Sunday, July 7, 2013

Pinetop Davenport?


Fun fact: The picture that illustrates the song “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie” by Clarence “Pinetop” Smith on the iTunes version is actually a photo of fellow blues pianist Charles Edward “Cow Cow” Davenport.  Not long after making his landmark record “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie” in 1928 (whose influence can be heard in Ray Charles’s “Mess Around,” among other recordings), Smith was killed in a shooting incident in 1929 at age 24, and no photographs of him are known to exist. So, why not use a photo of Davenport instead? Apparently, one blues pianist is just like another.

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