Even if he croaked his vocals and resorted to playing "Chopsticks" on the piano as his sole means of carrying a tune, Joe Willie (Pinetop) Perkins would draw a fair share of morbidly curious gawkers and diehard -- but not as hard as Pinetop -- blues enthusiasts when he plays the Dakota Jazz Club next week.

The gawkers will come to get a glimpse of a musical headliner who will be just five weeks short of his 96th birthday. The diehards will be there because, more than any other human being on the planet, Pinetop Perkins is the flesh-and-blood essence of the blues.

Blues biographies tend to be as hyperbolic as fish tales, but Pinetop's -- which is colorful enough to strain the credulity of a "Karate Kid" screenplay -- is the bona fide exception that proves the rule.

Pinetop really did pick cotton from sunup to sundown on a Mississippi plantation. He really did learn to copy the licks of Blind Lemon Jefferson and other mentors (including someone he calls Terrible Sludge) by stretching a wire -- he calls it a "diddly bow" -- between two nails in his boyhood shack. He really did run gambling houses and play juke joints, plantation parties, whorehouses and chicken fights, where sometimes the only pay was the carcass of the chicken that lost the fight. He really did switch from guitar to piano after a woman slit the tendons and muscles in his left arm with a knife.

Of course none of this would matter much if Pinetop didn't deliver the goods at the piano. But his distinctive, rolling style (caused in part by the way his compromised left arm approaches the keys) made him one of the now-legendary King Biscuit Boys, who provided blues succor to listeners across the South on the "King Biscuit Time" radio program out of Helena, Ark., in the 1940s. When he joined the great northward migration from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago, his playing caught the attention of Muddy Waters, the father of the electric blues, who employed Pinetop for 11 years.

His legacy rivals that of any living blues artist.

"He won the W.C. Handy Award for piano players something like 19 or 20 years in a row until they finally named the award after him so they could give it to somebody else," said Doug Nelson, a harmonica player who has performed with Pinetop and helped produce last year's album "Pinetop Perkins & Friends."

"From Elton John to Billy Joel to Billy Payne of Little Feat to Gregg Allman, all these boogie-woogie characters say that Pinetop's playing has been a huge influence," Nelson said. "It's been said many times that his rolling left hand helped create the sound of rock and roll. And if you know the influence Muddy Waters and his band had on the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, you see how that happened."

Still packing the dance floor

And now? Well, when the performer is nearly 96 there are no guarantees, but I caught Pinetop in a club just north of Milwaukee in April of last year, and was wowed by his prowess.

Resplendent in a maroon velvet pinstriped suit and with a turquoise peacock feather in his maroon fedora -- the same outfit he wore two months earlier to pick up his Grammy for best traditional blues album -- he barreled through the autobiographical "Down in Mississippi," paid tribute to Muddy with "Got My Mojo Workin'," delivered his best vocal on the tender ballad "How Long" and filled the dance floor with his original song "Big Fat Mama."

No one would argue that Pinetop can play as fast or as long as he could in his prime. But no one who heard him that night needed to know his profound history or be beguiled by the novelty of his age to have a good time. The music sufficed.

Pinetop doesn't do phone interviews -- his right eardrum was damaged by a speaker that exploded when he was playing with Earl Hooker a half-century ago -- but I got the opportunity to drive him to the airport in Chicago after that gig.

We hadn't hit the freeway ramp before Pinetop announced his plan to steal my wife (who was behind the wheel). The trip included a stop at McDonald's -- or "McDaniels," as Pinetop calls it. He eats at least one meal a day there. He ordered his usual: two double cheeseburgers, two apple pies and a decaffeinated coffee with two creams and five sugars, "to make it sweet."

We also pulled over for more than one cigarette break, the mentholated cancer sticks that have been Pinetop's addiction since age 9.

How does he stay alive?

"Lord's will, I guess," said Pinetop, quickly making the sign of the cross. But former Muddy Waters cohort Willie (Big Eyes) Smith, has another explanation. "Pinetop has lived as long as he has because he is doing what he loves to do."