If you're looking for the real thing in Chicago blues this weekend, the place you'll find it is the Off Shore Bar in Havensight's Port of Sale Mall. Legendary piano man Joe Willie Perkins, better known as Pinetop Perkins, will be doing the honors.
A blues and boogie woogie icon who spent more than a decade with Muddy Waters, Perkins is still on the road at 87 and was voted Best Piano Player at the 1998 W.C. Handy Awards. He will perform Friday and Saturday in shows that open at 8 p.m. with guitarist Jaybird Koder from the Steve Miller Band and vocalist Andy Stokes, who's appeared with Tower of Power.
Pinetop, backed by Koder, Stokes and some members of the Off Shore house band, will take to the spotlight around 9 p.m. Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door. "There are 200 tickets for each show; we seat a hundred," Off Shore owner Steve Shore deadpans. "That's limited." In other words, get your tickets in advance or take your chances on listening from the parking lot.
Veteran Chicago blues writer Bill Dahl, in the "All Music Guide to the Blues" (2nd Ed), says of Perkins: "Although it seems as though he's been around Chicago forever, the Mississippi native actually got a relatively late start on his path to Windy City immortality. It was only when Muddy Waters took him on to replace Otis Spann in 1969 that Perkins' rolling mastery of the ivories began to assume outsized proportions."
Piano, Dahl says, was Perkins' second choice of musical instrument. He started out his blues career as a guitarist but ran into a knife in the 1940s at an Arkansas night spot that "left him with severed tendons in his left arm. That dashed his guitar aspirations" and he concentrated on piano from then on.
Perkins, Dahl notes, "wasn't the originator of the seminal piano piece ‘Pinetop's Boogie Woogie,' but it's a safe bet that more people associate it nowadays with Pinetop Perkins than with the man who devised it in the first place, Clarence ‘Pinetop' Smith."
Born in 1913 in Belzoni, Miss., Perkins from his teens traveled through Mississippi and Arkansas and north to St. Louis and Chicago playing piano, and sometimes guitar, behind the likes of Big Joe Williams, Robert Nighthawk and John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson. After accompanying Nighthawk on a 1950 session for the Chess brothers that produced "Jackson Town Gal," Pinetop hit the road with Nighthawk disciple Earl Hooker. In 1953, he recorded his first version of "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie," in Memphis for Sun Records.
"He settled in downstate Illinois for a spell, then relocated to Chicago," Dahl writes. "Music gradually was relegated to the back burner until Hooker coaxed him into working on an LP for Arhoolie in 1968. When Spann split from Muddy Waters, the stage was set for Pinetop Perkins' re-emergence."
After more than a decade with the Muddy Waters Band, Perkins and bandmates broke away to form the Legendary Blues Band. "Their early Rounder albums (‘Life of Ease,' ‘Red Hot 'n' Blue') prominently spotlighted Perkins' rippling 88s and rich vocals," Dahl writes. "He had previously waxed an album for the French Black & Blue logo in 1976 and four fine cuts for Alligator's Living Chicago Blues anthologies in 1978. Finally, in 1988, he cut his first domestic album for Blind Pig, ‘After Hours.'
"Ever since then, Pinetop Perkins has made up for precious lost time in the studio. Discs for Antone's, Omega (‘Portrait of a Delta Bluesman,' a solo outing that includes fascinating interview segments), Deluge, Earwig and several other firms ensure that his boogie legacy won't be forgotten in the decades to come."
And more to come
Steve Shore points out that the weekend shows are "just the beginning" of a monthly series of blues events this season at his place. "This is the kickoff of the Heineken Speak Easy Concert Series," he says. "We will be announcing a minimum of one act per month throughout season."
December's attraction, on the 15th and 16th, will be a CD release party for a record cut live at the Off Shore last May by New Orleans gospel/blues/jazz saxophonist Reggie Houston with Raymond Weber (Harry Coniff Jr. Orchestra) on drums, Irvin Charles Jr. (Fats Domino Orchestra) on bass and special guest Charmaine Neville (daughter of Neville Brother Charlie) on vocals.
January 19 and 20 will bring blues guitarist/vocalist Joe Louis Walker with the Off Shore Gypsies.
Meantime, Koder and Stokes will be staying on St. Thomas for the next month, performing Wednesday through Saturday at Off Shore. The lounge features live music nightly from 9:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.
Shore's interest in showcasing the blues on St. Thomas comes from longtime connections in the business. He started out in his father's blues club in Portland, Ore., and owns a small independent blues record company, Candlelight Records, there. "I have worked with people associated with Pinetop," he says. "We have a lot of common friends."
Tickets for this weekend's shows are available in advance at Off Shore. Seating is unreserved. To learn more, call 779-6400.
