Pee Wee Hunt

Walter Gerhardt "Pee Wee" Hunt (May 10, 1907 – June 22, 1979) was an American jazz trombonist, vocalist, and bandleader.[1] Hunt was born in Mount Healthy, Ohio.[2] He developed a musical interest at an early age, as his mother, Sadie, played the banjo and his father, Edgar C., played violin. 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 where he majored in Electrical Engineering,[3] and during his college years he switched from banjo to trombone. He graduated from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.[3] He joined Jean Goldkette's Orchestra in 1928.[3]

Pee Wee Hunt
Hunt in 1941
Background information
Birth name	Walter Gerhardt Hunt
Born	(1907-05-10)May 10, 1907 Mount Healthy, Ohio, U.S.
Died	June 22, 1979(1979-06-22) (aged 72) Plymouth, Massachusetts, U.S.
Genres	Jazz
Occupation(s)	Trombonist, vocalist, bandleader
Instruments	Trombone

Pee Wee Hunt was the co-founder and featured trombonist with the Casa Loma Orchestra, 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.[3] He returned to the West Coast music scene in 1946. His "Twelfth Street Rag" was a three million-selling,[1] number one hit in September 1948.[2] 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.[4]

At age 72, Hunt died after a long illness in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Hunt and his wife, Ruth, had a daughter, Holly, and a son, Lawrence.