Andy Greene of Rolling Stone has a succinct obituary, with one of those headlines that sum it all up: "Legendary Delta Blues Pianist Pinetop Perkins Dies At 97: Perkins played with Muddy Waters for 10 years and recorded with everyone from Sonny Boy Williamson to Eric Clapton." Greene notes he kept touring and recording till quite recently. His 2008 disc Pinetop Perkins & Friends featured contributions from Eric Clapton and B.B. King.
Best obit of all is by Shelia Byrd of the Associated Press ... her lede:
Muddy Waters was looking for a new piano player when chain-smoking journeyman Pinetop Perkins showed off his aggressive keyboarding during a jam session.Some great quotes in the AP story:
"He liked what he heard. The rest is history," said Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, who was a drummer in Waters' band back in 1969.
By then, Perkins, an old school bluesman with the gravelly voice, for years had played the rickety bars among the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta, and toured far beyond them with rock pioneer Ike Turner in the 1950s. He performed with the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson and slide guitarist Robert Nighthawk.
When he and Waters hooked up, Pinetop was in his 50s and never had recorded an album of his own but "had more energy than us younger folks did," Smith said.
That verve kept him jamming in the clubs and collecting Grammy Awards until shortly before his death from cardiac arrest Monday at his Austin, Texas, home. He was 97.
"I didn't get no schooling. I come up the hard way in the world," Perkins told The Associated Press in a 2009 interview.Also an especially knowledgeable discussion of his musical influence in The Telegraph of London. Then there's one in Entertainment Weekly that gets its facts scrambled by saying he turned from guitar to piano when he suffered injuries in a fight with a choir girl in Helena, Ark. According to all other accounts, she was a chorus girl (but I kinda like the idea of the choir girl in a knife fight).
Bob Corritore, a harmonica player who performed occasionally with Perkins and produced some of his work, said, "Pinetop could find the cracks and fill them in and be the glue and mortar of the whole band."
Fellow great bluesman B.B. King was saddened by the loss of his friend.
"He was one of the last great Mississippi Bluesmen. He had such a distinctive voice, and he sure could play the piano. He will be missed not only by me, but by lovers of music all over the world," King said in an emailed statement.
* * *
Perkins lived his life in the tradition of many bluesmen, rambling from place to place, watching most of his contemporaries pass on. He moved to Austin in 2004 to live with an associate since he had no family.
His manager, Patricia Morgan, said funeral arrangements were pending in Austin and a graveside service would be held near Clarksdale, Miss., where he wanted to be buried.
"We knew he lived a good life. What can you say about the man? He left here in his sleep. That's the way I want to go," said Smith.
The NPR show Mountain Stage has an 18-minute clip of Perkins' performance on the program in 2001 with Bob Margolin on guitar, Tad Walters on bass and Wes Johnson on Drums. Said show host Larry Groce of the pianist's three appearances on Mountain Stage, "Pine Top was an inspiration. He last visited when he was 88 years old and he still had a twinkle in his eye, a chuckle in his voice and fingers that were right in the groove. Truly, an era has ended."
No comments:
Post a Comment