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Monday, March 21, 2011
Pinetop Perkins 1913- 2011
(Laura Skelding AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
- Photos: Remembering Pinetop Perkins
Legendary piano player Joe Willie “Pinetop” Perkins, who gave Austin a walking, talking, piano thumping monument to the blues when he moved here in 2003, passed away from cardiac arrest Monday at his home in North Austin. The oldest-ever Grammy winner, whose third golden gramophone came last month, Perkins was 97.
When the Rolling Stones played Austin for the first time in October 2006 at Zilker Park, the sight they most wanted to see was Perkins backstage before their show.
Even in failing health, Perkins went to Antone’s nightclub three or four times a week to sell CDs and DVDs and chat with fans, who couldn’t believe they were hanging out with the piano player in Muddy Waters’ great band from 1969 until 1980. He was often called onstage to jam, including Saturday at South by Southwest, when he played piano for fellow Mississippi native Bobby Rush.
Although Perkins is not survived by relatives, Susan Antone said “he was a member of our family, not just the Antone’s family, but the Austin family.”
An original Mississippi Delta bluesman, Perkins came up with musical folk heroes such as Robert Johnson and Son House and played on Sonny Boy Williamson ‘s essential “King Biscuit Time” radio program in the 1940s, He received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2005.
That recognition, plus the comfort he felt in his new hometown of Austin, ended a four-year retirement. “As soon as we got back from that trip to LA,” his fulltime caregiver Barry Nowlin told the American Statesman last year, “he told me, ‘I want you to get my manager on the phone.’ He was ready to perform again.”
Perkins, who got his nickname from his 1953 cover of Clarence Smith’s “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie,” had a special relationship with Antone’s and the club’s owner Clifford Antone since the mid-’70s, when the Muddy Waters Blues Band was booked at the club’s original Sixth Street location for a week. Among those in the crowd for every performance were Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan, plus piano player Marcia Ball, who called Perkins “the classic Chicago blues piano player.”
Antone was instrumental in convincing Perkins, who had been fleeced of all his money by an associate, to move to Austin from LaPorte, Ind.
“Their idea was ‘Let’s get Pinetop down here so we could put our arms around him,’ ” Nowlin said of Antone and former Waters harmonica player James Cotton, who lives in South Austin. .
Perkins was revitalized by the move to Austin, Nowlin said, but so were many local musicians, who were amazed to see the blues giant sitting in at honky-tonks as well as blues joints.
“For me, Austin’s been a place where we all came because there’s a pure love of music … with no discrimination of styles,” Ball said. “To see Pinetop at the Broken Spoke just tied together so much of what Austin’s about musically.”
Perkins and Antone were almost inseparable. “It was really an ageless thing,” said Clifford Antone’s sister Susan. “They were just very close. When Clifford died (in May 2006), Pine was devastated.”
“People in Austin treasure Pinetop and take care of him,” his manager Pat Morgan told the American Statesman last year.
Although best known as the piano player who replaced the great Otis Spann in the Waters band, rock historians also place Perkins at the birth of rock n’ roll. Perkins’ protege Ike Turner played piano on 1951’s “Rocket 88,” which Memphis producer Sam Phillips called the first rock n’ roll record. Perkins taught Turner how to set the rhythm with his left hand on the piano, while aping horn lines with his right hand. But Perkins never carried himself as a blues legend. “He loves everybody the same, whether it’s the president of the United States or the guy on Sixth Street who just asked him for spare change,” said Nowlin.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
- From the archive: Mr. Pinetop Perkins has earned living legend status
- Sign the guestbook
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Blues legend Pinetop Perkins has died. He was 97.
(Laura Skelding AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
- Photos: Remembering Pinetop Perkins
Bluesman Pinetop Perkins, who made a name for himself playing piano with Muddy Waters, among others, died Monday at his Austin home, according to a message on his website. He was 97. In February, Perkins won a Grammy Award, his third, for best traditional blues album for “Joined at the Hip: Pinetop Perkins & Willie Big Eyes’ Smith.” On Saturday Perkins attended a performance by Bobby Rush during the South by Southwest music festival.
