Ain’t nothin’ but a number

The most legendary Joe Willie “Pinetop” Perkins, age 89, is blues piano personified. Mississippi-born Perkins and his massive, cascading barrelhouse and boogie piano hands rambled the South, beginning in the mid-’20s. He rambled with Delta guitarists David “Honeyboy” Edwards and Robert Nighthawk and claimed the cherry gig of house pianist for the famous blues radio program, The King Biscuit Hour, on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas, from 1943-48. In 1969, Muddy Waters chose him to succeed Otis Spann, who died suddenly at age 40. Then, in 1981 at age 68, Perkins and the rest of Waters’ all-star band walked en masse and started the Legendary Blues Band. Add Rusty Zinn, the brilliant young redheaded guitarist and singer who recently moved to Sacramento, and who is truly a torchbearer for the real blues. This Saturday, January 26, these two together, along with Zinn’s band, should turn the Palms Playhouse into a cathartic and sly juke house all rockin’ night. The Palms is at 726 Drummond Ave. in Davis, the show starts at 8:30 p.m., cover’s $17.