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'America' singer Dan Peek, 60

ST. LOUIS - Dan Peek, a founding member of the popular 1970s band America and singer of high harmonies on hits that included "A Horse With No Name" and "Ventura Highway," has died, his father said yesterday. He was 60.

    by ASSOCIATED PRESS, Daily News
    Published 

ST. LOUIS

- Dan Peek, a founding member of the popular 1970s band America and singer of high harmonies on hits that included "A Horse With No Name" and "Ventura Highway," has died, his father said yesterday. He was 60.

Peek's wife, Catherine, found him dead Sunday in bed in his home in Farmington, Mo., about 60 miles southwest of St. Louis, Milton Peek said. An autopsy was planned.

Peek, whose father was in the Air Force, had met the two other members of America - Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley - also "Air Force brats" - while attending high school in London. The group's first album in 1971 included the No. 1 hit "Horse With No Name." Other hits followed: "Tin Man," "Sister Golden Hair," and "Daisy Jane," among them. Peek played lead guitar on many of the songs, and wrote some of them, including the 1974 hit "Lonely People."

"Dan & his music will live on in the great songs he shared with us all," Beckley wrote on the group's website.

Peek was born Nov. 1, 1950, in Panama City, Fla. He had lived in Farmington since 1978, soon after he left the band. Peek and his wife had no children. His funeral will be Monday at the Presbyterian Church in Farmington.