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Huey ‘Piano’ Smith, New Orleans Rock ’n’ Roll Cornerstone, Dies at 89

With songs like “Don’t You Just Know It,” “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” and “Sea Cruise,” he put a firm backbeat behind joyful nonsense.

By Jon Pareles

Huey “Piano” Smith, whose two-fisted keyboard style and rambunctious songs propelled the sound of New Orleans R&B into the pop Top 10 in the late 1950s, died on Feb. 13 at his home in Baton Rouge. He was 89.

His daughter Acquelyn Donsereaux confirmed his death.

Mr. Smith wrote songs that became cornerstones of New Orleans R&B and rock ’n’ roll perennials, notably “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu,” “Don’t You Just Know It” and “Sea Cruise.”

As a pianist and bandleader, Mr. Smith was known for strong left-hand bass lines, splashy right hand and forceful backbeat. He didn’t take center stage; his band, the Clowns, was fronted by a group of dancing lead vocalists , among them Bobby Marchan, who often performed wearing women’s clothes.

Mr. Smith’s lyrics were full of droll wordplay and irresistible nonsense-syllable choruses. “I use slangs and things like that,” he was quoted as saying in John Wirt’s biography, “Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and the Rockin’ Pneumonia Blues” (2014) , “When you put the music with words and things together, the songs just make themselves. And after you listen at it, it says something its own self, that you hadn’t planned.”

Mr. Smith’s songs have been covered by Aerosmith, the Grateful Dead, Johnny Rivers , Patti LaBelle, Deep Purple and many others. But he struggled to collect royalties through more than a decade of lawsuits, and in the 1990s he filed for bankruptcy. His song “Sea Cruise” was handed over by his label to a white singer, Frankie Ford, whose voice was overdubbed atop the backing track recorded by Mr. Smith and his band.

Huey Pierce Smith was born on Jan. 26, 1934, in New Orleans, the son of Arthur Smith, a roofer and sugar cane cutter, and Carrie Victoria (Scott) Smith, who worked at a laundry. He taught himself to play boogie-woogie piano, strongly influenced by the New Orleans master Professor Longhair, and by his teens he was performing regularly at the Dew Drop Café, a top Black club in what was still a segregated city. He formed a duo with Eddie Lee Jones, who performed and recorded as Guitar Slim and who gave him the “Piano” moniker. He also backed Lloyd Price and other New Orleans performers onstage.

Mr. Smith also became a regular session player at J&M, the recording studio owned by Cosimo Matassa , where the sound of classic New Orleans R&B was forged. His piano opens the Smiley Lewis hit “I Hear You Knocking,” and he was also heard on recordings by Earl King , Little Richard and many others.

He formed the Clowns in 1957 and had a nationwide hit that year with “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” (later versions often rendered it as “Rockin’”), which reached No. 5 on Billboard’s rhythm-and-blues chart and No. 52 on the pop chart. A medical-minded follow-up, “Tu-Ber-Cu-Lucas and the Sinus Blues,” didn’t fare as well.

With his new career as a bandleader thriving, Mr. Smith married Doretha Ford in 1957. They had five children before they divorced in the mid-1960s.

Mr. Smith and the Clowns reached the pop Top 10 in 1958 with the wry “Don’t You Just Know It.” The title was a phrase often used by the band’s bus driver, Rudy Ray Moore , who would go on to a career as a bawdy comedian and the star of the “Dolemite” movies.

That same year, Mr. Smith recorded “Sea Cruise.” Johnny Vincent, the owner of his label, Ace Records, was a partner in a distribution company, Record Sales Inc., with Johnny Caronna. The day after Mr. Smith recorded the music for “Sea Cruise,” planning to have the Clowns add vocals, Mr. Caronna claimed the song for a teenage singer he was managing, Frank Guzzo, professionally known as Frankie Ford .

According to Mr. Wirt’s biography, Mr. Smith was told, “Johnny Vincent agreed that if you can sell a million on this record, Frankie can sell 10 million” — and, he later recalled, “It hurt me to my heart when he told me he was taking that.”

