RE: (Boom Boom) The Boogie

["MLeFree" <mlefree@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mojo Red seems to have summed it up best:
> Now I don't claim to have any special knowldege of
> the history of blues, much less the facet of blues
> known as "boogie", but I've always thought that
> "Boogie Woogie" goes waaaaay back to the 1920s with
> songs like "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie," recorded in
> something like 1928. Pretty much a structured
> 12-bar type I-IV-V arrangement with lots of rhythm
> and generally fast.
>
> And I peg John Lee Hooker's boogie as the "Endless
> Boogie" since it has only one or two chords and no
> precievable turnaround. It's his driving rhythm
> that makes it inneresting and it just goes on and
> on, right into your livin' bones.
>
> I believe that in this context "Boogie" and "Boogie
> Woogie" separate and distinct.

As a long-time John Lee Hooker fan my curiosity has been piqued by Scorcher?
s question on the origin of the Hook's boogie beat.  I've spent too much
time Googling already, and haven't come up with much.  It seems reasonable
to think that the Hooker boogie beat is in some way related to boogie woogie
piano, but so far I have been unable to establish a solid connection.
Here's a few interesting little tidbits I did find along the way:

The word ?boogie? appears to have been first used as the name of so-called
"rent parties" held at the end of the month for people who couldn't raise
the money for their rent payment.  They'd hire a barrelhouse piano player
and invite everyone to dance all night and pitch in to the hat to help the
host pay rent for the month.  (Barrelhouses, of course, were off the beaten
path drinking establishments that served booze by the barrel and had them
lying around.)

Boogie woogie piano seems to have originated in New Orleans but spread over
the south and refined by the barrelhouse bar circuit's piano players, who
raised the genre to an art form.  Albert Ammons and Mead Lux Lewis are among
the many names that surface frequently as top purveyors of this rousing
piano style.  The best players were said to have had ?left hands like God?
for the rolling bass lines they played while their right hands took the
melody.

At this site

http://www.riverwalk.org/proglist/showpromo/boogiewoogiebeat.htm

I found a very good article on the boogie woogie beat that said ?the great
American bluesman Leadbelly heard an old-time Louisiana piano player who
called himself ?Pine Top? playing boogie woogie. Leadbelly picked up Pine
Top's rhythmic style and imitated it on his guitar. Leadbelly said, ?That's
what I wanted to play, that boogie woogie piano bass. I always wanted to
play those piano tunes. I got it out of the barrelhouses.??  This is the
only reference I have found that relates guitar and piano boogies.

I did make an unexpected discovery, for me any way.  Seems that Reggae is a
direct descendant of boogie woogie piano!  This site

http://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/fredericks.html

has an excellent and scholarly article titled, ?American Rhythm and Blues
Influence on Early Jamaican Musical Style?.  It states ?...Laurel Aitken
described the development of Ska this way: In the '50s we used to listen to
American rhythm & blues from New Orleans. Everybody used to dance to that
music in Jamaica, but in the '50s our music there was Calypso, which come
from Trinidad, and we took Calypso and mixed it with the rhythm & blues and
we turned that into Ska. So part of the roots of Ska music is from America.
& Ska music is American rhythm & blues and Jamaican calypso and it went from
there - that's where Ska come from. We used to listen to men like Smiley
Lewis, Joe Turner, Roscoe Gordon, and all these guys in the '50s and we were
influenced, I was influenced, by Roscoe Gordon because he played a downbeat
boogie. Roscoe Gordon is an American black singer and I was influenced by
him. Not only me, but other guys during that time was influenced by him
because it was very popular - the boogie-woogie stuff. And as I said, we
mixed the boogie-woogie stuff with calypso and that's where Ska came from,
as simple as that.?  I found several references to the fact that Roscoe
Gordon (of whom I didn?t even know until the recent PBS series on blues) was
an inspiration for the creators of Ska and Reggae.  Of course, Ska was the
precursor to Reggae, which retained much of it?s style and syncopated beat.

Having failed to find a connection between John Lee Hooker?s boogie beat and
boogie woogie piano, at last night?s open mic? I challenged our local blues
disco jockey and musicologist to establish one.  We both agreed that it?s
the sort of thing you thought you knew, but on closer inspection, you find
out how much you really don?t know.  I?ll keep doing my own research and
report anything my DJ buddy comes up with.

Good question, Scorcher!

Michelle