Piney Brown was recently featured in the Pittsburgh City paper before a concert.
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Piney Brown
Got a Job to Do

Writer: JUSTIN HOPPER

His speaking voice is the kind of wise muddle-and-scratch one might expect: part 84 years of wear and tear, part lax Alabama accent and, despite the afternoon hour, more than a bit of just-got-outta-bed.

But once Piney Brown gets rolling it’s hard to slow him down. He spins yarns about his days as a songwriter for the legendary King Records label, the song “Popcorn” that James Brown took from him, and recording jump blues in the Midwest and country in Texas. And, despite mistreatment by the music biz and limited commercial success, it’s hard not to hear in Brown a glimmer of enthusiasm.

For that enthusiasm we can thank, in part, Pittsburgher Jeff “Bonedaddy” Ingersoll of McKeesport-based Mojo Boneyard studios, where this week Piney Brown is recording his second album for Ingersoll’s Bonedog Records. Despite Brown’s relative obscurity -- even some of the more detailed blues and R&B references overlook him -- blues collector Ingersoll has long been a fan. These days, he’s more like a disciple.

“Yeah, he’s obscure,” says Ingersoll, “but not to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh has always famously loved drinking songs, and Piney’s got one -- ‘Walk-a-Block and Fall’ -- that [DJs including] Porky Chedwick and Charlie Apple always played.”

While other obscure blues and R&B pioneers have found their careers resurrected by young fans, Ingersoll points out, “He was still writing, and he was still recording, still trying to do it all through the ’80s. Who else in America has recorded in so many decades?”

Brown’s life story sounds like a blues enthusiast’s delirium: Born in 1922 in Birmingham, Ala., Piney Brown was performing on the blues and proto-R&B circuits by the time World War II broke out. “I worked in steel mills, coal mines, made Jeep parts on an assembly line during the war,” says Brown. “Anything, as long as it’s honest. But when I found out I could really [sing] and make a livin’ at it, I thought, ‘Well, I’d like that better than those other kinds of job!’”

By ’47, Brown began recording with a series of labels whose names are like manna to the R&B romantic: Miracle, Apollo, Sittin’ In, Duke, King, Sound Stage 7. He recorded everything from Big Joe Turner-style blues shouters (“How About Rockin’ With Me”) to Southern-style soul (“Nashville Wimmen”) to manic, driving funk (“Everything But You”). He also wrote songs recorded by the likes of Little Milton and James Brown.

But also true to blues form, Brown rarely profited from these successes.

“If I had all the money that was owed to me for records,” says Brown, laughing, “I wouldn’t have to do nothin’ but sit down! My stuff gets lost up in other peoples’ publishing, and I’m working on that with a lawyer, but unless you stand there with a counter when they’re pressing the records, you’ll never really know.”

The sins of the slew of recent reissues featuring Brown are nearly as grievous: He found out about the Delmark label’s Hoot and Holler Saturday Night collection only after its release. So it was a breath of fresh air for Brown when Fred Bond, of Millvale record store The Attic, introduced him to Ingersoll.

“I played him some of the stuff I’d been [recording], and I told him I wanted to do whatever he wanted to do,” says Ingersoll. “When you’re at that age you should do exactly what you wanna do.”

What he wanted to do turned out to be My Task (2003), which garnered rave reviews in the blues press, but clocked few sales -- a disappointment that didn’t in the least deter Ingersoll or Brown from working together again.

“These guys made it possible,” says Ingersoll. “They invented what popular music has become. Go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame -- the Stones have a big room, KISS is in there, and Muddy Waters gets stuck off to the side?”

Piney Brown isn’t in any Hall of Fame, nor would he want to be. After all, unlike young ’uns like KISS, Brown’s still writing and recording new material. And unlike all those museum pieces, Piney Brown’s gonna keep going ’til he’s finished.

“I’m gonna play as many gigs as I can get,” says Brown. “Me and my band, we wanna work, we don’t wanna just sit around -- ain’t no distance too far for us to go.

“I came in as a kid, when I was 18. I’m 84 now -- I’ve got a job to do, and I’ve learned how to do it. Now I’m just gonna do it, and I ain’t gonna quit ’til I get tired of it.”

Piney Brown with Bobby Wayne and Jimmy Adler. 8 p.m. Sat., March 11. The Palisades, 501 Water St., McKeesport. All ages. $15 ($20 at the door). 412-678-3955