Born in Montclair, N.J., Peter attended Deerfield Academy and studied biology at Princeton. After a master’s degree in zoology from Rutgers, he taught for years at SUNY New Paltz, heading to the Piedmont during summers, before focusing full time on regional musicians such as Homesick James, David (Honeyboy) Edwards, Peg Leg Sam, Guitar Shorty, and Tarheel Slim. In 1964, he was the first mainstream journalist to interview and write about the young B.B. King at the Apollo Theater in Manhattan.
His commercial releases are in the folklife collection at the Library of Congress, and the entire body of his work is archived at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has a lengthy Wikipedia entry. His web page, peterblowry.com, is a repository of anecdotes and scholarship.
Peter is survived by his wife, Robbie, and their son, Julian.