Pinetop Perkins -- How Long Blues

July 7, 1913 - March 21, 2011--Pinetop Perkins began playing blues in the late 1920s, and was widely regarded as one of the best -- and certainly most enduring -- blues pianists. He forged a style that influenced three generations of piano players, and continues to be the yardstick by which great blues pianists are measured. Born Willie Perkins in Belzoni, Mississippi in 1913, Pinetop started out playing guitar and piano at house parties and honky-tonks, but dropped the guitar in the 1940s after sustaining a serious injury in his left arm. He worked primarily in the Mississippi Delta throughout the 1930s and '40s, spending three years with Sonny Boy Williamson on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas. Pinetop also toured extensively with slide guitar player Robert Nighthawk and backed him on an early Chess session. After briefly working with B.B. King in Memphis, Perkins barnstormed the South with Earl Hooker during the early '50s. The pair completed a session for Sam P