Mr. Vincent, who died in 2000, also claimed co-writing credits on many songs Mr. Smith wrote and recorded for Ace, including his hits , although he later relinquished those credits. Mr. Smith moved to Imperial Records as the 1950s ended, but he returned to Ace to record a rollicking holiday album, “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” on which he declaimed the title poem over a jaunty horn section.

With the British Invasion of the 1960s, guitar-driven rock supplanted piano-centered New Orleans R&B on the pop charts. Mr. Smith continued to record on the Pitter Pat and Instant labels through the late 1960s, under his own name and others, and he had some regional hits . He also wrote and produced songs for other performers, notably Skip Easterling, who had a hit across the South in 1970 with Mr. Smith’s funk reworking of the Muddy Waters standard “Hoochie Coochie Man.”

Mr. Smith married Margrette Riley in 1971. She survives him, along with his children Ms. Donsereaux, Sherilyn Smith, Huerilyn Smith, Hugh Smith, Katherine Smith, Tanisha Smith, Tyra Smith and Glenda Bold; his stepson, James L. Riley Jr.; 18 grandchildren; and 47 great-grandchildren.

Barely able to make a living from his music in the early 1970s, Mr. Smith turned to other work. He started a gardening business, Smith’s Dependable Gardening Service. He also became a Jehovah’s Witness and gave up drinking and smoking.

Meanwhile, the value of his old songs was increasing. In 1972, Johnny Rivers’s remake of “Rocking Pneumonia” reached No. 6 on the pop chart. Dr. John included a medley of Mr. Smith’s song s on his album “Dr. John’s Gumbo,” and Ace Records rereleased Mr. Smith’s songs on compilation albums.

Mr. Smith performed occasionally as the 1970s ended. At the New Orleans club Tipitina’s and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1979 and 1981, he reunited with singers from the Clowns’ peak years. At the 1981 festival, his musicians included the Meters’ rhythm section: George Porter on bass and Zigaboo Modeliste on drums.

Mr. Smith moved to Baton Rouge in 1980 and stopped performing soon after that. His catalog continued to be heard — in cover versions, on movie soundtracks, in commercials and in reissues — but bad deals deprived him of much of his royalty income.

In a series of lawsuits from 1988 to 2000, Artists Rights Enforcement Corporation — a company Mr. Smith had engaged in 1982 to help collect back royalties and then fired in 1984 — demanded and won a 50 percent share of Mr. Smith’s ongoing royalty income from four of his biggest songs, including “Rocking Pneumonia.”

Mr. Smith declared bankruptcy in 1997; by then, he had pawned his piano. When full rights to the four songs were sold for $1 million to the publisher Cotillion Music in 2000, Mr. Smith remained entitled to foreign royalties but netted less than $100,000 to escape bankruptcy.

The Rhythm & Blues Foundation gave Mr. Smith its $15,000 Pioneer Award in 2000, and he gave his last major performance at the foundation’s gala. He was inaugurated into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame in 2001.

Mac Rebennack, the New Orleans pianist, guitarist and singer who recorded as Dr. John , received vital early songwriting guidance from Mr. Smith, according to Mr. Wirt’s biography. “Anyone who can talk can write a song,” he recalled being told. “So whatever you got to say, play good music and say it. You just put it where you need to say it.”

Mr. Smith, Mr. Rebennack said, also advised, “If you don’t have a song that’s got some kind of simple melody people can hum, sing with and roll with, it’s like, what do you got?”

An earlier version of this obituary mistakenly included two names on the list of Mr. Smith’s survivors. His sons Huey Pierce Smith Jr. and Huey Anthony Smith are no longer alive.

How we handle corrections

Jon Pareles has been The Times’s chief pop music critic since 1988. A musician, he has played in rock bands, jazz groups and classical ensembles. He majored in music at Yale University. More about Jon Pareles

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New Orleans R&B great Huey 'Piano' Smith dies at 89

Huey "Piano" Smith, who died earlier this month, recorded many influential singles including "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu." He wrote the Freddie Ford hit "Sea Cruise."

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Huey ‘Piano’ Smith, New Orleans rock-and-roll pianist, dies at 89

Huey “Piano” Smith, a New Orleans boogie-woogie pianist who wrote and recorded the 1950s rock-and-roll standards “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” and “Sea Cruise” and who influenced many later rock and pop performers, died Feb. 13 at his home in Baton Rouge. He was 89.

