PINE TOP SMITH

Clarence Smith, better known as Pinetop Smith or Pine Top Smith (11 June 1904 - 15 March 1929) was an influential American boogie-woogie style blues pianist. He is a 1991 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.
Smith was born in Troy, Alabama and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. He received his nickname as a child from his liking for climbing trees. In 1920 he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he worked as an entertainer before touring on the T. O. B. A. vaudeville circuit, performing as a singer and comedian as well as a pianist. For a time he worked as accompanist for blues singer Ma Rainey and Butterbeans and Susie.
In the mid 1920s he was recommended by Cow Cow Davenport to J. Mayo Williams at Vocalion Records, and in 1928 he moved, with his wife and young son, to Chicago to record. For a time he, Albert Ammons, and Meade Lux Lewis lived in the same rooming house.
On 29 December 1928 he recorded his influential "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie," one of the first "boogie woogie" style recordings to make a hit, and which cemented the name for the style. Pine Top talks over the recording, telling how to dance to the number. He said he originated the number at a house-rent party in St. Louis, Missouri. Pinetop was the first ever to direct "the girl with the red dress on" to "not move a peg" until told to "shake that thing" and "mess around".
Pinetop Smith was scheduled to make another recording session for Vocalion in 1929, but died from a gunshot wound in a dance-hall fight in Chicago the day before the session. Sources differ as to whether he was the intended recipient of the bullet. "I saw Pinetop spit blood" was the famous headline in Down Beat magazine.
Pinetop 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.

Why midi and mp3 files? Midi files contain information, not sound. This information is sent to your sound card or synth. What you hear is the result of your hardware, not neccesarily what I hear.
I have recorded many, not all of my midi files, using my synths. The mp3 files allow you to hear what I intended not what your hardware defines.
Mp3 files are compressed sound files, not quite as good as original .wav files. If you order the cd - you will get the best sound as I intended it to be.

The following songs are available as midi, .pdf files, tapes CD and/or printed scores. The server has samples of each {midi} about 20 measures per song. Most of the Mp3 files are complete.


For a somewhat out of date and incomplete list of midi files click here .

To order anything click here


midi The Original Boogie Woogie

mp3 The Original Boogie Woogie (my synths)


Return To The Bar or go Back To The Lobby?