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Blues musician Pinetop Perkins dies at age 97

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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

 
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Perkins in 2008

American blues musician Pinetop Perkins, a first generation Delta bluesman, died in Austin, Texas, Texas, on Monday at the age of 97. His death was announced by his agent, Hugh Southard. Perkins suffered from a cardiac arrest as he took a nap and paramedics failed resuscitate him. During his 80-year career Perkins remained active until the end, even performing publicly as recently as last month.

A boogie-woogie piano player, he was a guitarist until a knife fight damaged his left arm. He was primarily a sideman. Throughout his career he worked with several big names including Sonny Boy Williamson, Ike Turner and slide guitarist Robert Nighthawk. He worked for Muddy Waters for more than a decade, including playing on Muddy's great comeback albums of the late 1970s. He was 75 before an album was released under his own name.

Perkins also made history this year by becoming the oldest Grammy award winner. He won the best traditional blues album at February's ceremony for his album, Joined at the Hip: Pinetop Perkins & Willie "Big Eyes" Smith.

Tributes have been paid to Perkins. Southard said "That drive to keep playing the blues kept is what kept him alive." He also commented on Perkins' simple lifestyle saying "Two cheeseburgers, apple pie, a cigarette and a pretty girl was all he wanted."

Perkins was born in in 1913 in Mississippi and grew up on a plantation there. In a 2008 interview in No Depression he said, "I grew up hard. I picked cotton and plowed with the mule and fixed the cars and played with the guitar and the piano. What I learned I learned on my own. I didn’t have much school. Three years."

He left behind no family and will be buried in his hometown of Belzoni, Mississippi. He had been living with an associate in Austin since 2004.


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  This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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