Pianist Peck Kelley led this influential territory band in Texas in the 1920s. Kelley’s style was said to be ahead of his time and more harmonically advanced than other bands of that era. Pee Wee Russell and Jack Teagarden played in the band as well as Leon Roppolo of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. They never recorded.
Peck Kelley refused to leave Texas to play although he was offered jobs by Paul Whiteman, Red Nichols. The Andrews Sisters’ big hit song “Beat Me Daddy, Eight To The Bar” is said to be about Kelley. Peck Kelley joined the Dick Shannon quartet with Glen Boyd on Bass Fiddle in 1957, from which the only studio recordings from this musician survive.
| Artist | Instrument |
| Peck Kelley | Piano |
| Joe Loyocano | Bass |
| Leon Prima | Trumpet |
| Pee Wee Russell | Clarinet |
| Leon Roppolo | Clarinet |
| Jack Teagarden | trombone |
Redhotjazz.com was a pioneering website during the "Information wants to be Free" era of the 1990s. In that spirit we are recovering the lost data from the now defunct site and sharing it with you.
Most of the music in the archive is in the form of MP3s hosted on Archive.org or the French servers of Jazz-on-line.com where this music is all in the public domain.
Files unavailable from those sources we host ourselves. They were made from original 78 RPM records in the hands of private collectors in the 1990s who contributed to the original redhotjazz.com. They were hosted as .ra files originally and we have converted them into the more modern MP3 format. They are of inferior quality to what is available commercially and are intended for reference purposes only. In some cases a Real Audio (.ra) file from Archive.org will download. Don't be scared! Those files will play in many music programs, but not Windows Media Player.
