97 today and still making music.
“Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie” is one of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. It was recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis more than 50 years ago.
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 Pinetop’s 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.
And he’s played everywhere, from Arkansas juke joints and Chicago blues dens to the White House.
“I played there before with Muddy Waters,” Perkins says. “I can’t remember the name [of the president]. Since I got older, I am so forgetful of the names.”
Pinetop will be appearing at the Hondarribia Blues Festival in Spain this Saturday, at the Pocono Blues Festival in Lake Harmony, Pennsylvania, later this month, and at the Riverfront Blues Festival in Wilmington, Delaware, a month from now.
Pinetop Perkins begins playing in the video below at 35:24.
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