Walter Gerhardt "Pee Wee" Hunt (May 10, 1907 – June 22, 1979)^[1] was an American jazz trombonist, vocalist, and bandleader.^[2] Hunt was born in Mount Healthy, Ohio.^[3] He developed a musical interest at an early age, as his mother, Sadie, played the banjo and his father, Edgar C., played violin.^[1] He had a younger sister, Marian, and younger brother, Raymond. The teenage Hunt was a banjoist with a local band while he was attending college at Ohio State University,^[1] where he majored in Electrical Engineering,^[4] and during his college years he switched from banjo to trombone.^[1] He graduated from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.^[4] He joined Jean Goldkette's Orchestra in 1928.^[4]

Hunt was the co-founder and featured trombonist with the Casa Loma Orchestra,^[1] but he left the group in 1943 to work as a Hollywood radio disc jockey, before joining the Merchant Marine near the end of World War II.^[4] He returned to the West Coast music scene in 1946.^[1] His "Twelfth Street Rag" was a three million-selling,^[2] number one hit in September 1948.^[3] He was satirized as Pee Wee Runt and his All-Flea Dixieland Band in Tex Avery's animated MGM cartoon Dixieland Droopy (1954). His second major hit was "Oh!" (1953), his second million-selling disc, which reached number three in the Billboard chart.^[5]

At age 72, Hunt died after a long illness in Plymouth, Massachusetts.^[1] Hunt and his wife, Ruth, had a daughter, Holly, and a son, Lawrence.