Pinetop Smith
Pinetop Smith | |
---|---|
Birth name | Clarence Smith |
Born | Troy, Alabama, U.S. | June 11, 1904
Died | March 15, 1929 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. | (aged 24)
Genres | |
Occupation(s) |
|
Instrument(s) |
|
Years active | c. 1920–1929 |
Labels | Vocalion |
Clarence "Pinetop" Smith (June 11, 1904 – March 15, 1929),
Career
Smith was born in
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, Illinois to record.[1] For a time he, Albert Ammons, and Meade Lux Lewis lived in the same rooming house.[5]
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 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.[1][5] Sources differ as to whether he was the intended recipient of the bullet. "I saw Pinetop spit blood" was a headline in DownBeat magazine in 1939.[7]
No photographs of Smith are known to exist.[3]
78 rpm singles - Vocalion Records
1245 | "Pinetop's Blues" | December 29, 1928 |
1245 | "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie"[8] | December 29, 1928 |
1256 | "Big Boy They Can't Do That"[8] | January 15, 1929 |
1256 | "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"[8] | January 15, 1929 |
1266 | "I'm Sober Now"[8] | January 14, 1929 |
1266 | "I Got More Sense Than That"[8] | January 14, 1929 |
1298 | "Jump Steady Blues"[8] | January 15, 1929 |
1298 | "Now I Ain't Got Nothing At All"[8] | January 15, 1929 |
Influence
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 "Boogie Woogie" was arranged for big band and recorded by Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra in 1938.[2] Although not immediately successful, "Boogie Woogie" was so popular during and after World War II[9] 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)[10] and Count Basie also issued their versions of the song.[2]
From the 1950s, Joe Willie Perkins became universally known as "Pinetop Perkins" for his recording of "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie".[11] 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.[12]
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."[13]
Awards and honors
Smith was a posthumous 1991 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.[14]
References
- ^ a b c d e "Clarence Pinetop Smith". The Blues Trail. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
- ^ ISBN 1-904041-96-5.
- ^ ISBN 978-0810869240.
- ISSN 1525-4755.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-306-80743-5.
- ISBN 978-0-14-006223-6.
- ISSN 0012-5768.
- ^ a b c d e f g "Vocalion 78rpm numerical listing discography: 1000 - 1499 race series". www.78discography.com. Retrieved June 16, 2022.
- OCLC 31611854. Tape 2, side A.
- ^ "A Bing Crosby Discography". BING magazine. International Club Crosby. Retrieved September 11, 2017.
- ^ "2000 NEA National Heritage Fellowships". National Endowment for the Arts. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ "Answers - The Most Trusted Place for Answering Life's Questions". Answers.com. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
- ^ "The Poetry of Scale" (PDF). Publicaddress.us. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
- ^ "Inductees". Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on April 3, 2013. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
External links
- Pinetop Smith at AllMusic
- Pinetop Smith discography at Discogs
- Pinetop Smith solo discography on Red Hot Jazz Archive
- Pinetop Smith Archived September 26, 2013, at the Wayback Machine at Pittsburgh Music History