His daughter Acquelyn Donsereaux confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.

Mr. Smith’s group, the Clowns, lived up to its name by combining the pianist’s infectious rhythms with lyrics rooted in nursery rhymes, children’s songs, Mardi Gras chants and vernacular Crescent City slang and delivering the tunes in a broadly comic style. Singer Bobby Marchan, known for his booty-shaking dance moves, performed in drag while the group’s female vocalist, Gerri Hall, frequently wore a suit and tie.

Though well-rehearsed, the Clowns’ raucous vocals often sounded like a talented street gang, with each member trying to out-sing the other. The catchy refrain of a song like “Don’t You Just Know It,” with nonsensical phrases such as “gooba gooba gooba,” practically begged the listener to join in. Their rollicking records transported a generation of teenagers, many of whom had never set foot in New Orleans, to the Mardi Gras.

Mr. Smith’s syncopated keyboard style reflected the influence of his early idol, Professor Longhair, who combined boogie-woogie with habanera and rumba rhythms. Like Ray Charles, Mr. Smith used a Wurlitzer electric piano. He played it loudly, often telling people that he intended to fill the room with sound like Bo Diddley’s guitar.

The lineup of the Clowns often changed, and Mr. Smith eventually added falsetto tenor Marchan, the nasal-voiced Curley Moore, bass singer Roosevelt Wright, and Hall, to the group. Rudy Ray Moore, later a raunchy comedian who starred in the 1975 exploitation film “Dolemite,” was Mr. Smith’s driver.

The group performed on national rock-and-roll revues and even toured Jamaica in 1959, where their music influenced the nascent ska style.

“Each individual was at liberty to decide what he would do to act foolish,” Mr. Smith told author John Wirt for the biography “ Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and the Rocking Pneumonia Blues. ” “That’s what tickled the people so much. We had the songs down so each member of the group would break out and go to clowning.”

In addition to mentoring fellow pianists Allen Toussaint and James Booker, Mr. Smith recorded with Mac Rebennack on guitar before Rebennack assumed his rock-and-roll stage persona, Dr. John.

“I credit Huey with opening the door for funk, basically as we know it, in some ridiculously hip way and putting it in the mainstream of the world’s music,” Dr. John told Wirt.

The Clowns’ popularity extended to Canada. Guitarist Robbie Robertson of The Band recalled that his first professional group in Toronto specialized in Huey Smith songs. And in New York, John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful said that his song “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind” was an attempt to write in the style of Mr. Smith and the Clowns.

“Rocking Pneumonia” (co-credited to Ace record label owner Johnny Vincent) reached No. 52 on Billboard’s pop chart and No. 5 on the rhythm-and-blues chart. Fifteen years later, a cover by Johnny Rivers with Dr. John on piano reached No. 6 on the pop charts. With the passing decades, the song has become a rock standard with versions by Jimmy Buffett and Jerry Lee Lewis, among others.

The Clowns’ other hits of the late 1950s included “High Blood Pressure,” “Don’t You Just Know It” (both credited to Huey and Jerry), “Well I’ll Be John Brown” and “Don’t You Know Yockomo.”

Mr. Smith’s keyboard also graced some of the Crescent City’s most fondly remembered recordings of the mid-1950s, including Smiley Lewis’s “ I Hear You Knocking ,” Little Richard’s “ Just a Lonely Guy ” and Earl King’s swamp pop ballad, “ Those Lonely, Lonely Nights .”

Mr. Smith also recorded a Christmas album, “Twas the Night Before Christmas” (1962). While Christmas records by rock performers are common today, the one by Mr. Smith was removed from stores after a local TV commentator called the Clowns’ version of “Silent Night” sacrilegious.

Mr. Smith said he was cheated out of his biggest claim to fame, singer Frankie Ford’s 1959 hit “Sea Cruise.” Mr. Smith had written the song and recorded a backing track when Ace owner Vincent chose to scrub the group’s vocal for one by Ford, an Italian American singer marketed as a teen idol.

