Panhandle Pete and His One-Man Band
Bands / Ensembles
Panhandle Pete was the stage name of James Howard Nash, an one-man band and comedian from western North Carolina, born in Buncombe County in 1913. He began performing a music and comedy act as Panhandle Pete in 1937 and toured 33 states between 1937 and 1971. He wore a backpack-like rig of instruments and gadgets weighing about 104 pounds, including a banjo, harmonicas, kazoo, cowbells, cymbals, tambourine, bass drum, bicycle and car horns, a garden hose and train and exhaust whistles, and billed himself as the "Poor Man's Philharmonic." He appeared on television programs including The Ed Sullivan Show and recorded old-fashioned ballads for the Library of Congress. From 1961, the year Ghost Town in the Sky opened, he worked at the Wild West theme park in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, performing three or four shows a day during its six-month season for about a decade.
In the newsletter
- No. 6 Winter 1996