Richmond Times-Dispatch May 29, 2006

Before bluegrass and country music, there was hillbilly music, and Lester Leroy "Pete" Pike was a pioneer in popularizing it.

The Virginia Folk Music Association Hall of Fame had announced that he would be inducted in September. Now, he will be inducted posthumously.

Mr. Pike, one of the first musicians to bring hillbilly to the Washington area and a pioneer in performing it on a daily TV show in a major market, died Saturday in a Richmond hospital.

He was 76. A funeral will be held Monday at 2 p.m. at Little Flock Primitive Baptist Church in Amelia County. Burial will be in the church cemetery.

The Amelia native and resident grew up on a grain and tobacco tenant farm. When he was 12, his musician-father gave him and his brother, Franklin, a half-acre of tobacco land to tend. With their profits, Pete Pike bought a guitar, and Franklin bought a mandolin.

At 13, Pete Pike wrote his first song and at 15 formed his first band, which included his brother.

From performances at a small theater in Amelia and dances in eastern Virginia, he went to a weekly radio show in Blackstone and singing for early incarnations of Virginia Music Festivals.

Playing square dances in Meherrin during the late 1940s linked him with The Clark Brothers. Mr. Price's band went to Washington in 1947, initially to play with Roy Clark.

Their gigs at The Camden Tavern and clubs in Washington were among the city's first tastes of what now is called bluegrass.

"I have a picture of my dad up there playing with Buck Austin, and it's stamped '1948' on the back. That's very significant for music history," said his son, Lester Leroy "Petey" Pike Jr. of Amelia.

After two years of military service, Mr. Pike recorded his first record, "I Can See an Angel Walking," in 1954. It hit No. 1 on area Billboard charts.

Television was next. Pete Pike and Buzz Busby and the Bayou Boys played five days a week on a Washington TV show during the middle to late 1950s. "The Hayloft Hoedown" was a preview of "Hee Haw" to come and was hit in a city that never had seen a real hillbilly show, Pike said.

During the next 20 years Mr. Pike wrote and recorded gospel, country and bluegrass songs for early postwar labels. Trademark songs included "Going Home," "Long Way Home" and "Teardrops Falling Like Rain."

Over the years, he picked and sang with the likes of Bill Emerson, Charlie Waller, Scotty Stoneman, Jimmy Dean, Patsy Cline, Smitty Irvin, Floyd Cramer, Chet Atkins and Billy Grammer.

He was a regular on WRVA radio's "Old Dominion Barn Dance" during the 1960s in Richmond and had his own record label and publishing company.

After holding bluegrass festivals on his Amelia farm during the early 1970s, he left music for other pursuits.

At 75, he cut his first recording in 35 years, a CD called "Rolling Again," released in 2005. There are plans to release a four-CD set of his music and a gospel CD he completed after a bout with cancer, his son said.

He was the widower of Eugenia Pike, who died in 1996, and Jacqueline Sullivan-Pike, who died in 2005. In addition to his son, survivors include a stepdaughter, Sandra Isbell of Sandston; a stepson, William "Skipper" Sullivan Jr. of Richmond; two sisters, Patricia Steele of Amelia and Jurelean Flowers of Buena Vista; a brother, Franklin Pike of Amelia; and three grandchildren, two stepgrandchildren and one great-grandchild