by Glynn “Cowboy” Wilson

James “Milford” Perkins, the patriarch of the musical Perkins family of East Birmingham, Alabama, died Sept. 8 after a long bout with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 83.

Earline and Milford Perkins

Perkins was a veteran of the second World War and retired from Hayes Aircraft as a painter.

He was born on March 23, 1926, to James and Eliza Perkins in a house or a barn near Little Rock, Arkansas, where his family had moved from Alabama in a horse-drawn wagon to raise cotton. But when the Great Depression hit in 1929, there were more opportunities in making moonshine than farming. So the family moved back to Alabama, ending up in the unincorporated suburb of Birmingham known as Center Point, the half-way point between the steel city and the country in Blount and St. Clair Counties.

Raised by three sisters, Milford was somewhat shy, but he loved music and he loved to sing. He also became known for his singing voice while in the Army and at Hayes, where he was tagged with the nickname “Peon.” Some of his favorite songs were Hank Williams hits such as “I Saw the Light.”

Because of his shyness, Perkins may have missed an opportunity to sing on the Grand Ole Opry. An Army buddy was so impressed with his singing that he tried to persuade him to come to a local radio station in the days when they were sort of a farm system for auditions to play and sing on the Opry. Milford couldn’t get up the nerve to play on live radio.

He was also known for playing and singing on the front porch of the Perkins shotgun house on Twenty Fifth Avenue, which became a gathering spot for musicians and their friends in the 1960s and ’70s, especially after the oldest son Wayne Perkins came back from an audition to play guitar with the Rolling Stones in 1974.

That’s about the time I met Milford and Wayne Perkins.

I played the drums in the Erwin High School band and became friends with Wayne’s sisters Gail and Debbie, and later his brother Dale Perkins, the drummer for the almost famous Alabama Power Band, which signed a two-record deal with Capitol Records in the late 1970s but did not take off after the record company persuaded the band to change it’s name to Crimson Tide to avoid a lawsuit.

Milford, as he was known by all, also loved to read books, especially on American history, World War II and the Civil War, and he loved to fish, especially in the Cahaba River nearby.

“I don’t suppose that anyone who ever met Milford could forget him,” said Bruce Williams, the husband of Gail Perkins Williams. He performed the eulogy at the Jefferson Memorial Gardens funeral home on Highway 11 in Trussville on Monday, Sept. 14. Wayne was there and sang a song he wrote for his mom and dad.

James Milford Perkins was a member of Sinclair Springs Baptist Church. He is survived by his wife of 58 years, Jewel Earline (Miller) Perkins; six children, including Wayne Perkins, Dale Perkins, Nadine Sims (Steve), Karen Calvin (Eddie), Deborah Owens, Gail Williams (Bruce); 12 grandchildren; 8 great grandchildren; and a sister, Betty Snow.

He will be dearly missed by all who knew him and the Perkins home will never be quite the same.

The Perkins family: (back row) Wayne Perkins, Dale, Nadine, Karen, Debbie and Gail; Earline and Milford

Tags: Dale Perkins, James Milford Perkins, Wayne Perkins

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Obituaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.