HMR Project: History of Music & Modern Recording

Pink Anderson

Birth of the Blues: Pink Anderson

Pink Anderson

Born on 12 February 1900 in Laurens, South Carolina, Pink (Pinkney) Anderson is the reason for the first half of the name of the rock band, Pink Floyd. Floyd Council is the reason for the last half. Wikipedia has Anderson starting his musical career at age fourteen with Dr. Kerr's traveling medicine show which sold health remedies of dubious value. Yet another Wikipedia article has him learning guitar from Blind Simmie Dooley in 1916. Irwin Bosman doesn't have him joining Kerr's traveling medicine shop until 1917. The term "snake oil" is derived from this shady chapter in American history, more specifically as to Clark Stanley's Snake Oil Liniment. Stanley's fraud on four wheels sold a mixture of beef fat, mineral oil, turpentine and dash of chili pepper as a Hopi cure for everything from insect bites to toothaches. Upon the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 traveling pharmacies like Stanley's began to be discouraged by law. Stanley payed a fine of only $20 for his worthless potion in 1916 (equivalent to several hundred in today's currency). Be as may, Bosman has Anderson on Kerr's team for nearly three decades until 1945.

Clark Stanley's Snake Oil Linement

Clark Stanley's Snake Oil Liniment

Cover of 200 page sales pamphlet 1905

Source: Wikipedia

Pink recorded for the first time in 1928 in duets with above-mentioned Dooley. That consisted of four titles, after which he didn't record again until the Virginia State Fair in 1950, nor again until 1961 at his home in Spartanburg, South Carolina, by folklorist, Sam Charters. In 1973 Joan Fenton was able to videotape several titles by Anderson at his home. Fenton reports that he was in poverty eating dog food at the time, although bootlegging liquor out of his home.