In the book, “The Story of the Blues,” on page 16 in his chapter titled “Cottonfield Hollers,” 5 historian Paul Oliver wrote:
“When the blues began, the countryside was quiet. Loudest of the sounds to break the stillness was the roar of a steam train as it traced its way through the lowlands, leaving a smudge [...]
The quotations above from E. Simms Campbell and Clarence Williams are among the earliest accounts that attribute an origin of Boogie Woogie music to a specific geographical region, namely Texas. Their comments above are also noteworthy in that neither E. Simms Campbell nor Clarence Williams were from Texas. Campbell was from St. Louis [...]
Photo Above: Steel Gang Laying a Logging Railroad in the Piney Woods of East Texas. The image is from the East Texas Research Center Collection.
“Although the neighboring states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Missouri would also produce boogie-woogie players and their boogie-woogie tunes, and despite the fact that Chicago would become known as the center for [...]
On page 2 of his 1940 “Boogie Woogie and Blues Folio,”63 in his annotation to the reprint of the 1923 sheet music of George W. Thomas, Jr.‘s “New Orleans Hop Scop Blues,” (first published in 1916 by George W. Thomas) Clarence Williams states:
“The ‘Boogie Woogie’ originated in Texas many years ago. It wasn’t called [...]
The photo above was taken in Minglewood, TN in 1920. This photo is contained in the Special Collections Photograph Archives of the University of Louisville.
“Boogie Woogie piano playing originated in the lumber and turpentine camps of Texas and in the sporting houses of that state. A fast, rolling bass — [...]
(The web pages here on the BoogieWoogie.Com web site contain only a fraction of the material that I will eventually publish as a book. Never before published material from my own field research into Boogie Woogie will be in this forthcoming book. If you would like a copy, please contact me using the contact [...]