Ralph Peer
b. Ralph Sylvester Peer, 22 May 1892, Kansas City, Missouri, USA, d. 19 January 1960, Hollywood, California, USA. Peer was a leading talent scout, recording engineer and record producer in the field of country music in the '20s and '30s, who went on to form the Southern Music Publishing Company. After working for his father, who sold sewing machines, phonographs and records, Peer spent several years with Columbia Records, in Kansas City, until around 1920, when he was hired as recording director of General Phonograph's OKeh label. In the same year he supervised what is said to be the first blues recording, Mamie Smith's Crazy Blues, and followed that, in June 1923, with another ‘first’, when he set up mobile recording equipment in Atlanta, Georgia, to make what was reputedly the first genuine country record, Fiddlin' John Carson's Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane/That Old Hen Cackled And The Rooster's Goin' To Crow. Early in 1925 Peer recorded some sides with Ernest V. Pop Stoneman, the pivotal figure of the Stoneman Family. Out of these sessions came The Sinking Of The Titanic, one of the biggest selling records of the '20s. In 1926 Peer moved to Victor Records, and began to tour the southern states in search of new talent. He struck gold in August of the following year, when he recorded Jimmie Rodgersand the Carter Family on the same session. Rodgers, who later became known as the Father Of Country Music, cut The Soldier's Sweetheart and Sleep, Baby, Sleep, while the Carters' first sides included Single Girl, Married Girl. Another historic session took place in 1931 when Peers recorded Rodgers and the Carters performing together. In 1928, together with Victor, Peer formed the Southern Music Company, to publish and promote the expanding catalogue of country music. 
Within two years, he had extended his interests to jazz, having added the legendary names and songs of Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrongand Count Basie to Southern's roster. Shortly afterwards Peer broadened his canvas even further by moving into popular music, with songs as diverse as Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell's Georgia On My Mind and the French waltz, Fascination, written by F.D. Marchetti, Maurice de Feraudy and Dick Manning. Ten years after Rockin' Chair, Southern published Lazy River, another Carmichael standard, which was successfully revived in 1961 by Bobby Darin. In 1932 Peer acquired sole ownership of Southern from Victor and, in the same year, opened a London office headed by Harry Steinberg. Steinberg was able to place Southern copyrights with top bandleaders such as Henry Hall, enabling them to be heard on the popular radio programmes of the day. The '30s were boom years for sheet music, and it was not uncommon to sell over a million copies of a particular tune. In 1934 Southern had a smash hit in the UK with Fred Hillebrand's Home James And Don't Spare The Horses, which was popularized by Elsie Carlisle and Sam Browne with the Ambrose Orchestra. Back in the USA, Benny Goodman opened and closed his programmes with Let's Dance and Goodbye, both Southern copyrights. In the early '30s Peer had visited Mexico and picked up several songs such as Granada and Maria Elena, but in 1938, Southern's situation completely changed, and the publishing company moved dramatically into the big league. After further journeys to Central America, Peer flooded the world market with that region's music, and transformed it into enormous hits. Songs such as Frenesi, Brazil, Tico Tico, Perfidia (a hit in 1941 for Glenn Miller and revived 20 years later by the Ventures), Baia, Ba-Ba-Lu, Amor, Besame Mucho and El Cumbanchero endured as some of Southern's most lucrative copyrights. Time Was (Duerme), successful for bandleader Jimmy Dorsey in 1941, was was still heard regularly in the UK in the '90s, in a version by Nelson Riddle's Orchestra, as the signature tune of veteran broadcaster Hubert Gregg's long-running radio show, THANKS FOR THE MEMORY. Southern had another big hit with the title song from the 1939 movie, INTERMEZZO, which starred Ingrid Bergman and Leslie Howard. It was especially popular in the UK, where the film's title was ESCAPE TO HAPPINESS. In 1940 there came another watershed when the dispute between the ASCAP and US radio stations, led to the inauguration of the rival Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI). BMI supported music by blues, country and hillbilly artists, and Peer, through his Peer-International company, soon contributed a major part of BMI's catalogue. 
During World War II, and just afterwards, Peer published many fondly remembered songs such as Deep In The Heart Of Texas and You Are My Sunshine (both hits for Bing Crosby), Humpty Dumpty Heart (Glenn Miller), ‘You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You ( Russ Morgan), The Three Caballeros ( Andrews Sisters), Say A Prayer For The Boys Over There ( Deanna Durbin), I Should Care and The Coffee Song (both Frank Sinatra), That's What I Like About The South (Phil Harris), You've Changed (Connie Russell), I Get the Neck Of The Chicken ( Freddie Martin) and Can't Get Out Of This Mood (Johnny Long). Hot on the trail of the liberating forces, Peer was back in Europe in 1945, and published Jean Villard and Bert Reisfeld's composition Les Trois Cloches (The Three Bells), which was recorded by Edith Piaf, and subsequently became a hit for the Browns, in 1952, when it was also known as The Jimmy Brown Song. Around that time, Peer was still publishing such music as Mockingbird Hill, a million seller for Patti Page, and Les PaulAnd Mary Ford, Sway ( Dean Martin and Bobby Rydell), Busy Line ( Rose Murphy) and the novelty I Know An Old Lady ( Burl Ives). Then came the rock ‘n’ roll revolution, during which Southern published hits by Buddy Holly, Little Richard, the Big Bopper and the Platters. In 1956 Peer-Southern's Mexican office signed Perez Prado, who is credited with having created the Latin-American jazz music, the mambo. He added evergreens such as Patricia and Mambo Jambo to the catalogue. By then Peer had relinquished control of the Peer-Southern empire which was represented by over 20 offices throughout the world, and handed over to his son, Ralph Peer II. Peer Snr was devoting more time to copyright law, and to his absorbing interest in horticulture, especially camellias, on which he was a leading authority. In the '60s Southern had successful copyrights with songs such as Running Bear ( Johnny Preston), ‘What In the World's Come Over You’ ( Jack Scott), Little Boy Sad ( Johnny Burnette), Clementine (Bobby Darin), Love Me With All Your Heart ( Karl Denver), Catch The Wind ( Donovan), Detroit City ( Bobby Bare) and Winchester Cathedral ( New Vaudeville Band). The original country connection was retained with material such as Mel Tillis's Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town, which was a big hit for Kenny Rogers. Sadly, Peer did not live to hear those songs.