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.

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