My first musical instrument was a telephone book. It was a hefty instrument being from Detroit, Michigan. I bought a pair of jazz brushes and sat down on a stool right next to the old seasoned piano in the basement of the home of a guy named Pat Boyer and we would play for hours the two boogie woogie songs we had in our repertoire. One was Pinetop Boogie and the other wasn’t. I can’t recall ever playing in public with that telephone book but a few months later when I graduated from the 8th grade I moved up to a set of drums. I just now pulled up Pinetop Perkins and found him on the net playing his famous Boogie Woogie number at the age of 95. I pulled out my Research Triangle Park Greater Durham, NC yellow pages and then ran upstairs for my jazz brushes and played along with the original Pinetop Perkins and life was good, believe me. They asked Pinetop his secret to longevity and he said, “I like it here.” Sounds good to me.
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