which included a booking agency and music publishing (he had been involved in the writing of more than 400 songs). A past director of the Country Music Foundation, Pee Wee King was inducted into both the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and, in 1974, the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Pee Wee King passed away in Louisville on March 7, 2000, after suffering a heart attack.
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