Still living the blues
Erudite readers won't need to be told that the landmark blues recording Pinetop's Boogie Woogie was made, in 1928, by Clarence 'Pinetop' Smith and not Joe Willie 'Pinetop' Perkins, but it has become the latter's signature tune, and it's a common misconception that he wrote it.
Given that in recent years Perkins has constantly gone back to the same blues standard repertoire, it's a surprise the boogie woogie classic doesn't make an appearance on his latest for Telarc, Pinetop Perkins and Friends, but the singer-pianist delivers a set of comfortingly familiar material in excellent musical company.
At the tender age of 94, he's probably entitled to coast a bit. Perkins was already 15 years old when Pinetop's Boogie Woogie was a hit, and got his nickname because he liked to play the tune. If there's an older blues musician still working, I'm not aware of him or her, and it must have been a pleasant novelty for the 82-year-old B.B. King, who duets with him here on Down in Mississippi, to be the kid on the recording.
The 'Friends' are some very fine blues musicians. Besides King the guitar stars include Eric Clapton, Jimmy Vaughan, Paul Diethelm, Eric Sardinas, and Little Frank Krakowski, while bass duties are shared by Bob Stroger and Willie Kent. Drums are played by Willie 'Big Eyes' Smith, his son Kenny and two more unrelated Smiths, Kester and Leon.
Perkins has had a remarkable career. He started out doubling on piano and guitar, but was stabbed in his left arm by 'a chorus girl', and having sustained severe tendon damage concentrated on the keyboard, the posture being more comfortable for him.
He built a solid reputation as a blues sideman, playing for Robert Nighthawk, King, Sonny Boy Williamson and Earl Hooker, and in the early 1950s cut his own popular version of Pinetop's Boogie Woogie, for the first time, for Sam Phillips at Sun Records in Memphis.
He was well into his 50s by the time he got his big career break: in 1969 when Otis Spann - severely ill with the liver cancer that was to kill him the following year - left the Muddy Waters band, Perkins was invited to replace him.