[1] He began his career as a guitarist but then injured the tendons in his left arm in a knife fight with a chorus girl in Helena, Arkansas in the 1940s.

[3] He also moved from Robert Nighthawk's radio program on KFFA to Sonny Boy Williamson's King Biscuit Time.

[4] After ten years with that organization, he formed the Legendary Blues Band with Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, recording from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.

The death of Perkins's common law wife, Sara Lewis, in 1995, triggered a depression and periods of drinking.

The Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi held a dedicated jam on March 31, 2011, for friends and fans of Perkins.

[12] A music-filled open-casket funeral for Perkins was held in Austin, Texas on March 29, 2011, and was attended by several fellow musicians including Willie "Big Eyes" Smith and Bob Margolin.

[13] Perkins was laid to rest in the McLaurin Memorial Garden cemetery in Clarksdale on April 2, 2011, following a final open-casket "homegoing" celebration.

[10] The final laying to rest was ministered by Henry Espy, the first Black mayor of Clarksdale, and the altar display included Perkins's favorite meal: a McDonald's Big Mac and apple pie.

Shortly before he died, while discussing his late career resurgence with an interviewer, he conceded, "I can't play piano like I used to either.

[14] Bruce Iglauer, founder of Chicago's Alligator Records, stated Perkins was "absolutely the premier blues piano player."

[1] In 2008, Perkins, together with Henry Townsend, Robert Lockwood, Jr. and David "Honeyboy" Edwards, received a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album for Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live in Dallas.

[19] At the age of 97, Perkins won a Grammy Award in the category Best Traditional Blues Album for Joined at the Hip, which he recorded with Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, thus becoming the oldest winner of a Grammy Award,[11] edging out the comedian George Burns, who had won in the spoken word category 21 years earlier.