- From the archive: Mr. Pinetop Perkins has earned living legend status
- Sign the guestbook
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SXSW review: Scala and Kolacny brothers
Don’t know who Scala and Kolacny brothers are? Neither did a lot of the fairly intoxicated show-goers who wandered into Stubb’s on Saturday around 11:30 p.m. But for every individual confused by the name on the bill, there was another who at least knew they were about to see the choir that did a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” for “The Social Network” soundtrack.
As you can imagine, a piano-accompanied 21-woman choir dressed in prim black attire is not the standard touring act for the Stubb’s sound crew, nor the standard fare for beer-drinking rock fans. So as technical difficulties were being sorted out, a bit of awkwardness ensued. The choir would sing, and then their wireless mikes would cut out. So everyone started shushing each other. And then laughing. And then shushing. And then cheering.
“Get it, girls!” one audience member yelled.
But when the choir launched into a haunting rendition of Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People,” backed by a stumbling industrial beat, the shushing during the song turned genuine, as did the cheers afterward. The choir continued with popular hits, from “Everlong” by the Foo Fighters to a discordant rendition of “You’re Not the One for Me” by KT Tunstall.
The highlight of the performance was certainly “Creep” - the rises, falls and multi-part harmonies of which helped to revitalize a song that, while highly regarded, has slipped into the overly played territory that makes its lyrics lose meaning. The crowd seemed to enjoy, too, that the choir slipped the expletive of the original version back into the line, “You’re so very special.”
It seemed out of place for Stubb’s at first, but the performance had the audience roaring by the end.
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Jamey Johnson to play ACL Live May 12
Acclaimed country singer and songwriter Jamey Johnson is playing the 2,750-capacity Austin City Limits Live venue May 12. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. at www.acl-live.com.
Here’s the corny video for “Playing the Part” directed by Mathhew McConaughey:
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SXSW review: Alcoholic Faith Mission
Denmark’s Alcoholic Faith Mission has a pretty strange, singular sound - the kind of warbly, distorted tone that seems heavily studio-manipulated and difficult to create live.
But with the aid of bell shakers, tambourines, two synthesizers, a glockenspiel and a trombone played into an effects-laden microphone - in addition to traditional rock instrumentation - the six-piece band filled the Swan Dive with their aural soundscapes and also managed to unfold a few of the pastoral nuances that get buried between the creases on their albums.
It helped that the band’s four-part harmonies were not only tight but also tastefully restrained as the members switched between crooning directly into their microphones, stepping back and yelling at them from a distance and joining around a single one to belt the more cathartic breakdowns.
And if you need some lessons in showmanship, you’d do well to pay attention to Alcoholic Faith Mission. As they noodled out atmospheric guitar tones that broke into driving anthems, the band bobbed and danced furiously, encouraging the small club to clap along to the beat in double-time. Then, during a ragtime-influenced cut from the band’s upcoming EP, the frontman leaned over to the female keyboardist and kissed her on the cheek, and she pushed him away playfully in response. SXSW doesn’t get much cuter than that.
Some flatter moments came near the end of the set when the band played some of the more soporific cuts, like “Sobriety Up and Left” from last year’s “Let This Be The Last Night We Care.” But before long they were beaming and dancing again, leaving SXSW on an energized high note.
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Add another year to SXSW history
While it’s fresh in our minds, an addition to this brief history of SXSW:
2011
Number of acts: 2,002
Registrants: 14,000
Keynote speaker: Bob Geldof
Buzz bands: Odd Future, Oh Land, the Naked and Famous, the Vaccines, Wild Flag, Asking Alexandria, Eliza Doolittle, Fitz and the Tantrums, Yelawolf, Yuck
Nobody died, which is almost miraculous after thousands of fans rush the stage of the free Strokes concert on Auditorium Shores and a 350-lp camera boom falls into the crowd before OMD plays Stubb’s.
Caught on camera: Fans tear down the fence and grapple with cops on horses when they can’t get in to see Death From Above 1979 at Beauty Bar. Plus Ben Weasel punches an audience member, then a female crew member at the Scoot Inn.
Vevo angers thousands of fans when the music video company is forced to uninvite them from the Kanye West show at Seaholm Power Plant after APD steps in. Inviting ten times more people than the venue can hold seems to be corporate policy at SXSW fringe parties.
