Last week I wrote about Chicago piano giant Jimmy Yancey and his wide-reaching influence on boogie woogie piano, particularly his more easy-going style of it versus others who embraced the musical form and offered more, shall we say, enthusiastic interpretations of it.  I guess the notions of blues and boogie woogie piano stuck in my head the past week, as I’ve been digging into my vast blues collection and siphoning out various works by individual blues and boogie woogie piano practitioners, plus compilations that present numerous such artists on one album, cassette, and CD.  The one blues and boogie woogie piano musician who has stuck in my head over the course of the last week is Clarence “Pinetop” Smith.

Clarence Smith was born in mid-June, 1904 in Orion, Alabama, nearby Troy, Alabama (where the family moved when he was very young), Troy being the county seat of Pike County, an area in the lower southeastern portion of the state.  By most accounts, Smith’s family eventually moved to Birmingham, Alabama, some 150 miles northwest of Troy.  Smith was one of five children born to Sam Smith and Molly Smith, who researchers speculate were sharecroppers. 

To get it out of the way, by all accounts researched, Smith acquired his nickname “Pinetop” due to his childhood fondness for climbing trees.

Like so many of the earliest blues artists from the early 1900s, unless one was a prolific recording and performing “star” with some sort of interesting back story, very little is known about Smith’s early formative years.  It has been proffered that his earliest exposure to piano was through a very familiar means; the church.  And, his initial exposure to the blues likely resulted from the usual channels of seeing folks performing in casual settings on their homes’ front porches or in the yards, plus around the area in the local bars and jukes where a young person could listen and perhaps get a glimpse of what was going on inside if one was careful and evasive.

By the time of his mid-teen years, through self-taught determination, Smith was proficient enough on the piano to be performing the common house parties, picnics, and frolics in his Troy locale.  As mentioned earlier, Smith’s family made its way to Birmingham, an area that attracted many of the traveling vaudeville and minstrel shows, along with the itinerant blues artists.  Smith played local opportunities while in Birmingham, and he was wise enough to connect with other local blues musicians, including Robert McCoy, the established barrelhouse piano man (check out Delmark Records compilation entitled Bye Bye Baby).  Birmingham became something of a headquarters for the still-young Smith, and he began to travel more and perform outside his home area. 

Now, it’s very important to understand that by this time, Smith was performing during a period when venues were busy, frenzied outposts with loud patrons, a lot of dancing, and in general, quite feverish atmospheres in an age defined as the beginning of the coming and rousing “Roaring Twenties” and “The Jazz Age.”  What did that mean for Smith and other piano artists?  To be successful in these thrilling environments, they had to play a style of music that catered to the wild patronage of the clubs, and to be able to play and sing loudly enough to be heard over the venue’s boisterous din.  So, what did the piano players of this time do?  To be effectively heard and thus be in-demand as performers, they melded blues, jazz, ragtime, and even sanctified music into a form that came to be known as “boogie woogie.”  This new stomping dance floor style allowed solo piano artists to be able to indeed carry the burden of a show alone, to be more easily heard, and to create arousing excitement in the clubs.

But, around the age of 16 years-old, Smith, like many Black Americans, made his way out of the south and arrived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Why Pittsburgh?  This actually was a very good move for Smith, as the city had a thirst for excellent entertainment that was brought about by a Black middle-class component that could afford to spend for such nightclub fun and revelry.  Needless to say, Smith found abundant opportunities for his energetic piano and vocal skill sets on the lively Pittsburgh scene.

But Smith did not confine himself solely to Pittsburgh nightclub circuit work, as he began to again venture southward, this time with the traveling vaudeville, tent, and other road shows, including those of The Raymond Brothers, Matt Dorsey’s Pickaninnies, Ma Rainey (herself a Pittsburgh resident), Coot Grant, and Butterbeans and Susie, amongst others.  It is important to note that Smith not only played piano and sang with these shows, but he also danced and performed a comedic routine.  He was truly an all-around entertainer, making him more valuable than a “one trick pony” type of artiste.  When not part of these larger shows, Smith played solo shows in all points from Detroit, Michigan to Omaha, Nebraska.  Smith never let the dust settle under his feet if there was a chance to perform. 

However, between these southern tours and other meanderings, Smith would return to his then-home of Pittsburgh where he continued to steadily work.

Smith’s life took yet another turn when at the age of 20 (1924) when while on a tour he met a lady named Sarah Horton (she a North Carolina resident), and they married in October of that year.

