Ralph Peer: A & R Man for Okeh and Victor
Manager of The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers
One of the central figures in the early Country Music record industry was Ralph Peer. He discovered, developed and managed such early country stars found in his book as Fiddlin’ John Carson, Ernest Stoneman, Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, and established a copyright and royalty system that would become an industry standard. A shrewd businessman, Peer helped create and sustain the “hillbilly” personae; a critical component of promotion.
Just as success marketing “race” records, the “hillbilly” campaign worked even though it against the wishes of many Country musicians. “That hillbilly,” exclaimed Clayton McMichen, “we fought it tooth and nail.” Peer, who never understood Country Music on personal level, knew what to record and how to market it. When he named Al Hopkins and His Buckle Busters; the “Hill Billies,” they were, at first, embarrassed. A short time later they were hamming it up in hillbilly garb making a movie short. To be a hillbilly performer became fun and more importantly- profitable.
By the end of the 1920s Ralph Peer was making $250,000 per quarter (approximately 4 million today) off royalties alone! He was also the manager of two of country’s biggest selling artists: Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family. He would go on to almost single-handedly build the largest publishing company in the world.
In 1958 during a two day interview, he talked candidly about the artists he “tried so hard to forget.” His candid, often blunt and contradictory assessments offer some insight into the genius of Ralph Peer. He was more comfortable hobnobbing with high society folk at the opera or growing his prize-winning gardenias than mixing in the studio with hillbillies and blacks. “If I have a favorite saying: It’s the art of knowing where the lightning is going to strike,” said Peer. “And how in God’s name you can detect that I don’t know. But I’ve always been able to do it. The real secret is continuous activity.”
Peer’s Early Life
Born May 22, 1892, in Independence, Missouri, Ralph worked in his father’s store and sold Columbia Graphophones and records. He was a frequent 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 he landed 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.
After a brief stint with the Merchant Marines, by 1920 he was back in the United States, again with Columbia. When his boss, W. S. Fuhri, moved to the smaller 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. Showing an interest in blues and jazz, Okeh recorded black vaudeville singer Mamie Smith in 1920. Peer helped make the second Smith record featuring “Crazy Blues” which a runaway million-seller mostly in the African-American community. Peer and Okeh introduced "race" records, performances by black artists specifically targeted at black buyers.
Peer Heads Up Okeh Division
Peer began 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, displaying a knack for discovering new talent, signed singer Sara Martin and young Harlem pianist Fats Waller.
"We had records by all foreign groups," says Mr. Peer. "German records, Swedish records, Polish records, but we were afraid to advertise Negro records. So I listed them in the catalogue as 'race' records and they are still known as that."
About this time the vogue of Mamie Smith at Okeh was swamped by the arrival of the great Bessie Smith on Columbia records. Bessie Smith had now become almost a legendary figure and her records have lately been reissued in a new form and are considered classics in blues singing by experts. Her most famous was Gold Coast Blues, which originally sold into the millions. It may be remarked that at the present day a sale of 100,000 records is held to be sensational in any field.”
In March 1923, Peer was visited Henry Whittier, who boasted he was the "world's greatest harmonica player." After making several recordings, the first country vocals were temporarily shelved but in June at the recommendation of Polk Brockman, Okeh’s Atlanta representative, he recorded and released Fiddlin' John Carson's "The Little Old Cabin in the Lane." Carson became early Country Music’s first star.
"It was so bad that we didn't even put a serial number on the records, thinking that when the local dealer got his supply, that would be the end of it," says Mr. Peer. "We sent him 1,000 records, which he received on a Thursday. That night he called New York on the phone and ordered 5,000 more sent by express and 10,000 by freight. When the national sale got to 500,000, we were so ashamed we had Fiddler John come up to NewYork and do a re-recording of the numbers."
