East Coast Piedmont Blues

Full name: Pinkney Anderson

Recorded under: Pink Anderson

Born: Feb. 12, 1900, Laurens, SC
Died: Oct. 12, 1974, Spartanburg, SC

Instrument: Guitar (and vocals)

Biographical Sketch

Pinkney Anderson, a.k.a. Pink Anderson, was born in Laurens, South Carolina, about 30 miles south of Spartanburg. Soon after, he moved to Greenville, and then to Spartanburg. At the age of ten, he started learning how to play guitar in open tuning from a local blues musician named Joe Wicks. Early on Pink employed the finger picking guitar style primarily. When he was sixteen, he met blind Simeon "Simmie" Dooley. He would be Pink's teacher and mentor until Simmie's death in 1961. Pink was definitely the pupil, and when Pink would make mistakes, Simmie used a stick to punish him. He tried to use this method on Pink's son, Alvin, but Pink wouldn’t stand for it. In 1917, Pink started performing in W.R. Kerr's Indian Remedy Company Medicine Show. He would continue to perform with this and other medicine shows until about 1945.

When he wasn't traveling with medicine shows, Anderson would get together with Dooley and they would play at picnics, dances, and parties. During this time, Anderson also played with the Spartanburg String Band. In 1928, Pink and Simmie traveled to Atlanta and recorded four tracks together for Columbia records. Columbia wanted Anderson to come back and record more, but they wanted to record him without Dooley. Anderson wouldn't take the job because of his loyalty to Dooley (as Dooley had been like a second father to him). He did not record again until 1950. He was playing at the Virginia State Fair when a man named Paul Clayton recorded him. Anderson didn’t know until after his performance.

In 1957 Anderson was forced to retire from medicine shows because of heart trouble. In 1961, not only did Simmie die, but Anderson's wife died as well. (I can’t imagine what a time that must have been for him.) Later that year, Anderson did his last series recordings, which were recorded by Samuel Charters, in Spartanburg. He died in Spartanburg in 1974.

Anderson was a true performer. He may have really enjoyed being a musician, but he definitely worked for the money. His son Alvin laments about his father’s work ethic, “He worked fifteen minutes, and they told him that he had to push a wheelbarrow maybe two hundred feet. He told them to give him his money and he left them. He said he’d been playing ever since.”

Books

Bastin, Bruce. Crying for the Carolines. London: Studio Vista, 1971.

Bastin, Bruce. Red River Blues: The Blues Tradition in the Southeast. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.

Cooper, Peter. Hub City Music Makers: One Southern Town's Popular Music Legacy. Spartanburg, SC: Holocene, 1997.

Harris, Sheldon. Blues Who's Who: A Biographical Dictionary of Blues Singers. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1979.

Oliver, Paul, ed. The Blackwell Guide to Blues Records. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Reference, 1989.

Articles

Bookbinder, Roy. "Pink Anderson, Carolina Songster." Sing Out! 22 (May/June 1973): 18.

Lornell, Kip. "Peg Pete and His Pals." Living Blues 11 (Winter 1972-1973): 27-29.

Recordings on CD

Blues Sweet Carolina Blues. Recorded between Oct. 1960 and Nov. 1965. Bluesville/Prestige PRCD-9914-2.

Carolina Blues Man, Vol. 1. Recorded April 12, 1961. Prestige Bluesville OBCCD-504-2.

Medicine Show Man, Vol. 2. Prestige 1051.

Videos and DVDs

Blues Up the Country [videorecording] : the country blues guitar legacy [United States] : Vestapol Productions ; Cambridge, MA : Distributed by Rounder Productions, 1995.

Blues Up the Country released on DVD as Legends of Country Blues Guitar, Vol. 3: Blues up the Country. See Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop Website for details <http://guitarvideos.com/>

Web Sites

Introducing Pink Anderson. Accessed Dec. 9, 2003. <http://hem.passagen.se/evilclown/pinkfloyd/PA.htm>

"Pink Anderson" from T-Bone's Piedmont Blues Website. Accessed Dec. 9, 2003. <http://www.io.com/~tbone1/blues/ECblz/pinkan.html>

Pinkney "Pink" Anderson. Accessed Dec. 9, 2003. <http://www.deadbluesguys.com/dbgtour/anderson_pink.htm>

Wirz, Stefan. "Pink Anderson Discography." From the American Music Website. <http://www.wirz.de/music/andepfrm.htm>

Mason Moshoures pictured here with Alvin "Little Pink"
Anderson, son of Pink Anderson, during a November
2003 class field trip. Photo by Bryan Sinclair.

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Last updated 18 December 2003.