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Robert T. Smith (aka Piano Slim)* (1 August 1928 – 30 December 2011) was a Texas blues singer.
He was born in LaGrange, Texas to Elvina Thompson and George Smith, a family of sharecroppers in the Roundtop Community. He was the youngest of 18 children.
After Slim began working around Houston clubs as a singer, he also learned to play drums. He worked for a while as a drummer for Lighting Hopkins, and also played drums behind other notable area bluesmen. After being shot in the back in a case of mistaken identity, he had to quit playing drums and saxophone because the injuries damaged a lung. This started him to concentrate on the piano. He played as a sideman in the clubs around Houston for a few years, and he later decided to venture out on his own.
After making some contacts in the record business in Houston, where he made a record called "Squeeze Me Baby". At that time, the record companies around Houston were busy recording and promoting blues artists like Bobby "Blue" Bland and Junior Parker, so there wasn't much time for them to work with Slim's recordings. He was told about a record label starting up in St. Louis, Missouri and received a letter of recommendation from the record executives in Houston, Texas. After coming to St. Louis in 1959, he recorded his first sides for the Bobbin label. “Workin' Again” was popular enough to get him on a road show package to Memphis, Tennessee.
Back in St. Louis he began playing piano behind some of the great artists that originated there, such as Billy Gayles, Ike Turner, Albert King and Little Milton. After failing to get his own band he picked up work in taverns and clubs playing solo piano. Finally getting his own band together, with Amos Stanford on guitar and a drummer called Earthquake, he played around the area clubs for about five years.
After starting a family, he put music on the back burner for over a decade. He started playing again, but soon accepted a job with the Sate Hospital as a psychiatric aid, working with disabled children, and decided to back away from his music again. When that job ended it was back to his love playing the blues. He began playing piano for a group called the "Bluesmachine". Eventually, Robert T. Smith became known as "Piano Slim and the Bluesmachine". At the insistence of St. Louis blues legend Henry Townsend, executives from the European record label Swingmaster came looking for Slim. His first album for the Swingmaster label, "Mean Woman Blues", was recorded in August of 1981. Other recordings and singles followed such as the 1983 album "Gateway To The Blues".
This led to six European tours featuring Piano Slim as either a headliner, supporting act, or sideman. When home in St. Louis, he continued to play the local clubs and work with some of the area's notable bluesmen, such as Tommy Bankhead and J.R. Reed in 1991. Slim was featured on a compilation of St. Louis' blues artists on the Wolf Records label called "St. Louis Blues Today". Besides Piano Slim, this album included songs and performances by Tommy Bankhead, Doc Terry, J.R. Reed, Oliver Sain and Johnny Johnson.
As time went on, Robert T. Smith, "Piano Slim", began using a popular local St. Louis band, Blues Inquistion, as his backup band. They performed together at regular engagements and special events through the mid 1990's. In 1993 they recorded an album together, "Minnie Skirt", his best produced album to date. Shortly after that album was finished, Slim took another job as a cab driver to help raise his family. After retiring as a cab driver in 2003, he began playing the blues again and later released a CD named "Sneaky People" on the Swingmaster label.
Living Blues stated: ‘whether you prefer solo piano blues or rocking horn-backed material, Robert T. Smith can deliver the goods’. Piano Slim died at the age of 83 years old on 30 December 2011.
(Edited from Officer Funeral Home Obit. Sketch by James Gurney.)
*(Not to be confused with Willard Burton of Houston, Texas who was also known as Piano Slim.)