Born with boogie in my brain (All About Boogie Woogie)

Member Name: GentleGenius

Product:	All About Boogie Woogie
Date:	09/03/09 (405 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lively, skilful, fast, and very meaningful for me on a personal level

Disadvantages: None whatsoever

Boogie Woogie is essentially solo eight beats to the bar piano music, whereby the player pounds out a steady rhythm on the lower end of the keyboard with the left hand, and plays a lively tune with his or her right hand further up the scale. That sounds so simple, but despite boogie woogie being very easy to listen to and tuneful, the synchronisation between the two hands at work on the piano keyboard requires great skill, and the right hand can play some very complex (often improvised) tunes.

There seems to be some dispute about the true roots of boogie woogie music. Some people believe that it began as early as the 1880s, but the larger body of opinion is of the view that its roots lie in the poor areas of the south eastern states of the USA, and first made its appearance in the late 1920s. There are also some people who believe this style of music originated in Chicago, but that is mistaken. It was taken from the Deep South to Chicago, when many black people moved away to the north in an attempt to escape the disgustingly racist regime present in places such as Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia etc. Some also say that boogie woogie music evolved (either in the Deep South or in Chicago) when pianists took their influences from a nearby railway, and improvised music which imitated the sound of the trains passing by. That's a lovely theory, and it is true that boogie woogie music does have a rather "train rolling down the track" feel to it, but such a theory has been a little misunderstood, in that it was Meade Lux Lewis in Chicago in 1927, who harped back in his memory to his childhood spent next to a railway line - he took the influences from recall of the noise backdrop to his childhood, and recorded what must be the most famous piece of boogie woogie music known, "Honky Tonk Train Blues".

Originally known as "barrelhouse" or "cathouse", boogie woogie was first played by musically untrained, very poverty-stricken black people in the shanty towns and rural areas of the Deep South. They would get together in what they called "barrelhouses" (sort of ramshackle bars that sold whisky and no doubt other alcoholic beverages), and gradually the blues which had previously been the main music, was speeded up and hey presto, boogie woogie evolved. Initially it was intended as dance music, but as the players became more skilled and delivered more complex piano rolls, it also became music to listen to. The main early exponents of boogie woogie music in the Deep South were, amongst others, Cow-Cow Davenport, Clarence "Pinetop" Smith and Jimmy Yancey. One of the earliest and among the best known pieces of boogie woogie music, is Pinetop Smith's "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" (recorded in 1928) which, if you feel you've never heard it, I'm sure would be instantly recognisable to you if you happened to switch on the radio and it was playing; it certainly has stood the test of time.

Jimmy Yancey was one of the people who migrated north to Chicago, and there he met three of the most famous names in boogie woogie music - Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis. Jimmy, Pete, Meade and Albert would often play together, driving their audiences wild with some of the most lively, invigorating and uptempo - yet complex - music there has ever been.

Pete Johnson moved down to Kansas City in the 1930s, and there he met Big Joe Turner. The two men became great friends, and together played live boogie woogie music at various all-night and somewhat seedy venues in the city which sold bootleg alcohol during prohibition times. Pete backed Big Joe's blues singing on piano, and it really was all down to those two who by accident rather than design, created the stepping stone between blues/boogie-woogie and the rock & roll of the 1950s.

After being discovered in 1938 by music mogul John Hammond whilst he was on a tour of Kansas City, Pete Johnson and Big Joe Turner were invited by John to audition with Albert Ammons (who had moved from Chicago to New York) at Carnegie Hall, to become members of the Count Basie Band. Various other blues and jazz singers and musicians would sit in on concerts held by the Count Basie Band, and before long, Pete, Big Joe and Albert were playing boogie woogie as a trio - simply called The Boogie Woogie Trio.

The Boogie Woogie Trio soon drifted over to Greenwich Village, where they would regularly play at Cafe Society, which was the first night club in New York to be fully racially integrated. This was a very important musical step, as the three men graced the stage and made their boogie woogie music appeal across the board, stepping over race dividing lines and fascinating both black and white people alike.

Some of the WW2 big bands adopted a boogie woogie stance - one example is Glenn Miller's "In The Mood", where the very distinctive style of boogie woogie was for a time played on brass instruments. Even in the absence of a piano, the music was instantly recognisable as boogie woogie. More mainstream popular music of the day began to release records in boogie woogie style - probably the best known being The Andrews Sisters' "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy From Company B". At long last, this style of music was being recognised, enjoyed and relished as something which portrayed a very happy, optimistic feeling, and got people on the dance floors in their droves; they just couldn't listen to it without moving.

Big Joe Turner continued for some years to play at Cafe Society in Greenwich Village, often backed by Pete Johnson until he (Pete) suffered a stroke in 1958 which severely affected his ability to play. Albert Ammons sadly died in the 1940s, and Meade Lux Lewis slipped out of the limelight of fame, and ended up washing cars for a living. I'm not sure and haven't been able at this point to accurately ascertain what happened to Jimmy Yancey up to his death in 1951.

