Huey "Piano" Smith was one of the great New Orleans piano stylists of the R&B era — a rollicking, blues-drenched keyboardist whose recordings with his group the Clowns defined a moment in New Orleans pop music and whose compositions became standards of the rock and roll canon.
Biography
Smith was born in New Orleans in 1934 and came of age in the city's R&B scene, developing a piano style rooted in the tradition of Professor Longhair but given a propulsive, good-time energy entirely his own. His 1957 recording "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu" was one of the great records of the early rock and roll era, and "Don't You Just Know It" and "Sea Cruise" (recorded by Frankie Ford) followed it into the national consciousness. Smith's recordings were made at Cosimo Matassa's studio with the cream of the New Orleans session community, and their sound — loose, joyful, and unmistakably New Orleans — influenced generations of musicians. He largely withdrew from music in the early 1960s for religious reasons, a decision that cost him fame but cost us nothing: the records remain.
Discography
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