Caroline Peyton
Encyclopedia
Caroline Peyton is an American singer and songwriter
. Peyton was born in Brookhaven, Mississippi
on Oct. 8, 1951 and grew up in Charleston, West Virginia
. Her father, Thomas Peyton, is from Virginia
and her mother, the former Joan Johnson, is a native of Mississippi
. Peyton grew up with three sisters and began performing with them at an early age. She attended Charleston's George Washington High School, where she participated in theatrical productions.
Peyton was accepted to the Boston Conservatory of Music but enrolled at Chicago
's Northwestern University
in 1969. Already proficient as a guitarist and vocalist, she began performing in Chicago with fellow guitarist and singer John Guth. Peyton had previously met another singer interested in folk music, Mary Johnson, who later adopted the stage name Mary Flower. Johnson took Peyton to visit the town of Bloomington, Indiana
, which had a lively music scene that utilized both local musicians and students studying music at Indiana University
. Impressed by what was happening in Bloomington, Peyton moved there in 1970 and began performing with a group of musicians that included singer Bob Lucas and songwriter and producer Mark Bingham
.
Bingham had put together a large band with shifting membership, the Screaming Gypsy Bandits, who were influenced by jazz
, rhythm-and-blues and Frank Zappa
. Born in Bloomington on Jan. 30, 1949, Bingham had spent his early years in New York state and had gone to Los Angeles
, hired as an in-house songwriter and producer by California record label Elektra Records
. Cut loose by Elektra, Bingham returned to Bloomington in fall 1969 and began collaborating with Peyton.
Working at a local studio owned by drummer and teacher Jack Gilfoy, Peyton and Bingham recorded what would be Peyton's first record album on a label they had begun along with a local woman named Kathy Canada, who had family connections to, and thus family money from, pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lily. The label, Bar-B-Q Records, released Peyton's 1972 album Mock Up, which featured her guitar playing and vocals along with Bingham's guitar (and songwriting) and the piano of Mark Gray, who was studying jazz at Indiana University's music school. With spare performances, Mock Up featured Bingham compositions such as "Between-Two" and "Engram." The record came to the attention of Columbia Records
A&R
man Mark Spector, who arranged an audition with label head Clive Davis
in New York City
in October 1972, but they failed the audition, although Peyton says that Spector called her upon her return to Bloomington to encourage her.
As Peyton said in a 2006 Nashville Scene article, “I didn’t know what I wanted, and I needed to find my own voice. Mock Up was my first recording. My father paid for it, even though I had dropped out of Northwestern. My frustration with Mark Bingham was that he was so anti-establishment. I don’t think he ever re-wrote anything—it was all stream-of-consciousness. People ask me what ‘Engram’ means and I say, ‘I don’t know what it means now, and I didn’t know when I was singing it, and I’ll never know what it meant."
Peyton continued to perform in the Midwest, and the Screaming Gypsy Bandits became well known in the region. They opened for many big-name acts in the early 1970s, including a 1970 date with Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band at Cincinnati's Ludlow Garage
. With Peyton on vocals, the Screaming Gypsy Bandits recorded an LP
that was released in 1973. In the Eye received a favorable review in the jazz magazine Down Beat
.
Working again with Bingham, Peyton recorded another album in sessions that stretched from late 1974 until 1977. Released in 1977, Intuition featured songs by Bingham and Peyton and was reviewed in Rolling Stone
.
Peyton moved to Los Angeles in 1977, where she performed in local clubs, recorded demos
for record-label impresario Mike Curb
and appeared on a couple of television shows—most notably the Dinah Shore
show and the Gong Show
.
In the early '80s Peyton began performing in theatrical productions. She was featured prominently in both the Los Angeles company and the national touring company of the musical The Pirates of Penzance
and in 1984 made her Broadway
debut as Mary Arena in Galt MacDermot
's The Human Comedy.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s Peyton recorded vocals for four Disney animated movies: Beauty and the Beast
, Aladdin, Pocahontas
and The Hunchback of Notre Dame
.
Peyton moved to Williamson County, Tennessee
in 1993 and recorded a collection of Celtic Christmas songs. Ubiquity Records
featured a track from Intuition, "Just as We," on a compilation, Gilles Peterson Digs America:Brownswood, U.S.A. In 2006 the Chicago
record label The Numero Group
included "Engram"--a track from Mock Up--on their anthology of female singer-songwriter
s, Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies from the Canyon. Asterisk, an imprint of Numero, reissued Mock Up and Intuition in January 2009, with archival photos, extra tracks, liner notes and a video of Peyton performing in 1972 at Indianapolis
club the Hummingbird Cafe. Both albums had been previously reissued in limited editions in Japan
.
Peyton's godfather
is novelist William Styron
, with whom her father grew up in Virginia.
