Villepigue remained in Chanute for one year of junior college, where he played clarinet

in the orchestra. In 1938, at age

19, he joined the first of many

road bands, Allyn Cassel and His Orchestra, and began playing

gigs throughout the Midwest.

In Missouri, he formed a lasting friendship with another young arranger, Norman “Buddy” Baker (later director of music for Disney). In Baker’s words, Villepigue was

a truly great friend of mine, Paul, he was a warm and very talented man. 

I remember that I first met Paul in Hoover’s Music Store on South Street in Springfield, Missouri, in the late 30s when he was there in the store looking for score paper. He was arranging for the Jerry Pettit Orchestra, whose home base was in Springfield after a stint in Denver. The Jerry Pettit Orchestra was a 15 or 16 piece group. It was a good “local” band in Springfield and it was in the Tommy Dorsey/Benny Goodman swing style music. I was arranging and playing trumpet at a local radio station in Springfield. We also talked about arranging for the big bands as that was the rage at that time.

(Buddy Baker, email to Villepigue’s daughter Desne, March 2002)

In early 1940, from a gig at the Hotel Broadview in Wichita, Kansas, Villepigue wrote to his kid sister with advice about her piano work and singing in a four-girl group at Chanute High:

Piglet—

          Surprise—brother is answering a letter, and, almost promptly. I couldn’t very well do otherwise with 2 from you in such short order. But, truthfully, I hope you keep on writing me, that is, until we’re working together, cause I really get my kicks out of them. . . .

          If you should happen to send me the exact top range of your top gal and the bottom likewise of the low gal I will write up—Merry Oldsmobile just as sung by the Melody Maids on Crosby’s record of same (complete with words and piano part). That’s a good one for a quartette to start on as it is simple and has lots of whole notes.

          About that Pete Johnson left hand—I think I know what your trouble is. You’re not playing the chorus fast enough. When you do get it up to tempo you will find you can play it only one way. . . . Pete has a record out with the same left hand on it and I will buy it and send it to you—first chance I get. It is called “Roll ’em, Pete” and is really “tempo de scoot.” . . .

                                                                      Brotherly love

                                                                                Pig

(Paul Villepigue, letter to Celeste Villepigue, postmarked Wichita, January 10, 1940)

Despite Villepigue’s reference to “working together,” Celeste never took up a musical career. He ends the letter simply with the dates of the next gig—“Feb. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, & 4th in Grand Forks”—but doesn’t say which band he was with at the time. Later that year, while Villepigue was on the road, his father entered the hospital and died at age 48, cause unknown. The obituary for Paul Sr.—published November 4, 1940, in the Chanute Tribune—states that his survivors included

“a son, Paul F. Jr. of Henning, Minn., who will be here this evening.”