Speckled Red

Infobox musical artist
Name = Speckled Red


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Birth_name = Rufus Perryman
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Born = birth date|1892|10|23|mf=y
Died = death date and age|1973|1|2|1892|10|23|mf=y
Origin = Monroe, Louisiana
Instrument = Vocals, piano
Genre = Blues
Occupation = Musician, songwriter
Years_active = 1920s–1960s
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Speckled Red (October 23, 1892 - January 2, 1973) was born Rufus Perryman in Monroe, Louisiana. He was an American blues and boogie woogie piano player and singer most noted for his recordings of "The Dirty Dozens", legendary exchanges of insults and vulgar remarks that have long been a part of African-American folklore.

:I want all you women to fall in line:And shake yo shimmy like i'm shakin' mine:You shake yo shimmy and you shake it fast:If you can't shake the shimmy, shake yo' yes yes yes

:You a dirty mistreater, a robber and a cheater:Stick you in a dozens and you poppa aint yo cousin:And yo mama do the lordylord

Although the lyrics were sung rather than spoken, with its elaborate word play and earthy subject matter, "The Dirty Dozens" is considered in some respects an ancestor to rap music.

Life and career

Speckled Red was the older brother of Piano Red, their nicknames derived from both men being albinos [cite web | year=2005 | url=http://www.musicweb-international.com/encyclopaedia/s/S171.HTM| title=MusicWeb Encyclopaedia of Popular Music – Speckled Red| publisher=MusicWeb | accessdate=2008-03-27}] . The brothers were separated by almost a generation and never recorded together. Speckled Red and Piano Red both played in a raucous good time barrelhouse boogie-woogie style, although the elder Red played slow blues more often. Both recorded versions of "The Right String (But the Wrong Yo-Yo)", Speckled Red first in 1930, and the younger scored a big hit with the song 20-years later.

The family moved for brief periods during his early-to-mid teenage years to Detroit, Michigan, then Atlanta, Georgia after his father violated Jim Crow laws, before settling in Hampton, Georgia, where his birth was eventually registered some time later. The family itself, consisting of Perryman and 7 brothers and sisters, had little musical background, though Speckled Red was a self-taught piano player [cite web | year=0000 | url=http://www.learnlink.emory.edu/~libmlm/pianored.html| title=Piano Red | publisher=Leanlink | accessdate=2008-03-27] (influenced primarily by his idol Fishtail, along with Charlie Spand, James Hemingway and Will Ezell, and inspired at his earliest point by Paul Seminole in a movie theatre) and also learned the organ at his local church [cite web | year=1997-2008 | url=http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/music/artist/bio/0,,495891,00.html#bio| title=Piano Red | publisher=artistdirect.com | accessdate=2008-03-27] .

By his mid-teens he was already playing house parties and juke joints, and moved back to Detroit in his mid-20s to play anywhere he could, including nightclubs and brothels, and was noticed by a Brunswick Records talent scout just before he left for Memphis, Tennessee, where he was located by Jim Jackson. [cite web | year=0000 | url=http://www.delmark.com/delmark.601.htm| title=Speckled Red – The Dirty Dozens | publisher=Delmark | accessdate=2008-03-27] It was here where he cut his first recording sessions, resulting in two classics for Brunswick in "Wilkins Street Stomp" and the hit “The Dirty Dozens”. The following year, 1930, he recorded again, this time in Chicago, Illinois, resulting in most notably “The Dirty Dozens No. 2,” which was not nearly as successful and the pianist was without a contract or label and again playing making the rounds at Memphis venues and St. Louis bars.

His 1938 session work in Aurora, Illinois with slide guitar player Robert Nighthawk and mandolinist Willie Hatcher for Bluebird Records was steady and long but also unsuccessful, and sometime after during the 1940s moved back to St. Louis and continued his career of playing taverns, as well working the public produce market doing manual labor until the servicemen returned home to heavy lifting jobs.

Revival and death

Charlie O'Brien, a St. Louis policeman and something of a blues aficionado who applied many of his professional investigative methods to track down old bluesmen during the 1950s, "rediscovered" Speckled Red on December 14, 1954, who subsequently was signed to Delmark Records as their first blues artist. He experienced a small revival of interest in his music during the late 1950s and 1960s, his abilities still considerable, and worked around the St. Louis-area Jazz scene, regularly as the intermission pianist for the Dixie Stompers, performing concerts with Dixie Mantinee and the St. Louis Jazz Club, played the University of Chicago Folk Festival in 1961, bounced into Dayton, Ohio, with Gene Mayl's Dixieland Rhythm Kings, and even toured Europe in 1959 with Chris Barber. Several recordings were made in 1956 and 1957 for Tone, Delmark, Folkways, and Storyville Record labels.

His age, however, had become a factor, and the remainder of the 60s saw scattered performances. He died on January 2, 1973.

References

External links

* [http://www.answers.com/topic/speckled-red Answers.com page on Speckled Red]
* [http://www.geocities.com/shakin_stacks/speckledred.txt Geocities page]
* [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:2srj283c053a~T1 AllMusic biography]