Chicago Piano Blues
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Chicago Piano Blues combines urban piano blues with the amplified postwar Chicago band sound: heavy left hand, triplet fills, rolling shuffles, dense chords, and a piano part that locks with drums, guitar, harmonica, and bass. It can be solo, but its classic identity is as the engine under electric blues bands.
History
Chicago Piano Blues absorbed migrants from St. Louis, Mississippi, Memphis, and New Orleans, then hardened in clubs and labels such as Bluebird, Chess, Aristocrat, and Cobra. Big Maceo brought power and sophistication in the 1940s, Sunnyland Slim and Memphis Slim bridged prewar and postwar settings, Otis Spann became the definitive Muddy Waters-band pianist, and Little Johnny Jones, Lafayette Leake, and Pinetop Perkins carried the idiom through the Chess era. It shaped Chicago blues ensemble vocabulary and became essential to modern blues bands' shuffle language.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Mike Rowe, Chicago Blues
- Gerard Herzhaft, Encyclopedia of the Blues
- AllMusic
- The Blues Foundation