Remembering the great Pinetop Perkins (July 7, 1913 – March 21, 2011)

what a staggeringly good photo by Jerome de Perlinghi

Blues piano master Joe Willie “Pinetop” Perkins was born on July 7, 1913, on the Honey Island Plantation, seven miles southeast of Belzoni. Perkins spent much of his career accompanying blues icons such as Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2 and Muddy Waters. After he began to tour and record as a featured singer and soloist in the 1980s, Perkins earned a devoted following among enthusiasts who hailed him as the venerated elder statesman of blues piano.

Perkins did not have an album under his own name in the United States until he was seventy-five years old (in 1988), but during the next two decades he recorded more than fifteen LPs and CDs as the reigning patriarch of blues piano. Perkins started out on guitar, but he also learned piano as a youngster, influenced by local pianists and by the records of Clarence “Pine Top” Smith and others. Smith’s “Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie” of 1929 was so popular that many pianists, including Perkins, took up boogie woogie and sometimes even adopted the name “Pine Top,” or “Pinetop.”

Perkins first recorded as pianist on a Nighthawk session in Chicago in 1950. In 1953 Perkins recorded two versions of “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie” when he, Boyd Gilmore, and Earl Hooker did a session together for Sam Phillips’s Sun label in Memphis. Pinetop continued to play with Nighthawk, Hooker, and others at different times and also worked at a laundry and a garage. In 1969, when Otis Spann–another noted pianist with Belzoni roots–left the Muddy Waters band, Waters called on Perkins to take his place. International touring and recording with Muddy brought him widespread recognition, and he made his first album in 1976 for a French label. In 1980 Perkins and other band members left Muddy and formed the Legendary Blues Band. After recording two albums with the unit, Perkins embarked on his belated solo career.

content © Mississippi Blues Commission

courtesy of

Don's Tunes

Pinetop Perkins - Pinetop's Boogie Woogie

Pinetop Perkins with his "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" from "Muddy "Mississippi" Waters Live (Legacy Edition)". Released in 2003 from a 1979 album that was recorded in 1978. Personnel: Pinetop Perkins - Piano, Jerry Portnoy - Harmonica, Willie "Big Eyes" Smith - Drums, Muddy Waters - Guitar, 

The New Adult Bookstore Motel, Records & Liquor: various items from the thrift store, dollar a piece! (Jobe goes shopping)

 I need to get on over to the Library Bar and Grill!

It's next door to the Bookstore and the Motel where you can find allsorts, books, second hand vinyl and refreshments and even crash if you need . . . . . . . . 

You know it!

Motel and Bookstore - Voodoo Wagon

TAJ - Six Days On The Road

 

Taj - Lovin' In My Sweet Baby's Eyes

Richard Thompson - Turning of The Tide

Richard Thompson Beeswing - for Anne Briggs)

 

"Beeswing"

I was nineteen when I came to town, they called it the Summer of Love
They were burning babies, burning flags. The hawks against the doves
I took a job in the steamie down on Cauldrum Street
And I fell in love with a laundry girl who was working next to me

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child, oh she was running wild
She said "As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay
And you wouldn't want me any other way"

Brown hair zig-zag around her face and a look of half-surprise
Like a fox caught in the headlights, there was animal in her eyes
She said "Young man, oh can't you see I'm not the factory kind
If you don't take me out of here I'll surely lose my mind"

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing
So fine that I might crush her where she lay
She was a lost child, she was running wild
She said "As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay
And you wouldn't want me any other way"

We busked around the market towns and picked fruit down in Kent
And we could tinker lamps and pots and knives wherever we went
And I said that we might settle down, get a few acres dug
Fire burning in the hearth and babies on the rug
She said "Oh man, you foolish man, it surely sounds like hell
You might be lord of half the world, you'll not own me as well"

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child, oh she was running wild
She said "As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay
And you wouldn't want me any other way"

We was camping down the Gower one time, the work was pretty good
She thought we shouldn't wait for the frost and I thought maybe we should
We was drinking more in those days and tempers reached a pitch
And like a fool I let her run with the rambling itch

Oh the last I heard she's sleeping rough back on the Derby beat
White Horse in her hip pocket and a wolfhound at her feet
And they say she even married once, a man named Romany Brown
But even a gypsy caravan was too much settling down
And they say her flower is faded now, hard weather and hard booze
But maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains you refuse

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing

And I miss her more than ever words could say

If I could just taste all of her wildness now

If I could hold her in my arms today

Well I wouldn't want her any other way

Songwriters: Richard Thompson

One of the finest songs ever written . . . . IMO

 Townes Van Zandt - Tower Song (for my friend Phil) another fine fine song written by a master) Live version

UPDATE: Oh and there's more . . . . . 

with a Taj compilation 'Blue Light Blues' pre-90s selection par excellence with master tracks on it and one of the most breathtaking harmonica solos I have ever heard not from Taj but the extraordinarily gifted John Popper on She Caught the Katy ( a Taj Mahal penned song and there was me thinking it was a blues standard!!)

Awesome dollar a piece bargain buckets abounding!

Taj Mahal and Mississippi Fred McDowell

Taj Mahal - She Caught The Katy live (with band)

and also Jobe found in the bargain bins Pinetop Perkins, Phil Ochs, Traffic's John Barleycorn, Big Bopper, even Prince's Sign of The Times! go on over you know you want to and take something outta the library!