I-95 Drive Home Mystery Artist [VIDEO]

Tonight’s mystery artist wrote one of Steve Miller’s best known hits even though his challengers included being blind from the age of 20 and suffering from diabetes and pancreatitis. Think you know who this artist was??

His life was quite a story and not one that anyone would consider to have been easy. Born in Hyannis Massachusetts with congenital glaucoma Paul Pena would not be stopped from pursuing his music. He attended Perkins School for the Blind and Clark University in Worcester Mass.  He played in many bands such as T-Bone Walker and Bonnie Raitt. He also produced two albums of his own, his second ‘New Train’ which contained the song ‘Jet Airliner’ a song he had written about an airplane trip from Boston to Montreal he had taken to play his first-ever date with T-Bone Walker's band. The album ‘New Train’ unfortunately stalled in its release due to a disagreement with his record company.  But as fate would have it his producer was also the keyboardist for the Steve Miller band and he played an unreleased version for Steve who got permission to record a version of the song for his album ‘Book of Dreams’

In the end the song’s royalties from Steve’s single would be Paul Pena’s primary source of income. He died in California in 2005 from complications of diabetes and pancreatitis at the age of 55.

Here is Steve with tonight's featured song.