Peter died June 29, 2022, in Australia, where his family lived for a quarter-century. Wheelchair-bound for several months, he had been labeling the vast collection of photos from his travels. An eminent folklorist, historian, and record producer, Peter traveled the Piedmont for two decades to record, publicize, and preserve local gospel, jazz, and blues. Using hundreds of hours of field recordings, he founded Trix Records and wrote dozens of articles and books on African American music.

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.

Undergraduate Class of 1963