Frankie Ford, singer of ‘Sea Cruise,’ dies at 76

The B-side, “ Roberta ,” also a hit, was also originally slated for Ford, and featured the driving sound of Mr. Smith and James Booker double-heading the piano.

“Sea Cruise” and “Roberta” caused consternation for Mr. Smith, but he retained a collegial attitude toward Ford and played on many of his recordings. He even took the young singer to a process shop to get Ford’s curly hair straightened and dyed red for a photo shoot.

“My hair didn’t turn red, it turned fuchsia,” Ford recalled to Wirt. “I was in bed for three days with fever from the lye and everything. I was lucky not to lose it. So, it was so funny because Huey was so laid back. He said, ‘Well, we ain’t never done a white boy’s hair before but we want to try.’”

Huey Pierce Smith was born in New Orleans on Jan. 26, 1934. His father was a roofer, and his mother was a laundress. While still in his teens, he formed a duo with Eddie Jones, who performed and recorded as Guitar Slim.

His first marriage, to Dorothea Ford, ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 50 years, the former Margrette Riley; four children from his first marriage; three daughters from his second marriage; a daughter from his relationship with Brenda Brandon; 18 grandchildren; and 47 great-grandchildren.

A son from his first marriage and a son with Brandon preceded him in death.

In 1982, Mr. Smith hired Artists Rights Enforcement Corp. to help collect back royalties. Two years later, he fired them. The company sued him for breach of contract and won a 50 percent share of his income from four songs, including “Rocking Pneumonia.”

The case dragged on for years with Mr. Smith declaring bankruptcy in 1997. When the four songs were sold for $1 million to the publisher Cotillion Music in 2000, Mr. Smith received less than $100,000 and retained only the rights to his foreign royalties.

Mr. Smith stopped playing regularly in the 1980s but gave a performance in New York when he received a Rhythm & Blues Foundation Pioneer Award in 2000.

“You play what you feel,” he once said. “If something sounds good to you, you go to try to play it. And you repeatedly play it. Then that becomes part of you. Like a person talking, the way they walk, they have a mannerism with everything they do. Like the amount of pressure you put on the key, someone else might have a different pressure.”

Huey ‘Piano’ Smith, New Orleans R&B Great and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 89

By Daniel Kreps

Daniel Kreps

Huey “Piano” Smith, a New Orleans R&B legend and an early pioneer of rock n’ roll, has died at the age of 89.

Smith’s daughter, Acquelyn Donsereaux, confirmed her father’s death to the New Orleans Times-Picayune/Advocate , adding Smith died in his sleep Tuesday at his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

A renowned boogie pianist who recorded alongside the likes of Little Richard, Lloyd Price, Earl King, and countless Big Easy musicians, Smith was best known for his Fifties recording “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu.”

While the single was only a minor hit in 1957, its influence continued to be felt in the decades that followed as Johnny Rivers (who turned the track into a hit single in 1972), the Grateful Dead, Aerosmith, the Flamin’ Groovies, and more all covered the track. 

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Smith largely left music behind in the early Eighties, when he moved from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, but would sporadically perform at concerts and events that honored his legacy on R&B and rock, including the Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation.

The late Dr. John, a protege of Smith’s, said the pianist ( via nola.com ) opened “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.”

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Sea Cruise by Frankie Ford with Huey "Piano" Smith and Orch.