It is often claimed that Big Joe Turner invented rock & roll, but I haven't been able to determine how white people in the Deep South (such as Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley) could have been influenced by him directly, as Joe was in New York, and Buddy and Elvis were in Texas and Memphis respectively. It is possible Joe's music could have been broadcast on radio, but it's my guess that the early white rock & rollers took their influences from the still remaining barrelhouse bars in the Deep South, rockabilly and black gospel music together with offshoots from blues.....fusing those styles together and coming up with 1950s rock & roll as we know it.

Of course, we mustn't leave Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino out, as they are both major forces in the world of boogie woogie and subsequently rock & roll. We tend to think of them as solely rock & roll performers, but Jerry Lee Lewis was one of the very first white boogie woogie pianists, and Fats Domino was playing superb boogie of his own as early as the mid to late 1940s.

Moving across the Atlantic for a moment, Joe Meek, the infamous and rather nutty record producer who, before his suicide in 1967, was responsible for so very many superb British chart acts of the late 1950s through until the mid 1960s, apparently upset jazz musician Humphrey Lyttleton by taking the song "Bad Penny Blues" and boogie-ing it up. By all accounts, Humphrey hated Joe's treatment of his work, yet with Joe's arrangement which was very much against Humphrey's wishes, reached no.19 in the UK singles charts in 1956. Nobody was more surprised than Humphrey.

Another popular boogie woogie pianist of the 1950s was Winifred Atwell. Some may view her music as rather middle of the road or even twee, but her less commercialised music is pure, unadulterated and very skilfully played boogie woogie of the highest order.

As we moved out of the 1950s and into the 1960s, there was so much else going on musically that rock & roll and boogie woogie was relegated very much to the back burner. It made a reappearance in June 1976 when Keith Emerson took his version of "Honky Tonk Train Blues" to no.21 in the UK singles charts, then the style of music once more slid into the background....gone and perhaps forgotten....for a while.

Later in the 1970s and into the early 1980s (and onwards), boogie woogie music was still being kept very much alive in Europe by a young Austrian man called Axel Zwingenberger, and a French man called Jean-Paul Amouroux. I'm not sure about Jean-Paul, but as far as I'm aware, Axel is still riding high to this day and delighting his audiences with his amazing boogie woogie piano skills. Axel belts out one helluva song and really stomps (for the most part), and Jean-Paul's style is somewhat more laid back, but still boogie woogie all the same. Of course we have our own home-grown boogie specialist - Jools Holland. Jools has done so very much to re-stimulate an interest in this amazing musical genre, and his own very bassy style is as good as all the old masters.

As far as I can determine, the world's most recent exponent of boogie woogie music is Michael Kaeshammer, a young pianist who was born in Germany, and now lives in Canada. As well as boogie woogie, Michael's repertoire includes soft jazz and blues, and he writes a lot of his own material. Though he largely performs to live audiences, he has released a handful of albums, which have sold better in Canada than anywhere else in the world. Michael's style is all his own - he is a gifted and accomplished pianist, and his fingers just whizz over the keys. Gentle and light in his approach, he can play boogie woogie incredibly fast, yet without bashing the keys down hard, almost lending a slightly classical feel to this musical genre.

Well, that's about as much information as I can uncover on the roots, history and growth of boogie woogie music and how it with more "classical" Deep South blues was a major stepping stone and influence for rock & roll, which of course is the very basis of all popular music that has followed since......my sources of information are two very old books on the birth of black music in the USA which used to belong to my late father, and I'm sure now would be out of print. One book is called "The Birth Of The Blues", and the other is called "Out Of The Shanty Towns" and they were both published in 1955. All information pertaining to boogie woogie after 1955 has been gleaned from a whole host of different websites, just taking the odd minor fact here and there from each one.

So, what does it all mean to me?

During my very early childhood (in the mid and late 1950s), I was brought up in a very musical household. My dad was a multi instrumentalist (he couldn't read a note of music and played everything completely by ear), and he was always playing records, singing and dancing around the living room - often with me on his shoulders. My mum was a little older than him - the years of her youth had been spent during WW2, and she'd been very influenced by jazz and big band music. My sister was a teenager, and buying masses of rock & roll music on scratchy old 78rpms. Despite serious dysfunction in our family relationships, music was something that brought us all together. The radio or record player was always on, and the main bulk of our record collection was jazz, blues and rock & roll.

In the corner of our cramped little living room, was a small cottage piano, and I have vivid memories of my dad perching me on his lap as he sat on the faded, pink velvet piano stool and belted out some superb, completely improvised boogie woogie. He taught me how to play the left-hand rhythm, while he'd improvise the main tune.....well, sometimes he'd improvise and sometimes he'd play the old classics, like "Honky Tonk Train Blues".

I loved boogie woogie music (maybe it was because I thought of it as DADDY'S music), and it branded itself deep down somewhere inside of my psyche, creating the springboard towards all my other musical appreciation in later years.

I have quite a vast collection of boogie woogie music on CD, mostly performed by all the artists mentioned in this article - bought over a long span of years from various specialist music shops in London - and each time I hear that lively, rolling boogie rhythm, I'm transported back to what were the happiest times of my childhood....sitting on my dad's lap at the piano, while he belted out all that wonderful music which was born in the shanty towns and poor rural areas of the Deep South of the USA.

Thanks for reading!

Summary: A stepping stone between blues and 1950s rock & roll