Joe Willie “Pinetop” Perkins is a national treasure. Forget Mount Rushmore and to hell with the Grand Canyon – old rocks and dead men are no match for a timeless spring of eternal blues.
When Pinetop Perkins was born in 1913, William Howard Taft was President of the 48 United States- Arizona had been a state for just over a year! Taft was the 27th President; George W. Bush is the 43rd. Perkins has lived through 16 presidential administrations, World War I, World War II, Korea, Kennedy, Vietnam, the moon landing, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nixon. Pinetop Perkins has lived through more history than Forrest Gump. That timeline covers only some of what he's lived through, but none of what he's done.
He was born in Belzoni, Mississippi on the Honey Island plantation. Perkins has taken to saying he was “born in the honey,” a turn of phrase that now serves as the title of a 60-minute documentary on his incredible life.
He started playing music at an early age, learning both guitar and piano as a youngster before leaving home around age 16. Fellow blues legend Robert Nighthawk was from this same area of the Delta. He and Perkins formed a relationship that would see the two men working together throughout Nighthawk's life. Early on, music wasn't enough to support Perkins so he supplemented his earnings as a musician with both honest and more questionable occupations.
He moved to Clarksdale in 1940, not long after the moonshine operation he helped run got broken up. His fellow entrepreneurs were apprehended by the law. He escaped and decided it was time for a change of scenery. In Clarksdale, he found work at the same plantation as the legendary Charlie Patton. While there, he also met Earl Hooker. Hooker and Nighthawk would be Perkins' most regular musical partners for the next 30 years.
Nighthawk led Perkins west to Helena, Arkansas, when he landed a radio gig at legendary KFFA, which played a crucial role in spreading the blues sound throughout the South. KFFA was one of the first – if not the first – radio stations to hire, pay, and play African-American artists. Nighthawk's gig wasn't paid, but the exposure it would give he and Pinetop was almost as good as cash in hand. Pinetop was lured from his gig with Nighthawk to playing with fellow KFFA artist Sonny Boy Williamson, who not only had a radio gig, he was getting paid. Perkins now had the best of both worlds.
Perkins knocked around Memphis, St. Louis, and Cairo, Illinois throughout the '50s. While in Memphis, he taught Ike Turner to play piano. He also recorded on a session with Earl Hooker for Sun Records. While there, he recorded “Pinetop's Boogie Woogie,” which was originally recorded by Clarence “Pinetop” Smith. The song meant so much to Perkins that he donned the nickname himself, becoming even more famous than its originator.
He moved to Chicago in the '60s. While there, he played on Earl Hooker's Two Bugs and a Roach album. In 1969, he was asked to join Muddy Waters' band after Waters' longtime piano player Otis Spann finally left to go solo. Spann died in April the next year. Perkins and Spann probably did more to define and develop blues piano than any other players in the history of the genre.
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