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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZBOOGIE WOOGIEA blues piano style, combined with the influence of ragtime 'sixteens' and the habañera (New Orleans 'Spanish tinge'). Pianists in the eastern USA often had formal training; elsewhere many blues pianists taught themselves what they wanted to play and left it at that, like itinerant blues guitarists. 'Stride' pianists like James P. Johnson, Willie 'The Lion' Smith and Fats Waller used more sophisticated harmony, improvising on the best pop songs of a golden era, while boogie woogie, like the blues itself, was a limited genre which depended for its subtlety on the native skill of the player. It began in lumber camps in Texas and Louisiana, where the only entertainment was a barroom piano (the 'bar' was made of planks laid over barrels, hence 'barrelhouse'). The style used repeated figures in the left hand, typically eight notes to the bar, with blues improvisation in the right hand: the player could keep the beat going while he grabbed a drink or a bite. Meade Lux Lewis recorded '27; 'Pine Top's Boogie Woogie' (Pine Top Smith) was recorded '28; Montana Taylor and Charles 'Cow Cow' Davenport recorded '29 and boogie woogie might have become a fad, but the Great Depression intervened and the style had to wait a decade. Jimmy Yancey was a groundskeeper in Chicago baseball park; Lewis and Albert Ammons were taxi drivers; Pete Johnson, Roosevelt Sykes and Little Brother Montgomery were fine players; Peter Chatman (Memphis Slim) played, sang and wrote songs in the genre for decades. Ammons and Lewis were 'discovered' by John Hammond in the late 1930s; after Hammond's 'Spirituals to Swing' concerts in Carnegie Hall the style was formalized and became a fad during the Big Band Era. Waller allegedly had a clause in his contract saying he would not be required to play it. Will Bradley had a fluke smash hit with 'Beat Me Daddy, Eight To The Bar' '40, then a rash of sequels; Tommy Dorsey had a big hit 'Boogie Woogie' '38 (reissued '43 during the recording ban), credited to Pine Top; in '47, when times were getting hard for big bands, Basie recorded 'One O'Clock Boogie', 'St Louis Boogie'. The words 'Boogie' and/or 'Woogie' were used in so many song titles that Jack Kapp at Decca Records allegedly tried to copyright them. Adolescents all over the country pounded out boogie woogie on parlour pianos: it was superficially easy to play, a prequel to adolescent blues guitar, now called rock. One of the later players, Big Joe Duskin (b 10 February 1921; d 6 May 2007) had quit music because his father disliked it, but resumed playing 30 years later; meanwhile the boogie-woogie influence was heard in R&B shuffle rhythms played by Louis Jordan et al., and in early rock'n'roll through the piano styles of Fats Domino, Huey 'Piano' Smith, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and others. |