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Blending infectious grooves with comic lyrics, Huey “The Piano” Smith created late 1950s rock classics with a New Orleans twist.
The songwriter-pianist’s national hits “Swinging Pneumonia and the Boogie-Woogie Flu,” “Didn’t You Know” and “Sea Cruise” had worldwide impact.
Smith, 89, passed away peacefully in his sleep in Baton Rouge on Monday night, his eldest daughter, Acquelyn Donsereaux, confirmed. He moved from New Orleans to Baton Rouge in the early 80s.
“He just fell asleep,” Donsereaux said Tuesday. “Dad is the most positive person I know. Easygoing and funny. He was a comedian until the last few hours.”
Major artists who have performed and recorded “Swinging Pneumonia” and Smith’s other songs over the past 60+ years include Bruce Springsteen, Jason Isbell, Aerosmith, The Grateful Dead, Tom Jones, Paul Simon, John Ni Rivers, Jerry Lee Lewis, Herman’s Hermit, Jimmy Buffett, KC and the Sunshine Band, Boz Scaggs, Patti LaBelle and Chubby Checker.
Smith’s protégé Mac Rebennack, aka Dr. John, praised him for “opening the door to funk in a ridiculously hip way and putting it in the mainstream of world music.”
Rebennack is one of many New Orleans and Louisiana artists to perform on Smith’s catalogue. Others include Professor Shaggy, Brother Neville, Art Neville, Larry Williams, John Bute, John Fred and Alan Toussaint.
Toussaint, one of Smith’s songwriting and pianist peers in New Orleans, noted Smith’s unique place in the city’s music scene in an interview at the 2014 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
“He had a perfect grasp of what he was doing,” Toussaint said. “Extremely creative, and while most of us are disciples of Professor Shaggy, he’s not a disciple of Faith like we are. His own spirit is so powerful.”
“Hey,” Dr. John said of Smith’s influence on New Orleans pianists, “there’s a lot of him in them. Huey was a big part of the whole thing.”
Smith’s music also influenced future stars outside his hometown. Art Garfunkel lists “Sea Cruise” as number 5 on his list of 10 songs that changed his life. “For me, it was the gateway to rock and roll,” Garfunkel said.
Paul Simon, Garfunkel’s partner in the 1960s folk-rock duo Simon and Garfunkel, embraced Smith and New Orleans R&B.
“I don’t know it’s from Louisiana, but I like Fats Domino’s, I like Huey ‘Piano’ Smith,” Simon said in 2011.
Another 1960s music star, John Sebastian, described his band Lovin’ Spoonful as students of rock music professors Smith, Domino, and Phil Spector.
Huey Pierce Smith was born on January 26, 1934, and grew up in the Garden District of New Orleans near the Dewdrop Cafe. He learned to play the standard eight-bar blues march on the piano by watching his neighbors and his uncle play Leroy Carr’s hit “How Long.” His influence also includes local favorite Shaggy Professor and country stars Louis Jordan, Nellie Lucher and Hank Williams.
In the early 1950s, Smith became a regular performer at the Dew Drop, an African-American music venue that attracted national stars and local talent, including Smith and his early musical partner Eddie “Guitar Thin” Jones . On stage, Smith also collaborated with Smiley Lewis, Earl King and New Orleans hits Shirley and Lee. He was a key player in Cosimo Matassa’s recording studios and has performed on recordings for Lewis, King, Lloyd Price, Little Richard, Charles Brown, Amos Milburn and others.
Smith’s 1957 Ace Records album, “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu,” rose to No. 5 on Billboard’s R&B chart. Its success inspired Smith to form Huey Smith and the Joker. He rarely leads the vocals himself, instead assigning parts to the ever-changing line-up of singers in the ensemble. The striking Bobby Marchan and other clowns sing, dance and act as clowns, while Smith plays the piano and sings in the vocal ensemble. In addition to Marchan, the classic Clowns included Gerri Hall, John “Scarface” Williams, bassist Roosevelt Wright and Curley Moore.
Released in an era when black artists were less likely than white performers to receive pop radio airplay, “Rock Pneumonia” only peaked at No. 52 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. Still, in 1958, his rave shout-and-response “Don’t You Know,” climbed to No. 9 on the Hot 100. A Rudy Ray Moore catchphrase inspired the title and lyrics of “Don’t You Know It Was.” Moore was a driver for Smith and the Clowns and later rose to fame with his foul-mouthed comedy album and “Dolemite” movie.
The honor for “Sea Cruise,” released as a Frankie Ford single in 1959, broke Smith’s heart. Johnny Vincent, president of Ace Records in Jackson, Mississippi, released the song as a Ford single after the original Smith and Gerri Hall duet was replaced by Ford’s solo . The 18-year-old singer’s manager believes that Ford, a white teenager, has sold more records than the black artist Smith.
“My heart ached when he told me he was taking that drug,” Smith said decades later. Ironically, Smith and the Clowns’ “Don’t You Just Know It” charted five places higher than “Sea Cruise,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100. Ranked 14th on the list.
During the 1960s, Smith recorded for Empire Records in Los Angeles and Instant Records in New Orleans. Some of his releases, including 1968’s “Coo-Coo Over You,” were local and regional hits. Smith has also produced records for other artists, including Skip Easterling’s 1970 remake of Muddy Waters’ “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man.” The song, rewritten by Smith, was a hit with black audiences in the South, who were shocked to see Easterling as a white soul singer.
Despite Easterling’s regional success, Smith believes his career is over. As a gardener, he found solace in the faith of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“We picture someone like me as a crawling caterpillar,” he told the Baton Rouge Advocate in 2000. “Well, that’s Huey Smith, the musician. So, now I’m doing a Bible study with Jehovah’s Witnesses—what have you got? A beautiful butterfly.”
During a brief return to music in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Smith performed at the New Orleans Jazz and Traditional Music Festival, Tipitina and other New Orleans venues. After moving to Baton Rouge in the early ’80s, he quit the music business again.
Toussaint, on the one hand, regrets that Smith has left music so completely.
“I’m sorry he didn’t have a longer career,” he said in 2014. “I’ve wondered many times how creative we would be if Huey stayed, even if only for 10 more years.” There will be . “
In 2000, after a nearly 20-year hiatus from the stage, Smith performed “Swing Pneumonia” and “Sea Cruise” at the R&B Foundation Pioneer Awards Gala in New York City. After 12 years of legal battles over the latter songs, along with “High Blood Pressure” and “Don’t You Know,” Smith gratefully accepted a $15,000 honorarium from the R&B Foundation due to financial difficulties. In 2015, Donsereaux accepted the Big Easy Music Awards Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of his father.
Editor’s note: John Water’s artist biography, Huey “Piano” Smith and the Swinging Pneumonia Blues, was published in 2014 by LSU Press. Last year, the book was translated into Japanese and released in Japan by music journalist Masahiro Sumori.
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