Pinetop Smith

Clarence Smith, better known as Pinetop Smith or Pine Top Smith (11 June 1904 - 15 March 1929) was an influential American boogie-woogie style blues pianist. He is a 1991 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.

Career

Smith was born in Troy, Alabama and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. He received his nickname as a child from his liking for climbing trees.^[1] In 1920 he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,^[2] where he worked as an entertainer before touring on the T. O. B. A. vaudeville circuit, performing as a singer and comedian as well as a pianist. For a time he worked as accompanist for blues singer Ma Rainey and Butterbeans and Susie.

In the mid 1920s he was recommended by Cow Cow Davenport to J. Mayo Williams at Vocalion Records, and in 1928 he moved, with his wife and young son, to Chicago to record. For a time he, Albert Ammons, and Meade Lux Lewis lived in the same rooming house.

On 29 December 1928 he recorded his influential "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie," one of the first "boogie woogie" style recordings to make a hit, and which cemented the name for the style. Pine Top talks over the recording, telling how to dance to the number. He said he originated the number at a house-rent party in St. Louis, Missouri. Pinetop was the first ever to direct "the girl with the red dress on" to "not move a peg" until told to "shake that thing" and "mess around".

Pinetop Smith was scheduled to make another recording session for Vocalion in 1929, but died from a gunshot wound in a dance-hall fight in Chicago the day before the session. Sources differ as to whether he was the intended recipient of the bullet. "I saw Pinetop spit blood" was the famous headline in Down Beat magazine.

No photographs of Smith are known to exist.

Influence

Pinetop Smith was acknowledged by other boogie woogie pianists such as Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson as a key influence, and he gained posthumous fame when "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" was recorded by the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in the late 1930s.

From the 1950's Joe Willie Perkins became universally known as "Pinetop Perkins" for his famous recordings of "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie".^[3] Perkins later became Muddy Waters' pianist, and much later when in his 90's, recorded a song on his 2004 Ladies' Man album which played on the by-then common misconception that Perkins had himself written "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie".^[4]

Ray Charles adapted "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie" for his song "Mess Around", for which the authorship was credited to "A. Nugetre", Ahmet Ertegun.

In 1975 the Bob Thiele Orchestra recorded a modern jazz album called I Saw Pinetop Spit Blood that included a treatment of "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" as well as the title song.

Gene Taylor recorded a version of "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" on his eponymous 2003 album.^[5]

References

External links

• Clarence "Pine Top" Smith on redhotjazz.com with .ram files of his vintage recordings
• All Music article
• Official website of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame