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Artist
Billy Peek
12+ albums
Need to Raterockabillyrockguitarblues
about
Former lead guitarist with Rod Stewart. A Chuck Berry protege. Born in St. Louis, Missouri. Plays the blues and rock and roll locally. Fabulous! He is too young to be a historical figure, but he is also too important to leave out of history. Billy Peek is a St. Louis institution, a living legend who writes the history of his city with the music he plays on his guitar. He learned his craft listening to St. Louis blues musicians, including Albert King, Ike Turner, and the great Chuck Berry. Then he went on to international recognition as a rock and roll musician for his work with Rod Stewart’s band. But wherever Billy Peek goes, he takes a little of St. Louis with him in the hard-driving, boogie-woogie rock and roll that he says “tells a story and tells it in overdrive”. “I grew up on a street called Tower Grove”, he explains when asked about his origins as a musician, adding that “it was a good environment to grow up in to finally become a rock and roll musician, because it had all the background that it needed to give that good time feeling.” Tower Grove Avenue between Chouteau and Vandeventer formed the main corridor through “The Grove,” a south side working-class neighborhood where Peek grew up in the 1940s and 1950s. Like many people in the neighborhood, his parents had migrated from southeast Missouri during World War II to look for work in the foundries, warehouses and slaughterhouses along the Frisco Railroad tracks. Peek’s father worked in a nearby tobacco wa
