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ShareLEXINGTON, Ky. - Leave it to Pinetop Perkins to court two audiences at a single show.
On one side of the stage at a Lexington concert in 1994 was Bill Payne, keyboardist and founding member of the co-billed Little Feat. On the other was an enthusiastic outdoor crowd that cheered on Perkins’ ageless boogie-woogie piano rolls and bold blues phrasings.
Payne was clearly savoring the up-close moment with a mentoring musical inspiration. The audience was similarly thrilled at hearing Perkins rip through the Muddy Waters staples “Honey Bee” and “Got My Mojo Working.”
But the biggest, broadest smile that day probably belonged to Perkins himself. Granted, as his fingers strolled along the keys, Perkins summoned the spirits of his Mississippi youth, of 1950s recording sessions in Memphis and, yes, even 1970s road trips with Waters as the blues icon’s career enjoyed an unexpected renaissance. But the smile told the story. For a musician then in his early 80s, Perkins looked to be having the time of his life.
“I think people like the stuff I’m doing,” said Perkins, who turned 95 on July 7. “It’s all I know how to do.”
For Perkins, tradition reaches back to 1928, when he wrote and recorded “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie.” He has long been revered in blues circles, but the bold boogie-woogie colors of his piano work will forever define Perkins’ music.
Initially, his talents extended to guitar as well as piano. Then one of those dangerous, almost folkloric events occurred that set the direction of Perkins’ career. It all began with an altercation with a dancer in a Helena, Ark., club.
“Well, the girl stabbed me in the arm,” Perkins said. “I couldn’t play guitar no more.”
The tendons in his left arm forever severed, Perkins shifted full focus to the piano. During the 1940s, he was playing alongside some formidable blues figures, including slide guitarist Robert Nighthawk and harmonica ace Sonny Boy Williamson. By the end of the decade, he had headed from his native Mississippi to the electric-blues capital of the universe: Chicago.
Perkins worked, traveled and toured continually during that time. He also recorded some of his own music at Sam Phillips’ famed Sun Records in Memphis, but Perkins’ big break came in 1969, when he replaced Otis Spann in Waters’ band.
“Oh, yeah. I loved Muddy Waters,” Perkins said. “We were together for a long time. A long time. We traveled everywhere together. Shoot, Muddy had me playing all over the place, man. I loved him.”
Perkins also recorded extensively with Waters. First came 1973’s underrated album “Can’t Get No Grindin’,” a return to traditional form for the singer after years of psychedelic and brass-oriented records. Perkins also was there when Waters signed with Columbia for a series of albums produced by Texas roots-rock guitarist Johnny Winter - beginning with 1977’s extraordinary “Hard Again” - that introduced the learned Chicago artists to a new blues generation.
Perkins’ bandmate on all of the Waters recordings was drummer Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, whose band has been backing up the pianist.
“I don’t like to play by myself,” Perkins said of performing live.
Curiously, it wasn’t until after Waters’ death in 1983 that Perkins’ solo career took full flight. He has recorded for a variety of independent labels, including Telarc, which released an all-star outing called “Pinetop Perkins and Friends” in June.
“Oh, yeah, I got lots of friends,” Perkins said. “I love all good people.”
Among Perkins’ pals on the album are guitar giants B.B. King, with whom Perkins first collaborated in Memphis near the start of their respective careers; Eric Clapton; Jimmie Vaughan and Eric Sardinas. Smith is again in the drum chair for the album’s golden moment: the slow blues sway, with Perkins and Vaughan in rich simpatico, of the Nighthawk gem “Anna Lee.”
Times haven’t always been this celebratory, though. In 2004, while driving in La Porte, Ind., Perkins saw his life passing before him in the form on an oncoming train. His car was hit by a locomotive at railroad crossing. The car was destroyed, but the pianist escaped with only minor injuries.
“That train knocked me out, man. Shoot, I come to and I haven’t driven since,” he said. “I thank the Lord for me being here. That’s all I can say.”
Now that’s what you call a testimonial. How many bluesmen can outlive a train wreck to play into their mid-90s?
“They used to call me Pinetop,” Perkins said. “But now I done got so old they call me Pinebottom.”
