The people of Japan love New Orleans music and musicians, especially songwriter and performer Huey “Piano” Smith.

OffBeat contributor John Wirt’s book Huey “Piano” Smith And The Rocking Pneumonia Blues, published by LSU Press in 2014, has been translated into Japanese and published in Japan. Masahiro Sumori, a music journalist in Japan who writes about blues and New Orleans music, translated the book, and has staged book-release events in Tokyo and Osaka.

John Wirt’s extensive biography of Smith certainly gives him his due. Wirt starts from Smith’s beginning and traces his life path in a thorough fashion through his fame playing with the Clowns, the assorted record labels Smith recorded for, his conversion to the Jehovah’s Witness faith, his move to Baton Rouge, and all the way up the present day.

Wirt places Smith in his rightful place in the pantheon of R&B legends with great descriptions of both the music and the scene that was full of creativity and wildness for which the golden age of New Orleans rhythm and blues has become both famous and notorious.