Pink Anderson

All Music Guide:

A good-natured finger-picking guitarist, Anderson played for about 30 years as part of a medicine show. He did make a couple of sides for Columbia in the late '20s with Simmie Dooley, but otherwise didn't record until a 1950 session, the results of which were issued on a Riverside LP that also included tracks by Gary Davis. Anderson went on to make some albums on his own after the blues revival commenced in the early '60s, establishing him as a minor but worthy exponent of the Pidemont school, versed in blues, ragtime, and folk songs. Anderson also became an unusual footnote in rock history when Syd Barrett, a young man in Cambridge, England, combined Pink's first name with the first name of another obscure bluesman (Floyd Council) to name his rock group, Pink Floyd, in the mid-'60s.

Wikipedia:

"Pink" Anderson (February 12, 1900 – October 12, 1974) was a blues singer and guitarist, born in Laurens, South Carolina.

Life and career [edit]

After being raised in Greenville and Spartanburg, South Carolina, he joined Dr. Frank Kerr of the Indian Remedy Company in 1914 to entertain the crowds while Kerr tried to sell a concoction purported to have medicinal qualities.

He still "went out" when he could with Leo "Chief Thundercloud" Kahdot (of the Potawatomi native Americans) and his medicine show, often with the Jonesville, South Carolina based harmonica-player Arthur "Peg Leg Sam" Jackson. In May 1950, Anderson was recorded by folklorist Paul Clayton at the Virginia State Fair. Heart problems eventually forced Anderson to retire from the road in 1957. He was once more recorded at his home in 1962 by Samuel Charters.

"Anderson went on to make an album on his own after the blues revival commenced in the early 1960s" and played some folk clubs, "establishing him as a minor but worthy exponent of the Piedmont school, versed in blues, ragtime, and folk songs". He also appeared in the 1963 film, The Bluesmen. A stroke in the late 1960s curtailed his musical activity. Attempts by folklorist Peter B. Lowry in 1970 to get Anderson on tape were not successful, although apparently he could occasionally summon up some of his past abilities. A final tour took place in the early 1970s with the aid of Roy Book Binder, one of his "students", taking him to Boston and New York.

He died in October 1974, of a heart attack at the age of 74. He is interred at Lincoln Memorial Gardens in Spartanburg. Anderson's son, known as Little Pink Anderson (b. July 13, 1954), is currently a bluesman living in Vermillion, South Dakota.

The Pink in Pink Floyd [edit]

Syd Barrett, of English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, came up with the band's name by juxtaposing the first names of Anderson and North Carolina bluesman, Floyd Council. Barrett noticed the names in the liner notes of a 1962 Blind Boy Fuller album (Philips BBL-7512). The text, written by Paul Oliver, read: "Curley Weaver and Fred McMullen, (...) Pink Anderson or Floyd Council - these were a few amongst the many blues singers that were to be heard in the rolling hills of the Piedmont, or meandering with the streams through the wooded valleys."