In his continuing effort to discover new acts and reach untapped markets, Peer began traveling the U.S. with portable recording equipment designed by OKeh technician Charles Hibbard. During the course of 1923 he visited Atlanta, Chicago, and St. Louis, along the way recording previously unknown acts including future jazz legends Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, and Bennie Moten; blues singer Sippie Wallace; and Ernest V. "Pop" Stoneman, whose 1925 hit "The Titanic" created a country staple, the "event" song. Over the next two years Peer expanded his travels to include Cincinnati, Dallas, Cleveland, Detroit, and New Orleans -- he advertised his arrival in local newspapers and paid each artist $25 per selection, while securing copyright protection for original songs recorded on his watch via the 1909 U.S. Copyright Act.
Peer was the first label exec to encourage his recording artists to write their own original songs and avoid copyrighted material, pocketing most of the royalties himself -- the practice proved so lucrative that when he left OKeh to join the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1925, he accepted a nominal salary of just one dollar a year, instead assuming control of all copyrighted work created under his supervision and administering his publishing portfolio via his Southern Music firm. He learned that by managing the artists he could better control the copyrights and his interests. Beginning in 1925 he signed Ernest Stoneman to an exclusive contract. After Stoneman had a hit with “The Titanic” Peer began signing other groups. By the end of 1927 he was managing the hottest Country groups in the nation.
Bristol Sessions
With Victor's new "Orthophonic" recording equipment in tow, Peer returned to Atlanta in early 1927, followed by stops in Memphis and New Orleans. "If I can't get 'em in town,” he said, “we'll go to the woods." That summer, he again hit the road, this time departing for Bristol, TN, a small farming town on the Virginia border recommended to him by Stoneman, who on July 25 was the first act Peer recorded. Artist turnout was tepid, however, until a newspaper profile of Stoneman recounted the $3,600 in royalty checks he received in 1926 and the $100 a day he was earning while cutting new music in Bristol -- soon Peer was flooded with auditions and making records well into the night, in all documenting 76 songs by 19 different performers. They included the Carter Family -- songwriter A.P., his singer wife Sara, and guitarist sister-in-law Maybelle, who would emerge as the "first family of country music" -- as well as Jimmie Rodgers, "the Singing Brakeman" who was to become the first hillbilly superstar. Peer's Bristol sessions are considered the big bang of country music -- the Carters and Rodgers catalyzed rural American music's transformation into universal art, not to mention an increasingly powerful commercial force. Peer immediately grasped their brilliance, managing the careers of both acts and carefully selecting the songs they recorded.
Great Depression
By this time, Peer was also courting the mainstream pop market with future perennials like Hoagy Carmichael's "Georgia on My Mind," and he also moved into Hollywood, enlisting composer Leroy Shield to write soundtracks for film comedy producer Hal Roach. But the Depression threatened to change everything -- rival labels including Columbia went bankrupt, and although the Carter Family's melancholy, deeply felt Appalachian ballads continued to sell, A.P. and Sara Carter's marriage teetered on the brink of collapse. Jimmie Rodgers' May 26, 1933, death from tuberculosis clearly heralded the end of an era.
Peer’s Later Years
After securing sole control of his copyrights, Peer exited Victor to concentrate on the international music market, establishing Southern Music offices in London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Mexico City, and Havana. While the outbreak of World War II threatened to curtail Peer's global ambitions, at home he dealt with the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers' 1941 decision to pull its copyrights from radio in a royalties dispute. Southern negotiated with ASCAP's rival Broadcast Music Inc. to license the adapted Latin American songs Peer had collected for years, giving traditional standards like "Perfidia," "Brazil," and "Besame Mucho" new life on U.S. radio, and though ASCAP's radio boycott lasted only a few weeks, the opening was enough to establish BMI as a true contender to the publishing throne.
Following the war, Peer changed course again, signing contemporary classical composers like Charles Ives, Jean Sibelius, and Virgil Thomson, and Southern Music's catalog only grew in value with the advent of rock & roll, as acts including Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, the Platters, and the Rolling Stones made its old songs new all over again. But by this time Peer devoted much of his time and energy to horticulture, becoming director of the American Horticultural Society in 1959. He died in Los Angeles on January 19, 1960.