Caroline Peyton

Caroline Peyton (October 8, 1951 – August 11, 2021) was an American singer, songwriter, and actor born in Brookhaven, Mississippi, who grew up in Charleston, West Virginia. Her father, Thomas Peyton, was from Virginia, and her mother, Joan Johnson, was a Mississippi native. Peyton was raised alongside two sisters and began performing with them at a young age. She attended George Washington High School in Charleston, where she took part in theatrical productions. Though accepted to the Boston Conservatory of Music, she enrolled instead at Northwestern University in Chicago in 1969, where she performed with guitarist and singer John Guth. She had previously been introduced to singer Mary Johnson, who later performed under the name Mary Flower, and Johnson brought her to Bloomington, Indiana, whose active music scene drew both local musicians and Indiana University students. Peyton relocated to Bloomington in 1970 and began working with singer Bob Lucas and songwriter-producer Mark Bingham.

Bingham led a large ensemble with rotating membership called the Screaming Gypsy Bandits, a group shaped by jazz, rhythm-and-blues, and the influence of Frank Zappa. Born in Bloomington on January 30, 1949, Bingham had previously worked as an in-house songwriter and producer for Elektra Records in Los Angeles before returning to Bloomington in the fall of 1969. He and Peyton began collaborating at a local studio operated by drummer and teacher Jack Gilfoy. Together with Bingham and a local woman named Kathy Canada, who had financial ties to pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly, Peyton co-founded Bar-B-Q Records. The label released her debut album, Mock Up, in 1972. The record featured Peyton's guitar playing and vocals, Bingham's guitar work and compositions, and the piano of Mark Gray, a jazz student at Indiana University. Bingham-penned tracks such as "Between-Two" and "Engram" appeared on the album. Mock Up attracted the attention of Columbia Records A&R representative Mark Spector, who arranged an audition with label head Clive Davis in New York City in October 1972, though the audition did not result in a deal.

Peyton continued performing throughout the Midwest with the Screaming Gypsy Bandits, who opened for a number of prominent acts in the early 1970s, including a 1970 date with Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band at Cincinnati's Ludlow Garage. The band released an LP, In the Eye, in 1973, which received a favorable review in the jazz publication Down Beat. Peyton then recorded a second solo album with Bingham in sessions that ran from late 1974 through 1977. Intuition, released in 1977, contained songs written by both Bingham and Peyton and was reviewed in Rolling Stone. That same year, Peyton moved to Los Angeles, where she performed in local clubs, recorded demos for record-label figure Mike Curb, and appeared on television programs including the Dinah Shore show and the Gong Show.

In the early 1980s, Peyton transitioned into theatrical work. Kevin Kline, who knew her from Indiana University, recommended her for the role of Mabel in Joe Papp's production of The Pirates of Penzance. She was cast in the part and earned her Equity Card through the engagement, appearing prominently in both the Los Angeles company and the Broadway national touring company of the show. In 1984, she made her Broadway debut in Galt MacDermot's The Human Comedy, in which she played Mary Arena. Her Broadway career spanned 1981 to 1984.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Peyton was recommended through personal connections for work on Disney animated films and recorded vocals for four productions: Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. She relocated to Williamson County, Tennessee in 1993 and recorded a collection of Celtic Christmas songs for the Green Hill label. In 2006, the Chicago archival label The Numero Group included "Engram," from Mock Up, on their anthology Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies from the Canyon. The Numero Group imprint Asterisk reissued both Mock Up and Intuition in January 2009, with liner notes, archival photographs, bonus tracks, and a video of Peyton performing at Indianapolis club the Hummingbird Cafe in 1972. Both albums had previously been reissued in limited editions in Japan. Ubiquity Records also featured the Intuition track "Just as We" on the compilation Gilles Peterson Digs America: Brownswood, U.S.A.

In February 2009, Peyton performed material from her 1970s albums at Nashville club the Basement, and in May of that year reunited with Bingham and Lucas for a concert in Bloomington. She released her first self-written solo album, Homeseeker's Paradise, on September 9, 2014, with Nashville Scene writer Skip Anderson contributing a preview of the record. Peyton died in Nashville, Tennessee, on August 11, 2021, at the age of 69, from neuropathy.