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Speckled Red

 
Artist: Speckled Red
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Similar Artists:

Mr. B, Erwin Helfer, Henry Townsend, Roosevelt Sykes, Little Brother Montgomery, Amos Milburn, Memphis Slim

Influenced By:

Fats Waller, Art Tatum

Followers:

Piano Red, Memphis Slim

Performed Songs By:

Rufus G. Perryman

Worked With:

Sonny Boy Williamson, Yank Rachell, Robert Lee McCoy
  • Born: October 23, 1892, Monroe, LA
  • Died: January 02, 1973, St. Louis, MO
  • Active: '20s, '30s, '50s, '60s
  • Genres: Blues
  • Instrument: Piano, Organ
  • Representative Albums: "Dirty Dozens," "Complete Recorded Works 1929-1938," "Piano Blues"
  • Representative Songs: "The Dirty Dozen," "Wilkins Street Stomp," "St. Louis Stomp"

Biography

Pianist Speckled Red (born Rufus Perryman) was born in Monroe, LA, but he made his reputation as part of the St. Louis and Memphis blues scenes of the '20s and '30s. Red was equally proficient in early jazz and boogie woogie -- his style is similar to Roosevelt Sykes and Little Brother Montgomery.

Speckled Red was born in Louisiana, but he was raised in Hampton, Georgia, where he learned how to play his church's organ. In his early teens, his family -- including his brother Willie Perryman, who is better-known as Piano Red -- moved to Atlanta, Georgia. Throughout his childhood and adolescence he played piano and organ and by the time he was a teenager, he was playing house parties and juke joints. Red moved to Detroit in the mid-'20s and while he was there, he played various night clubs and parties. After a few years in Detroit, he moved back south to Memphis. In 1929, he cut his first recording sessions. One song from these sessions, "The Dirty Dozens," was released on Brunswick and became a hit in late 1929. He recorded a sequel, "The Dirty Dozens, No. 2," the following year, but it failed to become a hit.

After Red's second set of sessions failed to sell, the pianist spent the next few years without a contract -- he simply played local Memphis clubs. In 1938, he cut a few sides for Bluebird, but they were largely ignored.

In the early '40s, Speckled Red moved to St. Louis, where he played local clubs and bars for the next decade and a half. In 1954, he was rediscovered by a number of blues aficianados and record label owners. By 1956, he had recorded several songs for the Tone record label and began a tour of America and Europe. In 1960, he made some recordings for Folkways. By this time, Red's increasing age was causing him to cut back the number of concerts he gave. For the rest of the '60s, he only performed occasionally. Speckled Red died in 1973. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine & Michael G. Nastos, All Music Guide
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Wikipedia: Speckled Red
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Speckled Red
Birth name Rufus Perryman
Born October 23, 1892(1892-10-23)
Origin Monroe, Louisiana
Died January 2, 1973 (aged 80)
Genres Blues
Occupations Musician, songwriter
Instruments Vocals, piano
Years active 1920s–1960s

Speckled Red (October 23, 1892 - January 2, 1973) was born Rufus Perryman in Monroe, Louisiana. He was an American blues and boogie woogie piano player and singer most noted for his recordings of "The Dirty Dozens", legendary exchanges of insults and vulgar remarks that have long been a part of African-American folklore.

I want all you women to fall in line
And shake yo shimmy like i'm shakin' mine
You shake yo shimmy and you shake it fast
If you can't shake the shimmy, shake yo' yes yes yes
You a dirty mistreater, a robber and a cheater
Stick you in a dozens and you poppa aint yo cousin
And yo mama do the lordylord

Although the lyrics were sung rather than spoken, with its elaborate word play and earthy subject matter, "The Dirty Dozens" is considered in some respects an ancestor to rap music.

Contents

Life and career

Speckled Red was the older brother of Piano Red, their nicknames derived from both men being albinos [1]. The brothers were separated by almost a generation and never recorded together. Speckled Red and Piano Red both played in a raucous good time barrelhouse boogie-woogie style, although the elder Red played slow blues more often. Both recorded versions of "The Right String (But the Wrong Yo-Yo)", Speckled Red first in 1930, and the younger scored a big hit with the song 20-years later.

The family moved for brief periods during his early-to-mid teenage years to Detroit, Michigan, then Atlanta, Georgia after his father violated Jim Crow laws, before settling in Hampton, Georgia, where his birth was eventually registered some time later. The family itself, consisting of Perryman and 7 brothers and sisters, had little musical background, though Speckled Red was a self-taught piano player[2] (influenced primarily by his idol Fishtail, along with Charlie Spand, James Hemingway and Will Ezell, and inspired at his earliest point by Paul Seminole in a movie theatre) and also learned the organ at his local church [3].

By his mid-teens he was already playing house parties and juke joints, and moved back to Detroit in his mid-20s to play anywhere he could, including nightclubs and brothels, and was noticed by a Brunswick Records talent scout just before he left for Memphis, Tennessee, where he was located by Jim Jackson.[4] It was here where he cut his first recording sessions, resulting in two classics for Brunswick in "Wilkins Street Stomp" and the hit “The Dirty Dozens”. The following year, 1930, he recorded again, this time in Chicago, Illinois, resulting in most notably “The Dirty Dozens No. 2,” which was not nearly as successful and the pianist was without a contract or label and again playing making the rounds at Memphis venues and St. Louis bars.

His 1938 session work in Aurora, Illinois with slide guitar player Robert Nighthawk and mandolinist Willie Hatcher for Bluebird Records was steady and long but also unsuccessful, and sometime after during the 1940s moved back to St. Louis and continued his career of playing taverns, as well working the public produce market doing manual labor until the servicemen returned home to heavy lifting jobs.

Revival and death

Charlie O'Brien, a St. Louis policeman and something of a blues aficionado who applied many of his professional investigative methods to track down old bluesmen during the 1950s, "rediscovered" Speckled Red on December 14, 1954, who subsequently was signed to Delmark Records as their first blues artist. He experienced a small revival of interest in his music during the late 1950s and 1960s, his abilities still considerable, and worked around the St. Louis-area Jazz scene, regularly as the intermission pianist for the Dixie Stompers, performing concerts with Dixie Mantinee and the St. Louis Jazz Club, played the University of Chicago Folk Festival in 1961, bounced into Dayton, Ohio, with Gene Mayl's Dixieland Rhythm Kings, and even toured Europe in 1959 with Chris Barber. Several recordings were made in 1956 and 1957 for Tone, Delmark, Folkways, and Storyville Record labels.

His age, however, had become a factor, and the remainder of the 60s saw scattered performances. He died on January 2, 1973.

References

  1. ^ "MusicWeb Encyclopaedia of Popular Music – Speckled Red". MusicWeb. 2005. http://www.musicweb-international.com/encyclopaedia/s/S171.HTM. Retrieved 2008-03-27. 
  2. ^ "Piano Red". Leanlink. 0000. http://www.learnlink.emory.edu/~libmlm/pianored.html. Retrieved 2008-03-27. 
  3. ^ "Piano Red". artistdirect.com. 1997-2008. http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/music/artist/bio/0,,495891,00.html#bio. Retrieved 2008-03-27. 
  4. ^ "Speckled Red – The Dirty Dozens". Delmark. 0000. http://www.delmark.com/delmark.601.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-27. 

External links


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

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Artist. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Music Guide ®, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
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