AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – Blues musician Joe Willie “Pinetop” Perkins, who this year became the oldest person ever to win a Grammy Award, died at his Austin home yesterday at age 97.
“He went to take a nap and didn’t wake up,” said his manager, Patricia Morgan.
Perkins won a Grammy, the music world’s top award, for best traditional blues album for ‘Joined at the Hip: Pinetop Perkins & Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith’. He also won a 2007 Grammy and a 2005 lifetime achievement Grammy.
Perkins was born in 1913 on a cotton plantation near Belzoni, Mississippi, and became a sideman to blues legends such as Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson.
Never learning to read — a shortcoming he once said cost him throughout his long career — Perkins picked cotton and was introduced to whiskey as a boy by his mother. He ran away from home after his grandmother smashed a bottle over his head for not chopping firewood.
