Paul Peek was born in Highpoint, North Carolina but raised in Greenville. He started as a teenager on steel guitar player playing with several different groups including Country Earl’s Circle E Ranch Boys, and Claude Casey and the Sage Dusters on TV station WFBC through 1955. It seems Peek played whenever and with whomever the opportunity arose.

He was out on a gig in Washington, D.C. when he met Gene Vincent’s manager, Sheriff Tex Davis. Two days later Peek was on an airplane bound for Hollywood to appear with Vincent in the film The Girl Can’t Help It. Peek was hired as a rhythm guitarist, but he and Tommy Facenda developed a routine that came to be known as the Clapper Boys. Vincent had a limited range of motion due to a motorcycle accident and the Clapper Boys bolstered him out in front of the stage by singing, dancing, and clapping along. Peek only spent about 15 months with Gene Vincent’s Blue Caps, but in that time he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, played shows all over the world, and entered the pantheon of rockabilly royalty.

Peek began his solo recording career at Atlanta label NRC with a collaboration on a tune called The Rock-A-Round with fellow Greenville-native Esquerita.

Peek went onto record twelve singles for NRC in 1958 and ’59. He moved across town to another Atlanta label called Fairlane in 1961 to cut a couple more singles. he continued to search for gold with Mercury and Colombia through the 1960’s. 

No new records were issued after 1969 until Peek attempted to recreate himself as a country singer in 1984. After that, Paul Peek continued to perform around Atlanta. He died in 2001.