Peg Meyer's Melody Kings

The Peg Meyer’s Melody Kings  were a late 1910s through early 1920s Missouri Swing band.

The band got its start in 1919 during lunch hour at Cape Central High School gym, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The band was initially called the Agony Four . It consisted of four players: Jess Stacy (piano), Martell Lovell (violin/ trombone) Bergman Snider (drums), and Peg Meyer (soprano sax). Within the year, the band would be joined by Bill Gadbois on the clarinet. The name Agony Four lasted only a short time before the more marketable Peg Meyer’s Melody Kings was chosen.

As is expected with new band, the Agony Four would practice any place that would allow them and had an in tune piano, most frequently practicing at Cape Central High School, the Bluebird Confectionary on Broadway and Fountain, and the Sweet Shop on Main Street. The band or “orchestra” as they liked to call themselves, toured the local area, charging anywhere from one dollar an hour to five dollars a night, with the rate per hour doubling after midnight.

The musicians had very little access to arrangements, so they learned the majority of their pieces by ear, spending hours listening to the new invention the radio, as well as spending time in the local record shop. A few of their pre-arranged pieces included “Fidgety Feet,” “Clarinet Marmalade,” and “Tiger Rag. ”

This was the Swingin’ Twenties and the Peg Meyer Melody Kings embraced much of the wildness of the era, or at least as much as their parents allowed them. Berg Snider had over fifty hats that he would wear to various concerts and Jess Stacy became a master at playing the piano while squatting on the piano stool. The band even went through a phase where they wore clown costumes, fashioned by Jess Stacy’s mother. The clown costumes where short lived and the band soon returned to the traditional tuxedo.

The Peg Meyer Melody Kings/ Agony Four only produced one album. According to Peg Meyer there was a company that produced an aluminum disc that was soft enough to take the imprint of vibrations off of an ordinary reproducer and record it. Jess Stacy’s father, Fred Stacy, operated the recorder. Although the album has been lost, the players are known. It featured Jess Stacy on piano, Lovell on violin, Meyer on the sax, and Snider on the drums.

The band unofficially broke up in the spring of 1921 when Meyer and Stacy received jobs playing on the Majestic steamboat. The two joined the Harvey Berry band, only playing as the Peg Meyer’s Melody Kings when back in their home town. Later Meyer and Stacy would be joined by Berg Snider and move from the Majestic to playing on packet boats. This lasted a few years before the band once again moved away from each other.

Jess Stacy moved to Chicago to pursue a career in music. He would become very successful, eventually playing at Carnegie Hall with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. Meyer stayed on the riverboats for a few more years where he met Helen Evans. He would moved back to Cape Girardeau and marry her. Peg Meyer’s would go on to work and co-own Shivelbine’s, a music store that has operated in Cape Girardeau for the past fifty years.

The history of the band was recorded by Peg Meyer in a book entitled  Backwoods Jazz in the twenties by Raymond F. “Peg” Meyer; edited and with an introduction by Frank Nickell. Published by Center for Regional History and Cultural Heritage Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, Missouri, c1989.