Clarence "Pinetop" Smith

American boogie-woogie style blues pianist.

Born: June 11, 1904 in Orion near Troy, Pike County, Alabama.
Died: March 15, 1929 in Chicago, Illinois.

The youngest of seven children, Smith grew up in Troy and later in Birmingham, Alabama, where he became familiar with the local blues piano style. Around 1920, he moved to PIttsburgh, Pennsylvania. There, he became acquainted with Ma Rainey who performed in vaudeville with her husband as Ma and Pa Rainey. Smith became their piano accompanist on the T.O.B.A. circuit, a Black vaudeville circuit, later also performing with Butterbeans & Susie and Grant & Wilson. It may have been during this time that Smith acquired the nickname "Pinetop", a Southern slang term for a popular kind of bootleg whiskey.

In Summer 1928, Smith moved to Chicago with his wife Sarah (whom he had married in 1924) and their two children. They lived on South Parkway not far from Albert Ammons and Meade "Lux" Lewis.

In December 1928 and January 1929, at the recommendation of pianist and talent scout Cow Cow Davenport, record executive J. Mayo Williams organized three recording sessions for Smith with the Vocalion (2) label that resulted in eight released titles (and three variant takes).

One of the songs that Smith recorded on December 29, 1928 was "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie." This was the first time that the term "Boogie Woogie" appeared on a record, and it soon became associated with the insistent eight-to-the-bar bass that Smith plays on this record. When Boogie Woogie became a mainstream phenomenon in 1938, Tommy Dorsey recorded a version of "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie" that became his greatest hit, selling more than 5 million records.

"Pinetop" Smith himself died too early to experience more than posthumous fame. On March 15, 1929, two months after his last Vocalion (2) session, he was shot in the chest by a bullet that someone fired to stop a brawl in a dance hall. He was 24 years old.

No photographs of "Pinetop" Smith are known to exist.