Bugs, butterflies and the blues were all important interests to my friend, Peter Moody, who has died aged 77. He will be remembered by his friends and family for his modesty and good humour.
In the early 1960s, while he was working in Epsom, Surrey, Peter used to go to the local art college at lunchtimes to hang out with the musicians Duster Bennett and Top Topham. With Roger Pearce, the guitarist from the Muskrats, they formed the Grebbels; the singer and guitarist Peter Green regularly watched them play.
The Grebbels were managed by the promoter Giorgio Gomelsky, alongside the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds. They played frequently at London venues including the Crawdaddy, Eel Pie Island and the Marquee club. After the Grebbels split with Gomelsky, Peter joined the John Dummer Band.
Later, living in Bristol, Peter also started his own blues record label, Sunflower, and immersed himself in the city’s vibrant folk-blues scene at the Dug Out and the Troubadour. He met the singer-guitarist Al Jones and they gigged together. Later, Peter also played with the Eddie Martin Band.
Born in Taunton, Somerset, he was the younger child of Clare (nee Godfrey) and Edward Moody, the manager of an asbestos company. The family moved to Surrey in the mid-50s, settling in Cheam, but Peter’s love of nature and steam trains evolved from his annual holidays back in the West Country, spent with his grandmother in Lympstone, Devon. Interested in insects and butterflies, and particularly hover flies, he meticulously recorded the species he observed in the countryside and garden, keeping photographic records.
In Surrey, he attended Wallington Independent grammar school, where he made lifelong friends. He went on to work for a building supplies company in Epsom, moving in 1966 with his parents to Bristol, where he had a successful management career in that industry.
From his marriage to Lynn he had three children. When they separated in the mid-90s, Peter moved back to Surrey and re-met his former teenage girlfriend, Shirley Howe. They married in 2009.
In 1997 Peter was offered a job with Trojan Records as a researcher and compiler and developed their Indigo R&B label. Also, on his own initiative, Peter pursued royalties for blues musicians, concerned they should be paid their rightful dues.
Towards the end of his life Peter took great delight in working on a Fleetwood Mac blues album. He was also very proud of his extraordinary American regional blues compilations; and found a welcome home with the Wienerworld record label for his beautifully crafted collections. He had recently produced a British blues rarities release, Something Inside of Me: Unreleased Masters and Demos from the British Blues Years 1963-1976, in which he can also be heard accompanying Al Jones.
He is survived by Shirley, the three sons from his first marriage, and six grandchildren. His sister, Pat, died in 2005.
