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The original idea for this story
involved walking Pinetop
Perkins from his hotel in
Chicago’s South Loop to the nearby
Buddy Guy’s Legends blues club,
where he would sit at the piano and
explain a few patented moves. That
didn’t happen. Not that Perkins is lazy,
or uninterested in revisiting his favorite
blues and boogie-woogie standards. He
regularly works the international blues
festival circuit and at home in Austin,
Texas, Perkins plays, sells his CDs or
sits among dozens of adoring young
fans every night at clubs like Antone’s.
It’s just that at 95 years old, Perkins does
whatever he wants. For about an hour this past
June, that meant sitting near his hotel pool where
he drank big cups of sweetened coffee, smoked
menthol cigarettes and kept his eyes open in
case a woman in a bathing suit should happen to
walk by. As one dove into the pool, he turned
and muttered, “I look at ’em, talk to ’em and
that’s about it.”
Aside from that supposed physical limitation,
Perkins would make for quite a date. He’s been
playing piano (and, early on, guitar) behind
some of the biggest names in blues history.
Indirectly, Perkins inspired rock ’n’ roll. At an
age when most people consider retirement, he
started his solo recording career about 20 years
ago. This doesn’t include the multitude of
picaresque adventures, alongside ups, downs
and a few near fatal incidents that took him from
the early 20th century South to Chicago and
back down South again as a new century began.
Still, Perkins didn’t say all that much about
any of this as he sat by the pool. Not that he
can’t talk. “He clams up around the press, but
riding in the van you can’t get Pine to shut up,”
said his longtime bassist Bob Stroger.
Maybe for the laconic blues hero an interview
is like a performance: Sparse words are
supposed to convey as much as minimal tones.
“Pinetop plays few notes, but it’s all about
where he puts them,” said pianist Barrelhouse
Chuck (a.k.a. Charles Goering), who has been
his friend for more than 30 years. “I heard him
play with lots of different bands, and when he
was younger, the way he got behind and backed
the band was incredible. His rhythm, where he
put all those notes to bring the band to a certain
level.”
Nowadays, Perkins’ groups are usually made
MAN
OF FEW
NOTES
Pinetop Perkins’ Instinctive
Playing Still Defines Blues Piano
By Aaron Cohen
up of longtime friends and rotating guests.
Drummer Willie “Big Eyes” Smith worked with
Perkins throughout much of the 1970s in Muddy
Waters’ band, and Stroger has performed with
the pianist since he went on his own in the early
’80s. They form the backbone of much of this
year’s Pinetop Perkins And Friends (Telarc),
which includes guest appearances from B.B.
King and Eric Clapton, as well as younger musicians
like singer Nora Jean Brusco.
“He knows what to do instinctively,” Smith
said. “Pinetop’s been doing that his whole life
and will be doing that on his dying bed. He’s
slower than he was, but the instinct is still there.
He knows what he’s supposed to do.”
Peter Carlson’s 2007 documentary, Born In
The Honey: The Pinetop Perkins Story, delves
into the roots of these instincts: his birth (as Joe
Willie Perkins) on the Honey Island Plantation
of Belzoni, Miss., to pulling cotton and playing
music in the state’s juke joints and the Sanctified
church. To this day, Perkins grapples with the
decision he made to follow a secular path.
“I pray to the Lord, ‘Please forgive me for
the stuff I’m doing,’” Perkins said as he turned
away from the pool. “I’m trying to make a dollar
and I hope He listens to me. The Lord don’t like
that bluesy stuff, but I ask him to forgive me for
it. I’m trying to make people happy to make a
Photo by Jack Vartoogian
dollar, because it’s all I know how to do. I didn’t
do any schooling to get a good job.”
The seminal blues musicians who Perkins
encountered throughout Mississippi offered
Perkins a different kind of education. He’d work
with two of them—Robert Nighthawk and Earl
Hooker—for years afterwards. The boogie-woogie
pianist Pinetop Smith permanently lent his
style, as well as his nickname, to the younger
musician. Perkins also absorbed enough to teach
piano to a young Ike Turner. After Nighthawk
left the state for Helena, Ark., to perform on the
“King Biscuit Time” radio program in 1943, he
invited Perkins to join him.
Perkins built his early reputation playing in
town on the radio behind Sonny Boy
Williamson. At some point in the early ’40s, his
career—and possibly, his life—almost ended
when a drunken woman slashed the tendons in
his left arm (she mistakenly thought he locked
her in a bathroom). Although that happened
more than 60 years ago, Perkins continues to
mention the incident in regretful tones as if it
happened last month.
“I can’t play boogie-woogie like I used to
since that woman stabbed me in the arm,”
Perkins said. “I can’t play with my left hand like
I used to. I can’t play bass like I used to. I play
behind the bass now. I used to play a lot of gui-
September 2008 DOWNBEAT 53