Sea Cruise Single December 1958

Let's Take a Sea Cruise Album February 1959

Added by Canary

• Highlights 5
• Versions 183
• Adaptations 15

Sea Cruise written by Huey "Piano" Smith English

Sea Cruise written by Huey "Piano" Smith instrumental

Krydstogt written by Torben Eschen Danish

Rock'n'roll No. 39159 written by Morten Langebæk Danish

Seacruise written by Henk van Broekhoven Dutch

Hyppää paattiin written by K.W. Blomqvist Finnish

La croisière des souvenirs written by Long Chris , Pierre Billon French

Karneval im Hinterhaus written by Didi Zill German

Achterbahn written by Günther Sigl German

Kreuzfahrt written by Ulrich Schulze-Rossbach German

Harry Hoover written by Eldar Vågan Norwegian

Mi barquito written by J.G. Cruz Ayala , J. Vincent Spanish

Vámonos al mar written by Julissa Spanish

En glad refräng written by Tord Sjöman Swedish

En liten sjötur written by Gert Lengstrand Swedish

Full Gas written by Hans Sidén Swedish

Båten ut i skärgår'n written by Ingela Forsman Swedish

Huey ‘Piano’ Smith, session man and hit maker, dead at 89

NEW YORK (AP) — Huey “Piano” Smith, a beloved New Orleans session man who backed Little Richard, Lloyd Price and other early rock stars and with his own group made the party favorites “Don’t You Just Know It” and “Rockin’ Pneumonia and Boogie Woogie Flu,” has died. He was 89.

His daughter, Acquelyn Donsereaux, told The Associated Press that he died in his sleep Feb. 13 at his home in Baton Rouge. She did not cite a specific cause.

A New Orleans native who performed nationwide but always returned to Louisiana, Smith was one of the last survivors of an extraordinary scene of musicians and songwriters who helped make New Orleans a fundamental influence on rock ‘n’ roll. He was just 15 when he began playing professionally and in his 20s helped out on numerous ’50s hits, including Price’s “Where You At?”, Earl King’s “Those Lonely Lonely Nights” and Smiley Lewis’ “I Hear You Knocking.” Little Richard, Fats Domino and David Bartholemew were among the many other artists he worked with.

In 1957, he formed Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns and reached the top 10 with “Rockin’ Pneumonia,” a mid-tempo stomp which featured the vocals of John Marchin and Smith’s buoyant keyboard playing, and the equally rowdy and good-natured “Don’t You Just Know It.” The Clowns also were known for “We Like Birdland”, “Well I’ll Be John Brown” and “High Blood Pressure.”

One Smith production became a major hit and rock standard, for another performer. Smith and his group wrote, arranged and recorded “Sea Cruise,” but Ace Records thought the song would have more success with a white singer — as Smith learned bluntly from local record distributor Joe Caronna — and replaced the Clowns’ vocals with those of Frankie Ford, whose version became a million seller.

“I was crying as he (Caronna) said that,” Smith told biographer John Wirt, whose “Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and the Rocking Pneumonia Blues” came out in 2014. “I had been drinking a little bit. It hurt me to my heart when he told me he was taking that.”

Artists covering “Sea Cruise” and other Smith songs included John Fogerty, the Beach Boys, Aerosmith and Jerry Garcia. In 2005, Ford would deny “stealing” the song, alleging that he had written the words. “Huey sorta went through a period and ‘forgot’ a lot of things,” Ford told Offbeat Magazine.

Smith’s popularity faded after the Beatles arrived and by 1980 he had quit the business, settled in Baton Rouge with his wife, Margrette, and become a Jehovah’s Witness. Like many rock musicians from the ’50s, he fought to be paid and credited for “Sea Cruise” and other hits and spent decades in legal battles and financial trouble. Local musicians, meanwhile, continued to cite him as an inspiration.

“To me he was the man who got more out of simplicity than anybody in New Orleans,” drummer Earl Palmer told Wirt.

In 2000, Smith received a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation and he was honored a year later by the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame. Admirers would cite him as one of the most vital performers not to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

He is survived by his wife, 10 children, 18 grandchildren and 47 great grandchildren, his daughter told the AP.

Smith grew up in the Uptown section New Orleans, his father a roofer, his mother a laundry worker. As a boy, Smith took up piano, learning by watching his uncle play, and he soon mastered the eight-bar progression that anchored countless blues songs. He played obsessively, sometimes to the annoyance of his neighbors, and in high school he helped start the band the Joy Jumpers.

He was still in his teens when he met another young New Orleans musician, Eddie Lee Jones, who as “Guitar Slim” influenced countless musicians and gave Smith his “Piano” nickname. Lewis’ own work initially drew upon the blues-boogie woogie of Professor Longhair. But he would eventually absorb a wide range of styles, whether the jazz of Jelly Roll Martin or the rock-rhythm and blues of Fats Domino.

“I took up to tryin’ a variety of music other than just one individual style,” he told Wirt. “I like my own style, but my own style is completely different than rhythm-and-blues, or calypso or any of that. It’s just deep down funk.”

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