Hugo Peretti

Hugo E. Peretti, born December 6, 1916, in New York City to an Italian American family, was an American songwriter, trumpeter, record producer, and Broadway composer. He died on May 1, 1986, in Englewood, New Jersey, at the age of 69.

Peretti launched his music career as a teenager, performing on trumpet in the Borscht Belt resorts of upstate New York before advancing to work with orchestras. During the 1950s, he partnered with his cousin Luigi Creatore under the name Hugo & Luigi, a collaboration that began in songwriting and expanded into record production. In 1957, the pair acquired a stake in Roulette Records, where they wrote material for artists including Valerie Carr and produced a string of chart successes for Jimmie Rodgers: "Honeycomb," which reached number one on the Billboard charts, "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" at number three, "Oh-Oh, I'm Falling in Love Again," and "Secretly."

Peretti and Creatore moved to RCA Records two years later, where they produced recordings for Perry Como, Sam Cooke, and Ray Peterson. Working with lyricist George David Weiss, they contributed English lyrics to Solomon Linda's South African composition "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," which became a hit for The Tokens. The same trio of Peretti, Creatore, and Weiss co-wrote "Can't Help Falling in Love" for Elvis Presley, and Peretti and Creatore also wrote Presley's hit single "Wild in the Country."

In 1964, Peretti and Creatore departed RCA to collaborate with Weiss on a Broadway musical. The result was Maggie Flynn, which opened in 1968 and was set against the backdrop of the American Civil War. The production stands as Peretti's primary Broadway credit.

During the 1970s, Peretti and Creatore held a partial ownership stake in Avco Records before founding H&L Records, which they ran until retiring at the close of the decade. Their work during this period included recordings by The Stylistics and The Softones. In 1977, Peretti and Creatore received the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album as producers of Bubbling Brown Sugar.

In 1943, Peretti married singer June Winters. Together they founded Mayfair Records in 1946, a children's label on which Winters recorded as the "Lady in Blue," releasing a series of bestselling albums. The couple had two daughters, Kathy and Tina Marie. Winters survived Peretti by nearly three decades, dying on March 29, 2015, at the age of 96.