In February 2009, Peyton performed a set of songs drawn from her 1970s albums at Nashville club the Basement, and in May re-united with Bingham and Bob Lucas at a concert in Bloomington. As she told reporter Ron Wynn of Nashville's City Paper, “I guess I was just ahead of my time. It was what I call art songs. We really didn’t think much about whether they might be commercial or not. I know there are some incredible players on these recordings, guys who’ve gone on to make great records with other people.” She has also performed infrequently in Nashville.
Songwriter
A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...
. Peyton was born in Brookhaven, Mississippi
Brookhaven, Mississippi
Brookhaven is a small city in Lincoln County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 9,861 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Lincoln County...
on Oct. 8, 1951 and grew up in Charleston, West Virginia
Charleston, West Virginia
Charleston is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is located at the confluence of the Elk and Kanawha Rivers in Kanawha County. As of the 2010 census, it has a population of 51,400, and its metropolitan area 304,214. It is the county seat of Kanawha County.Early...
. Her father, Thomas Peyton, is from Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
and her mother, the former Joan Johnson, is a native of Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
. Peyton grew up with three sisters and began performing with them at an early age. She attended Charleston's George Washington High School, where she participated in theatrical productions.
Peyton was accepted to the Boston Conservatory of Music but enrolled at Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
's Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
in 1969. Already proficient as a guitarist and vocalist, she began performing in Chicago with fellow guitarist and singer John Guth. Peyton had previously met another singer interested in folk music, Mary Johnson, who later adopted the stage name Mary Flower. Johnson took Peyton to visit the town of Bloomington, Indiana
Bloomington, Indiana
Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County in the southern region of the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 80,405 at the 2010 census....
, which had a lively music scene that utilized both local musicians and students studying music at Indiana University
Indiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
. Impressed by what was happening in Bloomington, Peyton moved there in 1970 and began performing with a group of musicians that included singer Bob Lucas and songwriter and producer Mark Bingham
Mark Bingham (musician/music producer)
Mark Bingham is an American music producer/composer/musician/engineer.In 1966 , Bingham was signed to a publishing contract with Elektra Records. After a brief stint at Elektra in Los Angeles and one single released on Warner Bros., he returned to Bloomington where he attended Indiana University...
.
Bingham had put together a large band with shifting membership, the Screaming Gypsy Bandits, who were influenced by jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, rhythm-and-blues and Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
. Born in Bloomington on Jan. 30, 1949, Bingham had spent his early years in New York state and had gone to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, hired as an in-house songwriter and producer by California record label Elektra Records
Elektra Records
Elektra Records is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group. In 2004, it was consolidated into WMG's Atlantic Records Group. After five years of dormancy, the label was revived by Atlantic in 2009....
. Cut loose by Elektra, Bingham returned to Bloomington in fall 1969 and began collaborating with Peyton.
Working at a local studio owned by drummer and teacher Jack Gilfoy, Peyton and Bingham recorded what would be Peyton's first record album on a label they had begun along with a local woman named Kathy Canada, who had family connections to, and thus family money from, pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lily. The label, Bar-B-Q Records, released Peyton's 1972 album Mock Up, which featured her guitar playing and vocals along with Bingham's guitar (and songwriting) and the piano of Mark Gray, who was studying jazz at Indiana University's music school. With spare performances, Mock Up featured Bingham compositions such as "Between-Two" and "Engram." The record came to the attention of Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
A&R
A&R
Artists and repertoire is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists. It also acts as a liaison between artists and the record label.- Finding talent :...
man Mark Spector, who arranged an audition with label head Clive Davis
Clive Davis
Clive Davis is an American record producer and music industry executive. He has won five Grammy Awards and is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a non-performer. From 1967 to 1973 he was the President of Columbia Records. He was the founder and president of Arista Records from 1975...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in October 1972, but they failed the audition, although Peyton says that Spector called her upon her return to Bloomington to encourage her.
As Peyton said in a 2006 Nashville Scene article, “I didn’t know what I wanted, and I needed to find my own voice. Mock Up was my first recording. My father paid for it, even though I had dropped out of Northwestern. My frustration with Mark Bingham was that he was so anti-establishment. I don’t think he ever re-wrote anything—it was all stream-of-consciousness. People ask me what ‘Engram’ means and I say, ‘I don’t know what it means now, and I didn’t know when I was singing it, and I’ll never know what it meant."
Peyton continued to perform in the Midwest, and the Screaming Gypsy Bandits became well known in the region. They opened for many big-name acts in the early 1970s, including a 1970 date with Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band at Cincinnati's Ludlow Garage
Ludlow Garage
The Ludlow Garage began life as an automobile shop and later became a music venue located in the Clifton neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio.In the 1970s, the venue hosted concerts by many prominent touring acts including The Allman Brothers Band, Santana, Spirit, The James Gang, Humble Pie, as well...
