Artist Pinetop Perkins
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Doug Nelson
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Website
Pinetop Perkins
It’s astounding that there are still blues musicians playing the circuit who were around when giants like Robert Johnson and Charley Patton walked the earth, but Joe Willie “Pinetop” Perkins is one of them—and has more than earned the status of “giant” himself. Perkins played clubs in Mississippi before Prohibition, and enjoyed a fruitful career that included long stretches as a sideman to Sonny Boy Williamson and Muddy Waters. Forced to give up guitar after a woman in an Arkansas juke joint stabbed him onstage in the late ’40s (how blues is that?), Perkins found his true calling as a pianist, mastering the rolling, rhythmic sound of boogie woogie that is his greatest legacy
Updated 01/12/2011
