Piano Red’s Lost (and Last) Session to be Released August 17th
Records on Tuesday, August 17th, 2010. The European release will follow on Tuesday, August 23rd. A pre-release show celebrating the iconic artist's life and music will be held at Smith's Olde Bar in Atlanta on Thursday, August 12th. The event will feature "The Red Rockers," a band that will include musicians who played with Perryman and lifelong devotees like Terry Adams, formerly of NRBQ, Tommy Dean of The League of Decency, and Charles Wolff, formerly of The Brains, along with other special guests. A donation from the proceeds from the show and from CD sales will benefit the Atlanta Community Food Bank. Produced by Bang Bang Lulu Productions, the CD includes eighteen songs - eight of them previously unreleased - that were taped live at Atlanta's Excelsior Mill in 1984, and is the iconic entertainer's last recording. The tapes have been in the possession of Michael Reeves, who managed the Excelsior Mill at the time and hosted the artist four nights a week. Reeves, now the co-owner of Smith's Olde Bar and Fox Brothers Bar-B-Q, says he knew he had a valuable recording in hand, but was waiting for the right moment to share it with the world. When the time came, he asked Atlanta writer and producer David Fulmer to join him in the release. "Over the past years, Michael and I have worked together on some small projects," Fulmer says. "This one is by far the most significant. Piano Red was a one-of-a-kind blues and R&B artist and I'm glad to be a part of this production." Fulmer brings more than a decade in communications to managing local media operations for the CD release and event. National and international media is being handled by Mark Pucci of MP Media in Atlanta. Reeves trusted restoration of the original four-track tape to Mike Graves of Atlanta's Osiris Studios. "We were surprised at the quality of the recording," Reeves comments. "It sounded like Red was in the room. As soon as I heard it, I knew we had to do something special with it." Piano Red was born William Lee Perryman in Hampton, Georgia, in 1911, and moved with his family to Atlanta when he was six years old. Though he traveled far and wide, Atlanta remained his home through most of his life. He began playing the piano at an early age and by 1930 was performing blues, rags, and popular songs in dance halls, theatres, juke joints, campgrounds, and traveling shows. During the Depression, he took up the trade of upholstery, but never stopped playing. His career got a huge boost in the postwar years as his style changed from straight- ahead blues to R&B. His popularity soared as he helped usher in rock-and roll with early 1950s hits like "Rockin' with Red," "Dr. Feelgood," and his most famous composition, "The Right String (But the Wrong Yo Yo)," which has been covered by scores of musicians. He formed a band - Dr. Feelgood and the Interns - and worked R&B circuits all over the country. Like numerous other artists of the genre, he was more appreciated abroad than at home and toured Europe extensively in the 1960s and 1970s. He secured a nightly engagement at Muhlenbrink's Saloon in Underground Atlanta that lasted for ten years and grew his base of local fans as well as tourists. Musicians playing large halls like the Omni and the Fox Theatre visited regularly to pay their respects. Later, he opened shows for Keith Richards' band New Barbarians and for Peter Tosh. He began a regular gig at the Excelsior Mill in 1981. In 1983, he was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame and was presented with the Pioneer Award by the Georgia Music Association for his contributions to the state's musical heritage. He continued to record sporadically and play around the Southeast and in Europe until his health began to fail. He died at Dekalb General Hospital on July 25, 1985.
and operate the Peanut Palace in McDonough, Georgia, and The Excelsior Mill, The Cotton Club, and The Point, all in Atlanta. Currently, he co-owns Smith's Olde Bar and Fox Brothers Bar-B-Q. As a partner in Nolen-Reeves Music, he has released projects by Atlanta's Kodac Harrison and the band Operator. He has been on the Board of the Georgia Epilepsy Foundation, served as a Commissioner on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Commission, and has been an active supporter of the Atlanta Community Food Bank for over twenty years. Co-producer David Fulmer is the author of seven critically-acclaimed music-related novels. He has been nominated for a LA Times Book Prize, a Barry Award, and a Falcon Award, has won a Shamus Award, a Benjamin Franklin Award, and an AudioFile Golden Earphones Award. Most recently, The Blue Door was nominated for the 2009 Shamus Award for Best Novel. His seventh novel, The Fall, was released in March by Five Stones Press. He also wrote and produced "Blind Willie's Blues," a documentary about the life and music of Georgia blues legend Blind Willie McTell, and the "Americana" series of vignettes about American music, which aired on NPR affiliate WABE-FM and WMLB-AM, both in Atlanta. In a career that spans over 35 years as a music writer, editor, record executive, and publicist, Mark Pucci has worked with some of the most respected and influential artists in the business. During two separate stints as publicity director and VP of Publicity and General Manager of Capricorn Records and his own Atlanta-based publicity company, Mark Pucci Media, he has directed publicity campaigns for The Allman Brothers Band, The Marshall Tucker Band, Delbert McClinton, Gregg Allman, Dickey Betts, Elvin Bishop, 311, Cake, Hank Williams, Jr., Widespread Panic, Kenny Chesney, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and numerous other artists. In 2008, he was the recipient of the "Keeping the Blues Alive Award" from the Blues Foundation in Memphis for his career achievements. Pucci is listed in several prestigious resource books, including “Who’s Who In The World,” “Who’s Who In America” and “Who’s Who In Entertainment.” Established by Michael Rothschild in Atlanta in 1981, Landslide Records maintains a catalogue of Southern roots-oriented recordings in genres such as blues, Americana, jazz, jam, and bluegrass. The label has issued releases by a wide variety of notable artists, including Widespread Panic, The Derek Trucks Band, Tinsley Ellis & The Heartfixers, Nappy Brown, Dave Bartholomew, Sean Costello, Webb Wilder & The Beatnecks, Scrapomatic, and Colonel Bruce Hampton. Landslide currently sells to compact disc distributors in the United States and overseas, and its music is available digitally at all major download websites. ### Contact: mail@bang-bang-lulu.com |