But still again, fortune, as it were, was about to again shine on Smith and his career.  Shortly after his marriage to Sarah, he chanced upon the famous blues piano player Cow Cow Davenport (aka Clarence Edward Davenport), and by all accounts, Davenport was highly impressed with Smith’s piano and vocal styles.  At this point, in addition to being a notable performer, Davenport was also employed by the Brunswick and Vocalion labels as a roving talent scout.  These prominent labels had operations in both New York, New York and Chicago, Illinois.  Upon Davenport’s championing of him, Smith collected his family (by this time in 1928 he has a son – he did go on to have one more son) and moved to Chicago to record his first records.  As an aside, upon arrival in Chicago, Smith and his family shared a home with blues and boogie woogie piano notables Meade “Lux” Lewis and Albert Ammons.  Can you imagine the jam sessions that must have transpired there?

But things did not start well for Smith in Chicago.  His initial records made in December, 2928 did not sell well.  However, he was performing in the taverns, at the house rent parties, and in the time’s speakeasies (remember, this was the age of Prohibition), and his reputation as a rollicking good-time piano entertainer was growing.  He was also gaining much needed notoriety, as musical titans like Earl “Fatha” Hines, Jelly Roll Morton, and Chicago blues great Tampa Red were taking in his shows.  If the greats come out to see a performer, then it is reasonable to assume that something special was happening.

Smith returned to the recording studio later in December, 1928 and cut a song that would reveal his broad talent to all, and make his legacy assured.  Smith recorded “Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie,” and his greater notoriety would soon be off-and-running.  It was, by all measures, the most unadulterated boogie woogie piece ever recorded, it was the first time the phrase “boogie woogie” had been recorded within a tune, and in a very brief two-month period, it hit the public like hurricane.  It was a certifiable phenomenon.

The line in “Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie,” “Hold it now/Stop/Boogie Woogie,” set the standard for stop-time exultations in boogie woogie music.  It was a thrill to hear on record, and in-performance it built the audience’s anticipation and excitement to great heights.  Other noteworthy lyrics attributed to Smith that became part-and-parcel of the boogie woogie lingo and other musicians everywhere include his imploring “the girl with the red dress on” to “not move a peg” until told to “shake that thing” and “mess around.” Smith’s lyrics created a musical vernacular unlike any seen to that point.  Boogie woogie became a craze.

To capitalize on Smith’s momentum, record company executives had the foresight to return him to the studio in January, 2029 to lay down a total of six more cuts, including another signature tune, “Pine Top Blues.”  This song has come to be regarded as a pivotal and pioneering piece of musical history.  Rightfully so, as one listen to it will attest. 

In March, 2029, Smith again recorded, but just one recording this time.  His star was on the way up, and he was a major force on the boogie woogie and blues scene.  However, fate was about to deal Smith a terrible hand.  One day after his recording session, he was away from home rehearsing, and on the way back to his home and family Smith stopped-by a local Masonic lodge to check out the music and goings-on.  He decided to also join in on the fun surrounding him and took to the dance floor.  Unfortunately, a ruckus broke out, guns were drawn, and Smith was shot in the fracas.  Though he did make it to the hospital, Smith succumbed to his injuries.  He was gone at the age of 25.

Over the intervening years, Smith’s reputation as, arguably, the father of boogie woogie has only continued to grow.  His “Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie” and “Pine Top Blues” have been repeatedly covered over the years, and even the notable post-war piano bluesman Pinetop Perkins became so well-known from his song “Pine Top’s Boogie,” a song he recorded in 1950, that he took his name as an homage to the highly successful Smith tune (his birth name was Joe Willie Perkins).

No less an artist than the great Ray Charles even adapted “Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie” into his wildly successful chart-topper “Mess Around.”  That is high reverence, indeed.

It is not a stretch in the least to proffer that the boogie woogie style formulated by Smith has been borrowed by countless aspiring early guitar stylists over the intervening years to the point where it can be said with reasonable certainty to be a building block of what came to be known as rock-n-roll music.  Such is Smith’s time-honored legacy. 

Smith’s stature has only been further enhanced by being bestowed a Grammy Hall Of Fame induction in 1983.

Once again, the great Document Records makes available the brief ribbon of Clarence “Pinetop” Smith’s important work.  Those interested in the work of Smith are advised to check these collections out, and the link to Document Records is below.  The “Search 2.” feature found after one clicks the “Search” link on the company’s web home page allows for a drilling-down by artist.

Document Records – Vintage Blues and Jazz (document-records.com)