Pee Wee King Oral History Project

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Series of interviews with Country music composer and performer Pee Wee King conducted in 1992. Interviews are the basis for Dr. Ward Hall's 1996 biography of King called Hell-Bent For Music: The Life of Pee Wee King. Pee Wee King has been a significant contributor in the development of country and western music in America. He has been both a performer (Pee Wee King and His Golden West Cowboys) and a composer and co-composer of some of the most popular songs in American music history ("The Tennessee Waltz," "Slow Poke," "You Belong to Me," and Bonaparte's Retreat," for example).

He was born Julius Frank Anthony Kuczynski in Wisconsin in 1914. Since then Mr. King has known and performed with many legends of country music; from Hank Williams, Gene Autry, and Roy Acuff to Cowboy Copas and Eddy Arnold (who was part of King's band in the 1940s). Mr. King was a regular performer on the Grand Ole Opry and during World War II headed the "Camel Caravan," a troupe that toured military bases in this country and abroad. In the 1950s he had his own nationally televised show on ABC-TV and in 1974 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.