Peter B. Lowry

Peter B. "Pete" Lowry (born April 1, 1941) is an American folklorist, writer, record producer, ethnomusicologist, historian, photographer, forensic musicologist, and teacher who deals with aspects of popular music, mainly African American. Born in Montclair, New Jersey, he has specialized in blues and jazz with a primary focus on the Piedmont blues of the south-eastern United States.

Lowry traveled through the South Eastern United States for over a decade in the 1970s and 80's doing field-work and other research in the Piedmont region of Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas, including interviewing, photographing, and recording blues and gospel musicians between 1970 and 1980, initially working in collaboration with British folklorist Bruce Bastin. His field research also took him occasionally to the Midwestern US, where he recorded local Michigan pianists for the album Detroit After Hours - Vol. 1 and on to Chicago to record the blues albums Goin' Back Home (Homesick James) and I've Been Around (David "Honeyboy" Edwards).

In the early 1970s Lowry founded Trix Records, which proceeded to issue six 45s, and then 17 full-length LPs, from his hundreds of hours of field recordings. Trix artists included the stepson of Blues legend Robert Johnson, Robert Jr. Lockwood; Detroit and Macon, GA's Eddie Kirkland; Chicago's David "Honeyboy" Edwards; and New York-based Tarheel Slim. The then 92-year-old Edwards was the oldest musician to perform in Washington at the official celebration of the first inauguration of his country's first African American president, Edwards' neighbor, Barack Obama and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. Trix Records remained active for two decades before the issued LP masters and company name were sold to Joe Fields of Muse Records, in New York. It was subsequently sold on to Joel Dorn and 32 Jazz/Blues, also in NYC, before ending with JVC's Savoy Jazz imprint. Lowry also produced albums for Atlantic Records (at the urging of Atlantic's founder Ahmet Ertegun), Muse Records, Savoy Records,Columbia Records,Biograph Records, Flyright Records, and other companies. He began writing about blues music for Blues Unlimited in the UK in 1964 when, at the Apollo Theatre in NYC, he became the first mainstream American journalist to interview and write about the young B.B. King.

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