Edie2k2's "K2K2 FM 88.9"  

Show Notes

• Archived Blog Post

  Date / Time: 9/5/2009 12:04 AM UTC

  I Remember Richard Pegue (cont)
  

  His Saturday dusties show jumped from station to station for the last 28 years, from high-wattage frequencies like WGCI-FM to college stations like Kennedy-King’s WKKC (which is where he could be heard in recent years), but still managed a deep following. At one point in the ‘80s, his show was so popular that a competing black station (the long-gone WBMX) slotted a similar show on Sunday afternoons. As an old drop-in on Pegue’s show used to say, “when you hear the same songs on Sunday afternoons that you hear on Saturday nights, you know everybody’s listening to Richard Pegue and the Best Music Of Your Life!” The competing show on WBMX tanked. The DJs had little connection to the songs played, and often sounded like they didn’t want one, wisecracking, “This is my older brother’s record, I’m way too young to remember this!” Pegue, as he pointed out, was there when it happened. He spun stories about the time he stole some guitar sheet music from a ’60s Gene Chandler session, or the time his old singing group were recording at Chess Records while “these ugly white guys” (better known as the Rolling Stones) waited their turn. More importantly, he was proud of the local music scene. A typical Pegue show featured a heavy dose of the Chicago sound, usually from local acts who never broke nationally. Every now and then he’d play something he produced himself, like Renaldo Domino’s “Not Too Cool To Cry” (1969) or Little Ben & the Cheers’ “I’m Not Ready To Settle Down” (1965). In a city that boasted several producers with individualistic sounds, Pegue was not afraid to leave his touches all over a record—the Domino song is the only sweet soul song I can think of offhand with a fiddle solo. And true to his altar-boy roots, several of Pegue’s productions had eerie choral backgrounds.
  
  Richard Steele and Richard Pegue.

  Longtime Chicago DJ Richard Pegue Dies
  Produced by City Room on Wednesday, March 04, 2009

  A music legend on Chicago's South Side has died. Richard Pegue sang in doo-wop groups, wrote commercial jingles and spun soul and R&B tracks as a radio DJ. In recent years, Pegue co-hosted a Friday night dance party alongside WBEZ's Richard Steele.
  
  STEELE: His knowledge of old records was better than just about anybody I know. I mean, you name the artist, he knew that person, when they recorded, who they recorded with, who played drums on that recording, that kind of stuff. He was very, very intense about oldies—dusties—and knew the ins-and-outs, A-to-Z.
  
  Steele and Pegue were friends for more than 50 years, starting in high school. Pegue died Tuesday in Jackson Park Hospital after a heart attack. He was 64.
  
  
  • Permalink

Comments

edie2k2 9/5/2009 12:08 AM UTC Testing..

You are not logged in. Please log in to write a comment.