Pete "Guitar" Lewis

Pete "Guitar" Lewis (probably July 11, 1913 – September 25, 1970)^[1] was an American rhythm and blues guitarist and occasional harmonica player, best known as a session musician and performer with Johnny Otis in the late 1940s and 1950s.

Biography[]

Though details of his life are uncertain, researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc state that he was born Carl Lewis in northern Louisiana.^[1] Influenced in his guitar playing by T-Bone Walker, he was discovered by Johnny Otis performing in an amateur hour event at the Barrelhouse Club in Los Angeles in 1947. He was recruited to Otis' band, and performed and recorded with him until about 1956. One reviewer says of Lewis:

[He] took the electric guitar to new heights, offering sophisticated turns of phrase that bordered on jazz-inflected, to low-down gut bucket riffs that were unceremoniously wrenched out of his instrument — sometimes, all in the same song, or if need be, in the short space of a twelve-bar solo. His playing is at once, crisp, precise, and gritty — not to mention endlessly inventive — the perfect complement to Otis' rocking big band.^[2]

His guitar features prominently on such tracks as "Boogie Guitar" and "Good Old Blues", on which Lewis plays licks later adopted by Chuck Berry,^[3] and also recorded with saxophonist Ben Webster in Otis' band in 1951. Lewis recorded as a session musician for Don Robey's Duke and Peacock labels, backing such musicians as Johnny Ace, Little Esther Phillips, and Big Mama Thornton on her original 1952 recording of "Hound Dog".^[4] Songwriters Leiber and Stoller stated that the original arrangement of "Hound Dog" was based on a riff that Lewis developed in the recording studio. He also recorded several tracks under his own name for Federal Records in 1952, and for Peacock the following year.^[2][5]

Lewis left Otis' band in 1956 after an argument, perhaps related to Lewis' alcoholism. He was replaced in the band by Jimmy Nolen. Lewis' only later recording was accompanying singer . He is believed to have still been performing in Los Angeles nightclubs in the early 1960s.^[2] However, Otis reported that, by the mid-1960s, Lewis had been reduced to homelessness.^[5] He is believed to have died in Los Angeles in 1970.^[1] CORRECTION!) Pete Lewis arrived in Bakersfield, CA in 1962 from Los Angeles where he remained at least until after I left in 1965. I arrived in Bakersfield in 1962 where he had already formed a house band with no name by the time I arrived. They were the house band at the "Cotton Club" on Lakeview Ave that was owned by the McDaniels family of "If I Had A Hammer" fame, but they also played in the other black blues clubs (The Brown Derby out on lower Lakeview Ave across Brundage Lane, and Al's P&C Club over on Truxton Ave). Bakersfield was a main stop on the chittlin circuit and all the big name blues and R&B artists came there at one time or another. Most of them had no bands or considered it too expensive to travel with them, so Pete's house band did the honors. I was seventeen and he taught me how to play guitar and harp like a professional, and within four or five months I was playing off and on in his band. None of us had a place of our own to stay so we all ended up living in the back of Al's P&C Club. We worked in the agricultural fields during the day, and played in the clubs at night. Pete's middle finger on his fretting hand had a distorted, black claw looking fingernail that he always attempted to hide from people, and only those who actually knew him would know about it. He also carried a photograph in his wallet of a person he said was his brother. He was a heavy drinker with a preference for cheap wine and he hardly talked hardly to anyone. I left in 1965 and he was still in Bakersfield.

References[]