DESCRIPTION:
Heres the celebrated late London bluesman Pigmeat Pete Smith (1952 - 1999) performing his original song "Busker Blues" Pete mostly performed his own original blues songs full of full his own brand of genteel wry very English humour. Busking to those who don't know the word is Street Performing just like many of the original old bluesmen did. Busking has its good and bad points sometimes you meet folk that enjoy the performance and sometimes you meet the opposite,sometimes buskers find themselves having to contend with drunks and the mentaly unstable who attach themselves to street performers undermining their effort to be heard,and if thats isnt enough the police are liable to either move buskers on,or arrest them. Street performers have a lot to put up with,and pete wasn't joking when he said the joys of busking were short in quantity ha ha.
Pete responded to an advertisement I placed in several acoustic music and blues publications inviting musicians to come over and be recorded for my archive and he came over to my home for a video recording session in February 1998. He was a very gifted and warm affable performer and I will always remember those couple of hours I spent in his company recording the 90 odd minutes of his repertoire I was able to capture that afternoon. Beyond this one meeting I never got to meet him again.I first heard of his death in 1999 whilst having a telephone discussion with a blues journalist who told me he had chanced upon Pete in Londons Royal Free Hospital whilst visiting a ftriend,He described how poorly Pete had looked (he was very yellow faced).Pete tragicaly had discovered in the very late stages that he had a liver related cancer,and apparently he had died within a few days of discovering he was chronicaly ill. I hope this video serves as a small tribute to this very individual blues performer who mostly played his own original blues and was well known in Britain and Europe..

Kind Regards

Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video sound recording copyright Jim Clark 2012