Pee Wee King › Similar Artists

Saunders King - 78% match to Pee Wee King

Saunders Samuel King, 13 March 1909, Staple, Louisiana, USA, d. 31 August 2000, Oakland, California, USA. Starting out as a singer, and obtaining a job with the NBC network, King took up the electric guitar in 1938 after hearing Charlie Christian. King formed his own band in 1942, and became popular around the San Francisco area; he then began recording for the small Rhythm Read more

Cleo Brown - 73% match to Pee Wee King

Cleopatra Brown, 8 December 1903, DeKalb, Mississippi, USA, d. 15 April 1995, Denver, Colorado, USA. Born into a musical household, Brown began singing in her father’s church and after the family moved to Chicago in 1919, she studied music, learning to play piano. In the 20s she worked in clubs and tent shows, and was a frequent broadcaster with her own radio show. From Read more

Rex Stewart - 70% match to Pee Wee King

Rex William Stewart Jnr., 22 February 1907, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, d. 7 September 1967, Los Angeles, California, USA. Stewart began playing cornet in his early teens, having previously tried several other instruments. By 1921 he was in New York where he played in a succession of bands over the next three or four years. A spell with Elmer Snowden in the mid-20s was Read more

Red Foley - 43% match to Pee Wee King

Clyde Julian Foley, 17 June 1910, in a log cabin between Blue Lick and Berea, Kentucky, USA, d. 19 September 1968, Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA. The son of a fiddle player, Foley learned guitar as a child and was encouraged to sing by his parents. After high school, he attended Georgetown College, Kentucky, where he was discovered by a scout for the noted WLS National Barn Dance Read more

Jimmy Wakely - 40% match to Pee Wee King

Clarence Wakely, 16 February 1914, near Mineola, Arkansas, USA, d. 25 September 1982, Mission Hills, California, USA. Wakely’s family relocated to Oklahoma when he was child, moving several times as they struggled to make a living, usually by sharecropping. He gave himself the name of Jimmy and attended High School at Cowden, Oklahoma, where he learned to play the guita Read more

Floyd Tillman - 37% match to Pee Wee King

8 December 1914, Ryan, Oklahoma, USA, d. 22 August 2003, Bacliff, nr. Houston, Texas, USA. Tillman was the youngest of 11 children of a sharecropping family who moved to Post, Texas, when he was a few months old. He first learned to play mandolin and banjo but later changed to guitar, performing with Adolph Hofner’s band, even singing a few songs, although later admitti Read more

Spade Cooley - 36% match to Pee Wee King

Donnell Clyde Cooley, 22 February 1910, Grande, Oklahoma, USA, d. 23 November 1969, Vacaville, California, USA. His grandfather and father were talented fiddlers and he was playing at dances at the age of eight. Around 1930, the family moved to Modesto, California, where Cooley played local venues. In 1934, his resemblance to Roy Rogers found him employment as a stand-in and Read more

Harlem Hamfats - 29% match to Pee Wee King

Despite their name, the Hamfats were based in Chicago, Illinois, and were perhaps the first group created (by J. Mayo Williams) solely to make records. With some variation, the personnel consisted of New Orleans trumpeter Herb Morand, the brothers Joe and Charlie McCoy on guitar and mandolin, clarinettist Odell Rand, pianist Horace Malcolm, John Lindsay or Ransom Knowling on ba Read more

Johnny Bond - 29% match to Pee Wee King

Cyrus Whitfield Bond, 1 June 1915, Enville, Oklahoma, USA, d. 12 June 1978, Burbank, California, USA. Born into a poor farming family, Bond taught himself to play ukelele and guitar and played at local dances In 1934 he moved to Oklahoma and worked on radio, appearing as Cyrus Whitfield, Johnny Whitfield and then Johnny Bond. In 1937, he worked with Jimmy Wakely and Scotty H Read more

Stuff Smith - 27% match to Pee Wee King

Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith, 14 August 1909, Portsmouth, Ohio, USA, d. 25 September 1967, Munich, Germany. Smith began playing violin as a child; he had some formal tuition but left home at the age of 15 to make his way as a professional musician. In 1926, he became a member of the popular Alphonso Trent band, where he remained, with side trips to other bands, for four years Read more

Little Jimmy Dickens - 26% match to Pee Wee King

James Cecil Dickens, 19 December 1920, Bolt, West Virginia, USA. Dickens has summarized his early life as the youngest of 13 children in humorous country songs such as ‘A-Sleeping At The Foot Of The Bed’ and ‘Out Behind The Barn’. He had no intention of following his father into the coalmines, and being 4 feet 11 inches tall effectively ruled it out. When Read more

Merle Travis - 25% match to Pee Wee King

Merle Robert Travis, 29 November 1917, Rosewood, Kentucky, USA, d. 20 October 1983, Tahlequah, Oklahoma, USA. Travis was the son of a tobacco farmer but by the time he was four years old, the family had moved to Ebenezer, Kentucky, and his father was working down the mines. Travis’ father often remarked, ‘Another day older and deeper in debt’, a phrase his son Read more

Curtis Gordon - 24% match to Pee Wee King

Edward Curtis Gordon, 27 July 1928, Moultrie, Georgia, USA, d. 2 May 2004, Moultrie, Georgia, USA. A dedicated traditionalist, Gordon began playing guitar and singing as a child. His country music leaning was strongly towards the western swing of Bob Wills and he also admired Ernest Tubb. As a teenager and still in school, he played on local radio and also played in Mississi Read more

Carl Smith - 23% match to Pee Wee King

Ernest Tubb - 23% match to Pee Wee King

Ernest Dale Tubb, 9 February 1914, near Crisp, Ellis County, Texas, USA, d. 6 September 1984, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Ernest was the youngest of five children of Calvin Tubb, the foreman of a 300-acre cotton farm, and his wife Sarah. In 1920 the family relocated to Benjamin, and then moved again, to Kemp, in 1925. The following year, his parents divorced and initially he Read more