Perry Botkin, Sr.

Perry Botkin, Sr. (b. Richmond, July 22, 1907 – d. Van Nuys, October 14, 1973) – Guitarist, ukulele player, banjoist, keyboardist, songwriter, and composer. At the start of his long and varied career, teen-aged Botkin hooked up with pianist Wayne Euchner in the early 1920s, when the latter was finishing up a long appointment with his big band at West Baden, Indiana. Along with a few other musicians, the two new cohorts ventured out to Greenwich Village, where the newly-formed Euchner group was the house band for several years at Barney Gallant’s supper club. Botkin split the remainder of his career between the two coasts and developed a reputation as a masterful guitar player. His use of the electric guitar on Hoagy Carmichael’s 1938 recording of “Hong Kong Blues”—which Botkin’s big band accompanied—was one of the earliest recorded uses of that instrument. Among the many musicians who utilized his guitar expertise on radio broadcasts and vinyl recordings were Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Paul Whiteman, Bob Hope, Fred Astaire, the Dorsey Brothers, and Roy Rogers. In addition, he was Bing Crosby’s musical director for seventeen years. He also shone as a character actor, composer, songwriter, and ukulele virtuoso. After establishing himself as a Hollywood studio musician in the 1950s, he wrote the film score for the movie Murder by Contract (1958) and multi-track recorded all of the parts by himself. Perhaps his most famous incidental music though was “Elly Mae’s Theme,” which he wrote and played among other snatches of music for the Beverly Hillbillies. Equally famous is his son Perry Botkin, Jr., a well-known RCA producer in the 1960s.