. With Peyton on vocals, the Screaming Gypsy Bandits recorded an LP
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
that was released in 1973. In the Eye received a favorable review in the jazz magazine Down Beat
Down Beat
Down Beat is an American magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond" to indicate its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois...
.
Working again with Bingham, Peyton recorded another album in sessions that stretched from late 1974 until 1977. Released in 1977, Intuition featured songs by Bingham and Peyton and was reviewed in Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
.
Peyton moved to Los Angeles in 1977, where she performed in local clubs, recorded demos
Demo (music)
A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...
for record-label impresario Mike Curb
Mike Curb
Michael Curb is an American musician, record company executive, NASCAR and IRL race car owner. A Republican, he served as the 42nd Lieutenant Governor of California from 1979-1983 under Democratic Governor Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, Jr...
and appeared on a couple of television shows—most notably the Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore was an American singer, actress, and television personality...
show and the Gong Show
The Gong Show
The Gong Show is an amateur talent contest franchised by Sony Pictures Television to many countries. It was broadcast on NBC's daytime schedule from June 14, 1976 through July 21, 1978, and in first-run syndication from 1976–1980 and 1988–1989. The show was produced by Chuck Barris, who also served...
.
In the early '80s Peyton began performing in theatrical productions. She was featured prominently in both the Los Angeles company and the national touring company of the musical The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...
and in 1984 made her Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
debut as Mary Arena in Galt MacDermot
Galt MacDermot
Galt MacDermot is a Canadian composer, pianist and writer of musical theatre. He won a Grammy Award for the song African Waltz in 1960. His most successful musicals have been Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona...
's The Human Comedy.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s Peyton recorded vocals for four Disney animated movies: Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)
Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. The thirtieth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series and the third film of the Disney Renaissance period...
, Aladdin, Pocahontas
Pocahontas (1995 film)
Pocahontas is the 33rd animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. It was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and was originally released to selected theaters on June 16, 1995 by Walt Disney Pictures...
and The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1996 American animated drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released to theaters on June 21, 1996 by Walt Disney Pictures. The thirty-fourth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon, the film is inspired by Victor Hugo's novel of...
.
Peyton moved to Williamson County, Tennessee
Williamson County, Tennessee
Williamson County is a county in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of 2010 US Census, the population was 183,182. The County's seat is Franklin, and it is part of the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin Metropolitan Statistical Area. The county is named after Hugh Williamson, a...
in 1993 and recorded a collection of Celtic Christmas songs. Ubiquity Records
Ubiquity Records
Ubiquity Records is an American music label that focuses on funk, rare groove, soul, and hip hop and other musical genres. It is located in Costa Mesa, California and has a satellite office based in San Francisco, California...
featured a track from Intuition, "Just as We," on a compilation, Gilles Peterson Digs America:Brownswood, U.S.A. In 2006 the Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
record label The Numero Group
The Numero Group
The Numero Group is an archival record label that creates reissue compilations of previously released music, reissues original albums, and creates album reconstructions from a variety of musical genres...
included "Engram"--a track from Mock Up--on their anthology of female singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...
s, Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies from the Canyon. Asterisk, an imprint of Numero, reissued Mock Up and Intuition in January 2009, with archival photos, extra tracks, liner notes and a video of Peyton performing in 1972 at Indianapolis
Indianapolis
Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...
club the Hummingbird Cafe. Both albums had been previously reissued in limited editions in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
Peyton's godfather
Godparent
A godparent, in many denominations of Christianity, is someone who sponsors a child's baptism. A male godparent is a godfather, and a female godparent is a godmother...
is novelist William Styron
William Styron
William Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.For much of his career, Styron was best known for his novels, which included...
, with whom her father grew up in Virginia.
In February 2009, Peyton performed a set of songs drawn from her 1970s albums at Nashville club the Basement, and in May re-united with Bingham and Bob Lucas at a concert in Bloomington. As she told reporter Ron Wynn of Nashville's City Paper, “I guess I was just ahead of my time. It was what I call art songs. We really didn’t think much about whether they might be commercial or not. I know there are some incredible players on these recordings, guys who’ve gone on to make great records with other people.” She has also performed infrequently in Nashville.
Discography
- Mock Up (Bar-B-Q, 1972; Asterisk/Numero Group 2009)
- Back to Doghead (with the Screaming Gypsy Bandits,recorded 1970-1972; Piety Street Files and Archaic Media, 2009)
- In the Eye (with the Screaming Gypsy Bandits, Bar-B-Q, 1973)
- Bloomington I (compilation of Bar-B-Q records artists, 1976)
- Intuition (Bar-B-Q, 1977; Asterisk/Numero Group 2009)
- Celtic Christmas Spirit (Green Hill, 1998)
- Gilles Peterson Digs America: Brownswood U.S.A. (Ubiquity, 2005)
- Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies from the Canyon (Numero Group, 2006)