Pinetop's Boogie Woogie
Pinetop Smith (1928). Excerpted from "The 50 Songs That Gave Birth to Rock and Roll"
Alabama-born Clarence Smith was better known as Pinetop, a nickname earned through a childhood preoccupation with tree-climbing. A frenetic ragtime style piano pounder, Pinetop waxed the definitive boogie woogie recording before promptly shuffling off this mortal coil.
Born in 1904, Pinetop ventured north of the Mason-Dixon line in 1920, ultimately landing in Pittsburgh and joining a touring vaudeville company. His travels even saw the young pianist backing influential barrelhouse belter, Ma Rainey.
Just two days before New Year’s Eve, Smith recorded “Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie,” a boisterous ivory-banger and a landmark boogie woogie blues tune. The breathless pace and Pinetop’s gruff vocal exhortations embody the reckless juke joint spirit of the genre.
It would make an immediate and lasting impact. In fact, the tune’s authorship is often incorrectly attributed to Pinetop Perkins, a Delta contemporary who ultimately recorded a hit cover of the song in the 1950s.
As for the original, Pinetop Smith’s crackling performance would forge the sonic mold for future staples like Ray Charles’s “Mess Around” (1957) and “What’d I Say?” (1959).
Co-opted for recordings by white popsters Tommy Dorsey and Bing Crosby, it was redubbed “Boogie Woogie” and became a massive post-war hit.
Sadly, in 1929, Pinetop Smith found himself on the wrong end of a gun during a Chicago dance hall brawl. He was killed at age 24, just one day shy of his next recording session.
See the full list of 50 Songs that Gave Birth to Rock and Roll