Rufus George Perryman (October 23, 1892 – January 2, 1973),[2] known as Speckled Red, was an American blues and boogie-woogie piano player and singer[1] noted for his recordings of "The Dirty Dozens", exchanges of insults and vulgar remarks that have long been a part of African-American folklore.
Speckled Red was a self-taught piano player,[4] influenced primarily by his idol Fishtail and by Charlie Spand, James Hemingway and William Ezell and initially inspired by Paul Seminole in a movie theatre.
He moved back to Detroit in his mid-20s to play anywhere he could, including nightclubs and brothels, and was noticed by a Brunswick Records talent scout just before he left for Memphis, Tennessee, where he was located by Jim Jackson.
His 1938 session work in Aurora, Illinois, with the slide guitar player Robert Nighthawk and the mandolinist Willie Hatcher for Bluebird Records, was steady and long but also unsuccessful, and sometime in the 1940s he moved back to St. Louis and continued his career of playing in taverns.
He experienced a small revival of interest in his music during the late 1950s and 1960s, his abilities still considerable, and worked around the St. Louis-area jazz scene, regularly as the intermission pianist for the Dixie Stompers, performing concerts with Dixie Mantinee and the St. Louis Jazz Club, played the Goldenrod Showboat, and played the University of Chicago Folk Festival in 1961, went to Dayton, Ohio, with Gene Mayl's Dixieland Rhythm Kings, and toured Europe in 1959 with Chris Barber.