• 35 - Leadbelly Adapts Boogie Woogie Bass Line from Piano to Guitar »
• 34 - The First Recording to Use a 12-Bar Blues Harmonic Progression with a Boogie Woogie Bass Figure »
• 33 - Jimmy Blythe’s “Chicago Stomp:” The First “Completely Boogie Woogie” Recording »
• 32 - Black Swan Records - The Record Label that Recorded Fletcher Henderson’s “Chime Blues” »
• 31 - Fletcher Henderson’s “Chime Blues” is an Early Boogie Woogie Recording »
• 30 - The Earliest Sound Recordings Containing Boogie Woogie Bass Figures »
• 29 - U. S. Highway 59 from Texarkana to Houston to El Campo - “The Boogie Woogie Highway” »
• 28 - Eubie Blake’s “Charleston Rag” »
• 27 - Important Distinctions between Five Kinds of Broken-Octave Bass Figures »
• 26 - Another Early Sheet-Music Publication of a Boogie Woogie Bass Figure »
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“There is every reason for us to know something about Africa and to understand its past and the way of life of its peoples. Africa is a rich continent that has for centuries provided the world with art, culture, labor, wealth, and natural resources.” 73
“Boogie Woogie piano playing originated in the lumber and turpentine camps of Texas and in the sporting houses of that state.”
"The ‘Boogie Woogie’ originated in Texas many years ago. It wasn’t called the ‘Boogie Woogie’ then. George Thomas was the fellow who used this style and first wrote it down."
“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 this music through such pianists as Jimmy Yancey, Albert Ammons, and Meade Lux Lewis, Texas was home to an environment that fostered creation of boogie-style…”
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.
“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 of smoke against the blue sky.”
“The Boogie Woogie piano players had already developed a mature style in the early twenties, yet it waited until 1938 to find ready acceptance in the hot music field, and by such dispensers of musical taste as the arrangers.”
“The style was named for the barrelhouses, where it was performed-sheds with walls lined with beer and whiskey, an open floor, and a piano on a raised platform in a corner of the room. The back of the barrelhouse was also used as a bawdy house.”
“Boogie woogie is a percussive blues piano style—no one knows how old—in which an ostinsato bass figure, usually (but not always) played eight beats to the bar, is juxtaposed with a succession of right hand figures.”
“Somewhere along the way—no one knows for sure exactly when—barrelhouse forked into boogie-woogie, an urban style characterized by eight insistent beats to the measure in the bass, and right-hand melodies that were essentially rhythmic variations on this bass line.”
Although Boogie Woogie continued to develop and evolve after 1900, various pieces of evidence, such as Lead Belly’s account of piano walking bass lines in 1899, have resulted in my tendency to refer to Boogie Woogie events prior to 1900 as “origin” events, while referring to events after 1900 as “developmental” events.
The developments in Boogie Woogie that occurred in Chicago in the 1920s, and at various places in the 1930s, resulted in a prototypical recordings or yardsticks by which other latter music can be compared to assess its “Boogie-Woogie-ness.”
Improvised lead parts played on top of an ostinato substrate resonated with primitive humans for reasons that are almost certainly intrinsic to our evolutionary and sexual biology.
There is a war of words in which some want to co-opt the word “jazz” to apply only to the music that they own, promote, play, or otherwise stand to benefit from.
Although the words, “Boogie Woogie” and “Ragtime” have occasionally been used synonymously, there is no question that the modern meanings of these terms refer to different musical attributes. Nonetheless, some of the same sensibilities, especially in the right-hand parts, informed both Boogie Woogie and Ragtime.
There is a long history of snobbery and resentment from some Ragtime players towards Boogie Woogie players.
Hersal & George W. Thomas, Jr. Influenced Jimmy Yancey, Albert Ammons, Meade “Lux” Lewis, and Other Boogie Woogie Players in Chicago
On page 17 of the February 19, 1959 issue of Down Beat, Meade Lux Lewis described “The Fives” as something that was done with the right hand, rather than the left. Moreover, in 1959, Lewis has trouble remembering the name of the piano player who played “The Fives” for him and Ammons.
The Boogie Woogie has made its influence felt in present-day orchestration, and many leading orchestras have their version of the Boogie Woogie. But it is fundamentally a piano style and is most effective when played on this solo instrument.
George Washington Thomas, Jr. and his younger brother Hersal were regarded as seminal influences by later Boogie Woogie players, such as Albert Ammons and Meade “Lux” Lewis. Although both George and Hersal died tragically at a young age after they moved to Chicago, their having brought Boogie Woogie from the Piney Woods of East Texas to the Big Cities —first to Houston, then to New Orleans and Chicago—substantially influenced the course of popular music.
Three Railroads in the Jay Gould System Probably Brought the Thomas Family to Houston
Of all the railroad tycoons of nineteenth century, Jay Gould was perhaps the most notorious and hated.
The repetitive, ostinato, departing-acceleratory, chugging, thumping, rattling sound; as well as the bluesy Doppler-effected, pitch-shifted wail of steam whistles on steam locomotives inspired musical elements heard in Boogie Woogie and Blues music.
The National spread of Boogie Woogie
George Washington Thomas, Jr., is credited by Clarence Williams as playing with a Boogie Woogie bass figure in 1911 in Houston, Texas. Moreover, Clarence Williams credits Thomas with being the first man to write down a Boogie Woogie bass figure.
Another early sheet-music publication of a Boogie Woogie bass figure can be found in 1916 in George Thomas’s “New Orleans Hop Scop Blues.” Paul Oliver has noted that George Thomas based his “New Orleans Hop Scop Blues” on music that he had heard being played in East Texas.
What are the necessary and sufficient elements to constitute a broken-octave Boogie Woogie bass line? Some historians have erroneously referred to ANY broken octave bass line as a Boogie Woogie bass line. Yet, there are specific reasons why a broken octave bass is NOT sufficient in and of itself to create a Boogie Woogie feel.
Eubie Blake’s “Charleston Rag:”
A 1917 Piano Roll with a Non-Swinging, Grace-Noted, Broken-Octave Walking Bass Line
U. S. Highway 59 from Texarkana to Houston to El Campo - “The Boogie Woogie Highway” (A.K.A. “The Boogie Woogie Corridor”)
The Earliest Sound Recordings Containing Boogie Woogie Bass Figures
“In early 1923, Fletcher Henderson recorded a pair of piano solos for Black Swan, which were issued on their rare 2100 series. Chime Blues features a walking bass, and although Henderson was never known as a boogie-woogie pianist, this must be one of the earliest such solos on record (with the possible exception of the mysterious Clay Custer’s [A.K.A. George Thomas] ‘The Rocks’ on OKeh 4809, recorded about this same time). It would be interesting to know where Henderson picked up this style!”
Black Swan Records was the first back-owned record label. The label was founded by Harry Pace, who was from Georgia. Before moving to New York to start his record label, Pace had run a music publishing company in Memphis with W. C. Handy.
Unlike other early recordings of Boogie Woogie, Blythe’s “Chicago Stomp” is significant in that, after its short introduction, it maintains a Boogie Woogie feel and pulse to the end with no intermittant use of the 2/4 oom-pah pulse heard throughout most Ragtime music.
The First Recording to Use a 12-Bar Blues Harmonic Progression with a Boogie Woogie Bass Figure
Leadbelly Adapts Boogie Woogie Bass Line from Piano to Guitar
John Tennison (also known as “Nonjohn”) was born in 1968 in Texarkana, Texas. Texarkana is located in the Red River Valley in Bowie County at the far northeastern corner of Texas…
Citations and references for the content of “The History of Boogie Woogie”.
