Fusing infectious grooves with comic lyrics, Huey “Piano” Smith created late 1950s rock ’n’ roll classics with New Orleans flair.
The songwriter-pianist’s national hits “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu,” “Don’t You Just Know It” and “Sea Cruise” made worldwide impact.
Smith, 89, died peacefully in his sleep Monday night in Baton Rouge, his oldest daughter Acquelyn Donsereaux, confirmed. He’d moved from New Orleans to Baton Rouge in the early 1980s.
“He just slept away,” Donsereaux said Tuesday. “Daddy was the most positive person I know. Easy going and funny. He was a comedian until the last couple of hours.”
The major artists who performed and recorded “Rocking Pneumonia” and Smith’s other songs during the past 60-plus years include Bruce Springsteen, Jason Isbell, Aerosmith, the Grateful Dead, Tom Jones, Paul Simon, Johnny Rivers, Jerry Lee Lewis, Herman’s Hermits, Jimmy Buffett, KC and the Sunshine Band, Boz Scaggs, Patti LaBelle and Chubby Checker.
Smith’s protégé, Mac Rebennack, aka Dr. John, credited him “with opening the door to funk, basically as we know it, in some ridiculously hip way, and putting it in the mainstream of the world’s music.”
Rebennack was among the many New Orleans and Louisiana artists who performed Smith’s catalog. The others included Professor Longhair, the Neville Brothers, Art Neville, Larry Williams, John Boutte, John Fred and Allen Toussaint.
Toussaint, one of Smith’s songwriting and piano peers in New Orleans, noted Smith’s singular place in the city’s music during a 2014 interview at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
“He had the perfect touch for what he was doing,” Toussaint said. “Extremely creative and, though most of us are disciples of Professor Longhair, he was less a disciple of Fess than us. He was so strong within his own spirit.”
“Hey,” Dr. John said of Smith’s impact on New Orleans pianists, “it’s a lot of him in all of ’em. Huey is a major part of the whole thing.”
Smith’s music also affected future stars beyond his hometown. Art Garfunkel listed “Sea Cruise” at No. 5 among the 10 songs that changed his life. “For me, it was the door opening to rock ’n’ roll,” Garfunkel said.
Paul Simon, Garfunkel’s partner in the 1960s folk-rock duo Simon and Garfunkel, embraced Smith and New Orleans rhythm-and-blues.
“I didn’t know it was from Louisiana, but I loved Fats Domino, I loved Huey ‘Piano’ Smith,” Simon said in 2011.
John Sebastian, another 1960s music star, described his group, the Lovin’ Spoonful, as students of rock ’n’ roll professors Smith, Domino and Phil Spector.
Born Jan. 26, 1934, Huey Pierce Smith grew up in New Orleans’ Garden District near the Dew Drop Café. He learned to play the standard eight-bar blues progression at the piano by watching a neighbor as well as his uncle play Leroy Carr’s hit, “How Long.” His influences also included local favorite Professor Longhair and national stars Louis Jordan, Nellie Lutcher and Hank Williams.
In the early 1950s, Smith became a regular performer at the Dew Drop, the African-American music venue that booked national stars and local talent, including Smith and his early musical partner, Eddie “Guitar Slim” Jones. On stage, Smith also worked with Smiley Lewis, Earl King and the hit-making duo from New Orleans, Shirley and Lee. A key session player at Cosimo Matassa’s recording studio, he played for recordings by Lewis, King, Lloyd Price, Little Richard, Charles Brown, Amos Milburn and many others.
Smith’s 1957 Ace Records release, “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu,” rose to No. 5 on Billboard’s rhythm-and-blues chart. Its success inspired Smith to form Huey Smith and the Clowns. Rarely singing lead himself, he assigned parts to an evolving cast of vocalists in ensemble arrangements. The attention-loving Bobby Marchan and the other Clowns sang, danced and clowned while Smith played piano and sang in the vocal ensemble. In addition to Marchan, the classic Clowns include Gerri Hall, John “Scarface” Williams, bass singer Roosevelt Wright and Curley Moore.
Released in an era when Black artists were less likely than White performers to receive pop radio play, “Rocking Pneumonia” reached only No. 52 on Billboard’s Hot 100 pop singles chart. Nonetheless, in 1958, his riotously fun call-and-response, “Don’t You Just Know It,” rose to No. 9 on the Hot 100 pop chart. A pet phrase spoken by Rudy Ray Moore inspired “Don’t You Just Know It’s” title and lyrics. Moore, a driver for Smith and the Clowns, later found fame with his expletive-laced comedy albums and “Dolemite” movies.
The lack of credit Smith received for 1959’s “Sea Cruise,” released as a Frankie Ford single, broke his heart. Johnny Vincent, president of Ace Records in Jackson, Mississippi, issued the song as a Ford single after its original Smith and Gerri Hall duo vocals were replaced by Ford’s solo voice. The 18-year-old singer’s manager believed that Ford, a White teenager, would sell more records than Smith, a Black artist.
“It hurt me to my heart when he told me he was taking that,” Smith said decades later. Ironically, “Don’t You Just Know It,” credited to Smith and the Clowns, charted five spots higher than “Sea Cruise,” which peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100.
In the 1960s, Smith recorded for the Los Angeles-based Imperial Records and New Orleans’ Instant label. Some of his releases, including 1968’s “Coo-Coo Over You,” were local and regional hits. Smith also produced recordings for other artists, including Skip Easterling’s 1970 remake of Muddy Waters’ “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man.” Reimagined by Smith, the song was a hit with Black listeners in the South, shocking Black audiences when they saw that Easterling was a White soul singer.
Despite Easterling’s regional success, Smith concluded his own career was over. Working as a gardener, he found solace in his Jehovah’s Witness faith.
“We illustrate a person like me as being this caterpillar crawling,” he told The Baton Rouge Advocate in 2000. “Well, that was Huey Smith, the musician. So, now I’m studying the Bible with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and — what have you? A beautiful butterfly.”
During a brief return to music in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Smith performed at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Tipitina’s and other New Orleans venues. He dropped out of music again after his early ’80s move to Baton Rouge.
Toussaint, for one, regretted that Smith left music so completely.
“I’m sorry that his career wasn’t longer lived than what it was,” he said in 2014. “I’ve wondered many times, if Huey would have stayed on, even just 10 years longer, how much more creativity we would have.”
In 2000, following a nearly 20-year absence from the stage, Smith performed “Rocking Pneumonia” and “Sea Cruise” at the Rhythm and Blues Foundation Pioneer Awards gala in New York City. In dire financial need after 12 years of legal battles over the latter songs as well as “High Blood Pressure” and “Don’t You Just Know It,” Smith gratefully accepted the R&B Foundation’s $15,000 honorarium. In 2015, Donsereaux accepted the Big Easy Music Awards Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of her father.
Editor's note: John Wirt's biography of the artist, "Huey "Piano" Smith and the Rocking Pneumonia Blues," was published by LSU Press in 2014. Last year, the book was translated into Japanese and released by Masahiro Sumori, a music journalist in Japan.
