Pinetop Smith

Clarence "Pinetop" Smith (June 11, 1904 – March 15, 1929) was an American boogie-woogie style blues pianist. His hit tune "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" featured rhythmic "breaks" that were an essential ingredient of ragtime music, but also a fundamental foreshadowing of rock and roll. Sources disagree on the exact place of his birth with some stating he was born in Troy, Alabama According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama the Smith family lived in Orion at the time of Clarence's birth and they moved to Troy not long after he was born. As a teenager he moved with his family to Birmingham, Alabama. where he worked as an entertainer before touring on the Theatre Owners Booking Association (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

On December 29, 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. Smith 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. Smith 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". Similar lyrics are heard in many later songs, including "Mess Around" and "What'd I Say" by Ray Charles.

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.

Smith died in Chicago on March 15, 1929.

78 rpm singles - Vocalion Records

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|"Pinetop's Blues"

|December 29, 1928

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|"Pinetop's Boogie Woogie"

|December 29, 1928

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|"Big Boy They Can't Do That" that it became Dorsey's best-selling record, with over five million copies sold. Bing Crosby (recorded January 21, 1946, with Lionel Hampton's Orchestra) and Count Basie also issued their versions of the song. Perkins later became Muddy Waters's pianist. When he was in his nineties, he recorded a song on his 2004 album Ladies' Man, which played on the by-then common misconception that he had written "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie".

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, which 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.

Claes Oldenburg, the pop artist, proposed a Pinetop Smith Monument in his book Proposals for Monuments and Buildings 1965–69. Oldenburg described the monument as "a wire extending the length of North Avenue, west from Clark Street, along which at intervals runs an electric impulse colored blue so that there's one blue line as far as the eye can see. Pinetop Smith invented boogie woogie blues at the corner of North and Larrabee, where he finally was murdered: the electric wire is 'blue' and dangerous."

78 rpm singles - Vocalion Records

Awards and honors

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