Weekly Rundown – Boogie-Woogie

I changed the name from Weekly Theme to Weekly Rundown, because it sounds cooler.

Happy Independence Day! What could be more American than some good ol’ boogie-woogie blues?

Boogie-woogie is a style of (usually 12-bar) blues played on a piano that was developed in the 1910′s and became popular in the 30′s and 40′s. The style is signature by wild, improvised piano playing. Uncharacteristically for blues music, boogie-woogie is uptempo and associated with dancing. As such, it’s considered to be an early predecessor to rock n’ roll.

As with any Rundown, Ve can only provide so much information and so many artists. If there’s a boogie-woogie artists that Ve has forgotten, by all means leave a comment. I also wanted to note, that because a lot of this music is old and created in a time long before the information age, many of the pianists mentioned in here don’t have a whole lot of information. I’ve included what information I can dig up. As for the rest, I hope you like the music at least.

Now, on with the list!

Ben Abney (This guy came into piano blues later in his life. These recordings were probably made when he was in his fifties.)
Albert Ammons (He was pretty popular. One of his records went gold and he performed with Benny Goodman.)
Black Diamond Twins
The Boogie Woogie Kid (AKA Matthew Ball, in 2001 he quit being a lawyer and started playing the piano, and clearly has a gift for it.)
Boogie Woogie Troop (Honestly, aside from the piano playing, I don’t really care for this group.)
Charles Brown (A cool dude, in this live recording, he tells his own story.)
Sammy Brown
Bob Call
Caroline Dahl (As well as playing boogie-woogie, she also does fabric art.)
Cow Cow Davenport (He got kicked out of theological seminary for playing ragtime. I’m okay with that. Big inspiration to Ray Charles and Cripple Clarence Lofton.)
Blind John Davis (I don’t know anything interesting about this guy, but he was one of the major players in boogie-woogie.)
Joe Dean
Herve Duerson
Will Ezell (Considered one of the best, he had somewhat of a rivalry with Cow Cow Davenport. He recorded his last record in 1931, and nobody knows what happened to him after that.)
Blind Leroy Garnett (Nobody really knows anything about this guy, but several recordings of his have survived, and he is a rad pianist)
Erwin Helfer (Worked extensively with Mama Yancy, and this video is no exception.)
Lasse Jensen (This dude sounds sort of nerdy on the interview, but he don’t play like no square.)
Dr. John (If your parents tried to force piano down your throat, you’re very familiar with this dude.)
Johnnie Johnson (Allegedly his drunken debauchery inspired Chuck Berry to write Johnnie B. Goode. Also, he had ten kids, which is a lot unless he’s Mormon.)
Tommy Keys
Kid Stormy Weather
Cripple Clarence Lofton (Remembered for his exuberant stage performance, Lofton would often whistle and snap his fingers while simultaneously playing the piano.)
Mississippi Jook Band (Featuring Blind Roosevelt Graves. Is ‘Jook’ a racial slur? It sort of sounds like it would be.)
Little Brother Montgomery (Not a boogie-woogie piano player, but I wanted to include him because he was hugely influential on all sorts of piano blues.)
Sylvester Palmer
Pinetop Perkins (Named so because he commonly played ‘Pinetop Boogie Woogie,’ this dude played with Muddy Waters for years and didn’t put out an album with his name on it until 1988. He still tours and plays today, and performed at a recent South by Southwest.)
Eeco Rijken Rapp (This dude has a whole series of videos up on YouTube that can teach you pretty much anything you’d like to know about boogie-woogie.)

Jessica Roemischer (The video is awesome because you get to watch her fingers, but man, she has a mean look on her face when she plays.)
Walter Roland
Martijn Schok (This guy is considered the best blues piano player in the Netherlands, which I’m sure is more impressive than it sounds.)
Pine Top Smith (Wrote one of the first boogie-woogie songs to become a hit. He died from a gunshot wound in 1929 and no photos of him are known to exist.)
Roosevelt Sykes (Fast blues player, a big influence to rock n’ roll. Also, he had a big personality that presided in his music.)
George W. Thomas (One of the founding father’s of the style. He recorded the first walking bass line.)
Hersal Thomas (Oh man, I can feel it. Thomas died when he was about twenty, probably of food poisoning. Such an awesome piano player.)
Kingfish Bill Tomlin
Wesley Wallace (Considered unconventional, he made the first recording of boogie woogie in 3/4 time, and typically did ‘train songs’ where the beat resembles the movement of a locomotive.)
Jimmy Yancey (Husband to Mama Yancy, he played a softer, more gentle boogie-woogie than most.)

And lastly…

Martin Spitznagel & Bryan Wright (More like Boogie-Wookie)