Pinetop Smith - Influence

Influence

Smith was acknowledged by other boogie woogie pianists such as Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson as a key influence, and he gained posthumous fame when "Boogie Woogie" was arranged for big band and recorded by Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra in 1938. Although not immediately successful, "Boogie Woogie" was so popular during and after World War II that it became Dorsey's best selling record, with over five million copies sold. Bing Crosby also recorded his version of the song.

From the 1950s, Joe Willie Perkins became universally known as "Pinetop Perkins" for his recording of "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie". Perkins later became Muddy Waters' pianist and later, when in his nineties, recorded a song on his 2004 Ladies' Man album, which played on the by-then-common misconception that Perkins had himself written "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie".

Ray Charles adapted "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie" for his song "Mess Around", for which the authorship was credited to "A. Nugetre", Ahmet Ertegun.

In 1975 the Bob Thiele Orchestra recorded a modern jazz album called I Saw Pinetop Spit Blood that included a treatment of "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" as well as the title song.

Gene Taylor recorded a version of "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" on his eponymous 2003 album.

Claes Oldenburg, the pop artist, proposed a Pinetop Smith Monument in his book, Proposals for Monuments and Buildings 1965-69. Oldenburg described the monument as "a wire extending the length of North Avenue, west from Clark Street, along which at intervals runs an electric impulse colored blue so that there’s one blue line as far as the eye can see. Pinetop Smith invented boogie woogie blues at the corner of North and Larrabee, where he finally was murdered: the electric wire is “blue”and dangerous."