|
 M.C. Records is proud to announce the signing of 90 year old blues piano egend Pinetop Perkins. His first release for the label will be "Ladies Man." The
recording will feature duets musically or vocally with the finest women in roots and blues music. Already recorded are duets with Ruth Brown, Deborah Coleman, Ann Rabson, Marcia Ball and Susan Tedeschi. The
attachment enclosed is a photo with Tone-Cool recording artist Susan Tedeschi and her bass player Ron Perry. This photo was taken at Raven Street Studio in Ottawa Canada. Pinetop will be recording
with more great women throughout the fall. Look for the CD to be out in the winter of 2004. This will be Pinetop's first full-length studio recording since 2000.
Pinetop Perkins just celebrated his 90th birthday on July 13. He will be featured on the PBS Blues Series on October 4th. The program will feature Pinetop being
interviewed and performing. The program is directed by Clint Eastwood.
Pinetop Perkins is one of the last great Mississippi bluesmen still performing. Heıs made a living playing blues since
1926 and is widely regarded as one of the best blues pianists. Heıs created a style of playing that has influenced three
generations of piano players and will continue to be the yardstick by which great blues pianists are measured.
Born Willie Perkins, in Belzoni, MS, in 1913, Pinetop started out playing guitar at house parties and honky tonks, and
switched to piano after sustaining a serious injury that made picking a guitar painful. He came under the tutelage of
Clarence ³Pinetop² Smith, for whom he composed the song entitled ³Pinetopıs Boogie² that became a hit and, indeed,
one of the more popular tunes from the boogie-woogie era. Perkins started performing the tune himself, and out of admiration for his mentor, started using the name ³Pinetop.²
Perkins worked primarily in the Mississippi Delta throughout the thirties and forties, spending five years with Sonny Boy
Williamson on the King Biscuit Time radio program on KFFA, Helena, Arkansas. Pinetop also toured extensively with
slide guitar player Robert Nighthawk and backed him on an early Chess session. After briefly working with B.B. King in
Memphis, Perkins barnstormed the South with Earl Hooker during the early fifties. The pair completed a session for Sam Phillipsı famous Sun Records in Memphis 1953.
By this time, Pinetop had developed his own unmistakable sound. His right hand plays horn lines while his left kicks out
bass lines and lots of bottom. It was Pinetop, along with Pete Johnson, Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, and Little
Brother Montgomery, who provided the basic format and ideas from which countless swing bands derived their sound
-whole horn sections playing out what Pinetopıs right hand was playing. Although Pinetop never played swing, it was his brand of boogie-woogie that came to structure swing and eventually, rock n roll.
Still, with recent successes the exception, Pinetop is best known for holding down the piano chair in the great Muddy
Waters Band for twelve years during the highest point of Muddyıs career. Replacing the late, great Otis Spann in 1969,
Pinetop helped shape the Watersı sound and anchored Muddyıs memorable combo throughout the seventies with his
brilliant piano solos. In 1980, Pinetop and other Watersı alumni decided to go out on their own and formed the Legendary Blues Band. Legendary recorded two records for Rounder and toured extensively.
Pinetop, who had been labeled a sideman throughout most of his career, eventually left Legendary to concentrate on a
solo career. Within two years, he had his first domestic record as a frontman and had a most impressive touring schedule
. Since going solo, Pinetop has been featured on many nationally syndicated news and music shows, and he has
appeared in numerous movie productions as well as television and radio ads. He has also headlined nearly every major showcase room in North America and most of the major festivals here and abroad.
|
