Piano / Boogie-Woogie Blues
Piano / Boogie-Woogie Blues gathers blues styles built around keyboard attack: rolling bass figures, walking tenths, ragtime syncopation, barrelhouse drive, stride reach, gospel chords, and left-hand ostinatos. Its sound can be rough saloon music, elegant jazz-blues, pounding dance boogie, slow torch ballad, or churchy testimonial blues, but the piano is the engine and often the whole band.
History
The family developed in Southern barrelhouses, logging camps, railroad towns, rent parties, brothels, honky-tonks, and urban studios before boogie-woogie became a national craze in the late 1930s. Pioneers such as Cow Cow Davenport, Pinetop Smith, Jimmy Yancey, Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, Roosevelt Sykes, Leroy Carr, and Memphis Slim connected rural blues, ragtime, jazz, swing, R&B, and rock and roll. The family influenced jump blues, rhythm and blues, rock piano, New Orleans R&B, Chicago blues, and modern blues pianists.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Peter J. Silvester, A Left Hand Like God
- Paul Oliver, The Story of the Blues
- Bob Eagle & Eric LeBlanc, Blues: A Regional Experience
- AllMusic