A percussive style of piano blues favoured, for its volume and momentum, by bar-room, honky-tonk and rent-party pianists. The term appears to have been applied originally to a dance performed to piano accompaniment, and its widespread use stems from the instructions for performing the dance on the recording Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie (1928, Voc.) by Pine Top Smith.
The boogie style is characterized by the use of blues chord progressions combined with a forceful, repetitive left-hand bass figure; many bass patterns exist, but the most familiar are the ‘doubling’ of the simple blues bass (ex.1) and the walking bass in broken octaves (ex.2).
Walking basses are reported to have been developed by ragtime pianists in the 19th century, and the first published example appears to be in Blind Boone’s Rag Medley no.2 (1909). Clay Custer used the same device on his recording The Rocks (1923, OK), which George Thomas may have made under this pseudonym, and which was one of the first recorded examples of a walking bass. The right-hand configurations played against the bass patterns were both rhythmic and melodic, with sharp ostinato passages and sequences in 3rds and 5ths. Some performances, such as Meade ‘Lux’ Lewis’s Bass on Top (1940, BN), display subtly shifting patterns, while Wesley Wallace’s train imitation No.29 (1930, Para.) employs 5/4 time in the bass and 4/4 in the treble. Such a feat is possible through the independence of the right-hand improvisations from the steady, rolling rhythm maintained by the left hand. Startling dissonances occur through the juxtaposition of the two strands, and cross-rhythms are also frequently created. Deliberate discords and rapid ‘crushed’ or ‘press’ notes, obtained by the striking of adjacent notes in rapid succession, are evident on Lewis’s Honky Tonk Train Blues (1927, Para.).
The first generation of boogie-woogie pianists – blues pianists who prominently featured walking bass and ‘eight-to-the-bar’ rhythms – included Romeo Nelson, Arthur Montana Taylor and Charles Avery, rent-party pianists who were forgotten in the Depression years. In 1938 a revival was initiated by the record producer and critic John Hammond, who sought out Albert Ammons and Meade ‘Lux’ Lewis, then working in Chicago as taxi drivers. With Pete Johnson from Kansas City and his singer Joe Turner, the Boogie Woogie Trio became popular at Café Society, New York, and, linked with the swing craze, boogie-woogie enjoyed a brief vogue. These authentic boogie pianists made a number of outstanding recordings, including Pete Johnson’s Goin’ Away Blues (1938, Voc.) with Big Joe Turner, and Albert Ammons’s Chicago in Mind (1939, BN). The brief but widespread popularity of boogie-woogie also led to the discovery of Jimmy Yancey and ‘Cripple’ Clarence Lofton, who brought singular rhythmic conceptions to their playing. The connection with swing is exemplified in such recordings as Boogie Woogie by Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra (1938, Vic.) and Count Basie’s Basie Boogie (1941 OK).
In the late 1940s boogie-woogie reverted to the blues, becoming a standard element in every blues pianist’s playing. Chicago and Detroit pianists gained inspiration from the recordings of Big Maceo (Major Merriweather), whose Chicago Breakdown (1945, Bb) was a tour de force.
Boogie-woogie has proved to be one of the most enduring elements in blues performance, and has provided the background for scores of recordings by the Chicago blues bands of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Futhermore, it has permeated the rock and roll of pianists such as Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, and was employed by pianists in many rhythm and blues bands. It was featured on stage by Winifred Atwell and other popular performers, and has persisted in Europe in the playing of Axel Zwingenberger and the ‘Austrian school’ of boogie-woogie pianists.
McCarthyJR
W. Russell: ‘Boogie Woogie’, Jazzmen: the Story of Hot Jazz Told in the Lives of the Men who Created it, ed. F. Ramsey and C. E. Smith (New York, 1939/R), 183–205
E. Borneman: ‘Boogie Woogie’, Just Jazz, ed. S. Traill and G. Lascelles (London, 1957), 13–14
M. Harrison: ‘Boogie Woogie’, Jazz: New Perspectives on the History of Jazz by Twelve of the World’s Foremost Jazz Critics and Scholars, ed. N. Hentoff and A.J. McCarthy (London, 1959/R), 105–35
P. Oliver: The Story of the Blues (London, 1969/R)
E. Kriss: Barrelhouse and Boogie Piano (New York, 1974) [incl. transcrs. and discography]
PAUL OLIVER