Pinetop Perkins, one of the last living blues legends died today at the young age of 97. As I talked about here a few months ago, I was able to see Pinetop play back at the King Biscuit Blues Fest for the second time in the past few years. This past festival, he played with his Muddy Waters bandmates Willie "Big Eyes" Smith and Bob Margolin, but he clearly drove the show. He still sounded really good, which was an amazing feat for a 97 year old. Below is a video of Mr. Perkins at age 95 singing "Down in Mississippi" with Bob Margolin on guitar.
Born on a cotton plantation near Belzoni, Mississippi, in 1913, he worked the fields from age 7, drove a truck for a living at 18 and got stabbed in the arm in his late 20s. The barroom attack tore his tendons and cut his bone, ending his dreams of becoming a leading guitar man. Instead, he refashioned himself as a regal piano player. The tragedy — and turning point — in his musical life occurred in 1942, when an angry woman mistakenly blamed him for an offense her husband had committed and swung a blade at him.
"It was a freak accident," Perkins told the Chicago Tribune. "When she did that, I just said, 'Well, you just cut me out of my career, that's all I can say.' It was hard to start over. It was kind of rough, but I just figured out playing the piano the best way I could."
In 1969 in Buffalo, N.Y., Perkins, well into his fifties, sat in on piano during a jam session and earned a spot in the band of legendary bluesman Muddy Waters. By then, he had already performed with the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson and slide guitarist Robert Nighthawk. The old school bluesman with the aggressive keyboard style and gravelly voice had played the rickety bars among the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta, and toured with rock pioneer Ike Turner in the 1950s.
Indeed, he played piano with harmonica master Sonny Boy Williamson on the iconic "King Biscuit Time" radio show and with B.B. King in Memphis. Generations of musicians learned and modeled their art on Perkins, including no less than Ike Turner. "Pinetop would be the birth of rock 'n' roll, because he taught me what I played," Turner told the Tribune in 2004.
Perkins' skills came not from any sort of formal training but from an innate ability and love for a musical form that arose from the South's plantation system. "I didn't get no schooling. I come up the hard way in the world," Perkins told The Associated Press in a 2009 interview.
Perkins won a Grammy this year for best traditional blues album for "Joined at the Hip: Pinetop Perkins & Willie "Big Eyes" Smith." That win made Perkins the oldest Grammy winner, edging out late comedian George Burns, who was 95 when he won in the spoken category for "Gracie: A Love Story" in 1990. Perkins also won a 2007 Grammy for best traditional blues album for his collaboration on the "Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live in Dallas." He received a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2005.
The above obit is a combo of two articles by:
Shelia Byrd and Jim Vertuno of the Associated Press; Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune
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