Why I want to see Kenny Wayne Shepherd for 50 bucks: He's packing a legend!
A tall slender black man of twenty-four slides behind a piano; he intends to make it boogie. He dons a black and white suit and shades, which he sports on the tip of his nose. His pant legs rise slightly as he sits, revealing black socks, which emerge from freshly shined wingtips.
Pinetop Perkins, sits in a dark and smoky but bustling Blues bar. It’s 1937 and Perkins refuses a cigarette, but accepts a cocktail with a red plastic stirrer half in the liquid and half out. He nods and says, “Thanks, man.” In the room are the wait staff, a couple of bartenders, and a predominately black crowd, save a few poor whites and a slick record executive with too much cologne and hair tonic on. That must be why he’s sitting in the corner, his only company a dry martini.
Quiet conversation fills the bar and “cool, cat” or “yeah, daddio” drift through the air. The smoke rises to the ceilings, through the windows and doors, making its escape.
Pinetop and co. haven’t started yet, but at note one people put down their glasses and curb their conversations to make way for a hell raising performance.
Tonight Perkins and the band play red hot, as if they were Satan’s backup band on that cool January night. They smoke like the cigarettes and cigars that illuminate the dim room.
On Saturday, September 4th I saw proof that the majesty of the blues still wields power. It was a sight to make dead bluesmen spin in their graves, trying to get out and dance. I watched the aforementioned blues piano master, Pinetop Perkins, play with a local blues combo the Nighthawks (the band’s name is inspired by the famous blues guitar player Robert Nighthawk). The ensemble and
guest Perkins kicked out the Texas hot and Alaska cool American jams to a packed house. Perkins appeared a friendly, but serious man of few words; he let
the keys do the talking. Born 91 years ago, Perkins didn’t look, act or sound it. Perkins’s relentless performance pounded the keys and tickled the ivories with well trained hands. Even the necking white trash couple and the bizarre dancing couldn’t distract. Somewhere, in the distance a cell phone rang; no one noticed.
I don’t even know how I knew. Maybe I just made that up.
Pinetop Perkins stands for an America exclusive to the first half of the twentieth century, when this country cut its teeth. America is not politicians and elections; it’s everyday people playing and enjoying blues, jazz, gospel, hip hop, and rock music. Patriotic waves swept over me, fanning the burning house’s flames which only rose higher. If the concert weren’t outdoors Perkins woul’ve set smoke detectors off. America grew up around him. Pinetop helped shape this fine nation and if anyone has a story to tell, he does. Just hearing how he got there that night would fascinate me.
Pinetop swaggered his way across the stage to his electric piano dressed in a striking emerald green suit and pearl white top hat. Lookout, ladies: he’s 91 years old and dressed to impress. He looked fresh from the 1920s. As far as I was concerned, he was. Perkins survived and endured a parade of groundbreaking generations, nearly a century of change. The roaring twenties; tumultuous thirties; fresh dressed fifties; the drugs and sex of the sixties; disco and the decadent seventies; the campiest decade, the eighties; and the fad filled nineties. He watched the popular music cycle and his peers buy into more popular musical ventures, but Mr. Perkins stands by the standards. He lifted the blues piano tradition he helped establish to legend. Pinetop lived through adversity and discrimination just to perform to people perhaps descendant from those who fought to keep him from voting or using the same public restroom. But he outlived them all, and here he was, in Northwest DC jamming with a band of Caucasians to a predominately white audience and everyone is all smiles.
Pinetop Perkins commands respect not through vocal chords, but piano chords, for American music would be incomplete without his influence on the country built around him.
A tall slender black man of twenty-four slides behind a piano; he intends to make it boogie. He dons a black and white suit and shades, which he sports on the tip of his nose. His pant legs rise slightly as he sits, revealing black socks, which emerge from freshly shined wingtips.
Pinetop Perkins, sits in a dark and smoky but bustling Blues bar. It’s 1937 and Perkins refuses a cigarette, but accepts a cocktail with a red plastic stirrer half in the liquid and half out. He nods and says, “Thanks, man.” In the room are the wait staff, a couple of bartenders, and a predominately black crowd, save a few poor whites and a slick record executive with too much cologne and hair tonic on. That must be why he’s sitting in the corner, his only company a dry martini.
Quiet conversation fills the bar and “cool, cat” or “yeah, daddio” drift through the air. The smoke rises to the ceilings, through the windows and doors, making its escape.
Pinetop and co. haven’t started yet, but at note one people put down their glasses and curb their conversations to make way for a hell raising performance.
Tonight Perkins and the band play red hot, as if they were Satan’s backup band on that cool January night. They smoke like the cigarettes and cigars that illuminate the dim room.
On Saturday, September 4th I saw proof that the majesty of the blues still wields power. It was a sight to make dead bluesmen spin in their graves, trying to get out and dance. I watched the aforementioned blues piano master, Pinetop Perkins, play with a local blues combo the Nighthawks (the band’s name is inspired by the famous blues guitar player Robert Nighthawk). The ensemble and
guest Perkins kicked out the Texas hot and Alaska cool American jams to a packed house. Perkins appeared a friendly, but serious man of few words; he let
the keys do the talking. Born 91 years ago, Perkins didn’t look, act or sound it. Perkins’s relentless performance pounded the keys and tickled the ivories with well trained hands. Even the necking white trash couple and the bizarre dancing couldn’t distract. Somewhere, in the distance a cell phone rang; no one noticed.
I don’t even know how I knew. Maybe I just made that up.
Pinetop Perkins stands for an America exclusive to the first half of the twentieth century, when this country cut its teeth. America is not politicians and elections; it’s everyday people playing and enjoying blues, jazz, gospel, hip hop, and rock music. Patriotic waves swept over me, fanning the burning house’s flames which only rose higher. If the concert weren’t outdoors Perkins woul’ve set smoke detectors off. America grew up around him. Pinetop helped shape this fine nation and if anyone has a story to tell, he does. Just hearing how he got there that night would fascinate me.
Pinetop swaggered his way across the stage to his electric piano dressed in a striking emerald green suit and pearl white top hat. Lookout, ladies: he’s 91 years old and dressed to impress. He looked fresh from the 1920s. As far as I was concerned, he was. Perkins survived and endured a parade of groundbreaking generations, nearly a century of change. The roaring twenties; tumultuous thirties; fresh dressed fifties; the drugs and sex of the sixties; disco and the decadent seventies; the campiest decade, the eighties; and the fad filled nineties. He watched the popular music cycle and his peers buy into more popular musical ventures, but Mr. Perkins stands by the standards. He lifted the blues piano tradition he helped establish to legend. Pinetop lived through adversity and discrimination just to perform to people perhaps descendant from those who fought to keep him from voting or using the same public restroom. But he outlived them all, and here he was, in Northwest DC jamming with a band of Caucasians to a predominately white audience and everyone is all smiles.
Pinetop Perkins commands respect not through vocal chords, but piano chords, for American music would be incomplete without his influence on the country built around him.
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