Billy Mo born 22 February 1923

Billy Mo (February 22, 1923 - July 16, 2004) was a jazz trumpeter and pop singer. 

Billy Mo was born Peter Mico Joachim in Trinidad. His parents died when he was about five years old, after which he and his two sisters were sent to an orphanage. In the orphanage, Joachim received music lessons and learned to play the harmonica, and according to other sources, at the age of six, also the trumpet and French horn.  According to a later account, he became a member of an orchestra for the first time when he was seven, and a member of the local police marching band at the age of 14, making him Trinidad's youngest police officer. 

There are different accounts of when and how Joachim came to Great Britain: According to a magazine report from 1967, which is based on an interview with Joachim, he was hired by an officer in the British merchant navy in 1945 for an all-colored dance band.  A statement by Joachim in Spiegel also speaks for 1945, in which he states the length of his stay in London as 11 years (1945–1956) during which he received a scholarship from the Royal Academy of Arts and Music in London. 

The band played for American and British soldiers and performed in nightclubs. The group broke up in November or December 1945 during a tour of France due to internal strife and Joachim returned to England unemployed. Although he continued to be a member of various London bands, he was not able to make a living from his work as a musician. Instead he had to work in restaurants.  From around 1950, Joachim worked with the multi-instrumentalist and arranger Rupert Nurse from Trinidad, who had come to England in 1945. Joachim also appeared with him alongside the Caribbean pianist Winifred Atwell at the Prince of Wales Theater in the show Pardon My French (1953/54). 

According to a later account, he was called “Hot Lips Pete” at the time. Joachim is also said to have performed with the Ivor Curzon band.  In the early 1950s, Joachim finally founded his own orchestra, with which he performed at the River Club, the Stork Club and the Café de Paris.  However, the big breakthrough as a musician failed to materialize. In April 1956, Joachim came to Hamburg via Paris, penniless, and was hired as a trumpet player in the house band of the St. Pauli scene club Blauer Peter. According to Keim's account, he came to Germany “with a small band. 

He also played Dixieland and Rock 'n' Roll in other venues and also began to sing. In 1957 he was discovered by the head of the NDR television orchestra Viktor Reschke and published the two swing titles Buona Sera and Oh Marie by Louis Prima under his new pseudonym “Billy Mo” . In the same year he played (for contractual reasons without naming his name) a trumpet solo in Franz Grothe's Midnight Blues for the Bert Kaempfert Orchestra. With other titles such as Darling, You know ja , Oh, Jennilie and Swing, Methuselah (all 1958), Joachim began to establish himself as “Billy Mo” in the German music business. 

                                    

With the title Das Fräulein Gerda , an oldie first published in 1938, Billy Mo's musical transition to pop and folk music was completed in 1960 . Mo delivered further remakes of hits from the 1920s and 1930s. He achieved his big commercial breakthrough in 1962 with the number one hit I'd rather buy a Tyrolean hat. In 1962/63 the song stayed in the charts for 17 weeks, reached number three on the sales lists and achieved sales of four million marks by 1967. For his success in Germany, Mo received a gold record from his music label.

From then on, the Tyrolean hat became Billy Mo's trademark, which was a must at every public appearance. His later single releases were unable to repeat this success, even though he continued to have a few listings in the German charts. Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi later judged that Billy Mo's "popularity was based on his talent to beat the Germans in their own specialty - humtata music."  Mo's last single re-release appeared in 1970. Musical developments had transcended his musical style and his record sales had plummeted. Nevertheless, Billy Mo continued to tour live and appear on entertainment programs over the next few years with his songs, which had now become “oldies” in their own right. 

Since the 1970s, Mo lived in Wunstorf in Lower Saxony, where he was also involved in the local musical life. At the age of 78 he was still performing in jazz clubs, most recently especially in the Jazz Club Hannover.  After a performance in December 2001, he suffered a stroke. Since then he has been in a vegetative state and was in need of care.  In the summer of 2002, Mo was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon by the Federal President for his services in musical youth work, which was presented to him by the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Sigmar Gabriel. Billy Mo died of heart failure in 2004 at the age of 81. A trumpet and a Tyrolean hat can be seen on his gravestone in Wunstorf-Luthe.

(Edited from Wikipedia)