Genre of blues music
Boogie-woogie is a genre of blues music that became popular during the late 1920s, developed in African-American communities since the 1870s. It was eventually extended from piano to piano duo and trio, guitar, big band, country and western music, and gospel. While standard blues traditionally expresses a variety of emotions, boogie-woogie is mainly dance music (although not usually played for the competitive dance known as boogie-woogie (dance), a term of convenience in that sport). The genre had a significant influence on rhythm and blues and rock and roll.
Boogie-woogie waned in popularity in the 1930s, but enjoyed a resurgence and its greatest acclaim in the 1940s, reaching audiences around the world. Among its most famous acts was the "Boogie Woogie Trio" of Pete Johnson, Albert Ammons, and Meade "Lux" Lewis. Other famous boogie woogie pianists of this peak era were Maurice Rocco and Freddie Slack. There were also many very notable women boogie woogie pianists during this time, including Hadda Brooks, Winifred Atwell, Martha Davis, and Hazel Scott, as well as in later years, such as Katie Webster.
Musical features.
Boogie-woogie is characterized by a regular left-hand bass figure, which is transposed following the chord changes.
Boogie-woogie is not strictly a solo piano style; it can accompany singers and be featured in orchestras and small combos. It is sometimes called "eight to the bar", as much of it is written in common time () time using eighth notes (quavers) (see time signature). The chord progressions are typically based on I–IV–V–I (with many formal variations of it, such as I/i–IV/iv–v/I, as well as chords that lead into these ones).
For the most part, boogie-woogie tunes are twelve-bar blues, although the style has been applied to popular songs such as "Swanee River" and hymns such as "Just a Closer Walk with Thee".
Typical boogie-woogie bassline:
History.
1870s–1930s.
Several African terms have been suggested as having some interesting linguistic precursors to "boogie": Among them are the:
The African origin of these terms is consistent with the African-American origin of the music.
In sheet music literature prior to 1900, there are at least three examples of the word "boogie" in music titles in the archives of the Library of Congress. In 1901, "Hoogie Boogie" appeared in the title of published sheet music, the first known instance where a redoubling of the word "Boogie" occurs in the title of published music. (In 1880, "The Boogie Man" had occurred as the title of published music.) The first use of "Boogie" in a recording title appears to be a "blue cylinder" recording made by Edison of the "American Quartet" performing "That Syncopated Boogie Boo" in 1913. The "Oxford English Dictionary" states that the word is a reduplication of "boogie", which was used for "rent parties" as early as 1913.
"Boogie" next occurs in the title of Wilbur Sweatman's April 1917 recording of "Boogie Rag". None of these sheet music or audio recording examples contain the musical elements that would identify them as boogie-woogie. The 1919 recordings (two takes) of "Weary Blues" by the Louisiana Five contained the same boogie-woogie bass figure as appears in the 1915 "Weary Blues" sheet music by Artie Matthews. Tennison has recognized these 1919 recordings as the earliest sound recordings which contain a boogie-woogie bass figure.
Blind Lemon Jefferson used the term "Booga Rooga" to refer to a guitar bass figure that he used in "Match Box Blues". Jefferson may have heard the term from Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, who played frequently with Jefferson. Lead Belly, who was born in Mooringsport, La., and grew up in Harrison County, Texas, in the community of Leigh, said he first heard boogie-woogie piano in the Caddo Lake area of northeast Texas in 1899. He said it influenced his guitar-playing. Lead Belly also said he heard boogie-woogie piano in the Fannin Street district of Shreveport, Louisiana. Some of the players he heard were Dave Alexander, who recorded for Decca in 1937 as "Black Ivory King", and a piano player called Pine Top (not Pine Top Smith, who was not born until 1904, but possibly Pine Top Williams or Pine Top Hill). Lead Belly was among the first guitar-players to adapt the rolling bass of boogie-woogie piano.
Texas, as the state of origin, became reinforced by Jelly Roll Morton, who said he heard the boogie piano style there early in the 20th century, as did Leadbelly and Bunk Johnson, according to Rosetta Reitz.
The first time the modern-day spelling of "boogie-woogie" was used in a title of a published audio recording of music appears to be Pine Top Smith's December 1928 recording titled "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie", a song whose lyrics contain dance instructions to "boogie-woogie".
The earliest documented inquiries into the geographical origin of boogie-woogie occurred in the late 1930s when oral histories from the oldest living Americans of both African and European descent revealed a broad consensus that boogie-woogie piano was first played in Texas in the early 1870s. Additional citations place the origins of boogie-woogie in the Piney Woods of northeast Texas.
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;The first Negroes who played what is called boogie-woogie, or house-rent music, and attracted attention in city slums where other Negroes held jam sessions, were from Texas. And all the Old-time Texans, black or white, are agreed that boogie piano players were first heard in the lumber and turpentine camps, where nobody was at home at all. The style dates from the early 1870s.
"Fast Western" connection to Marshall and Harrison County, Texas.
Max Harrison (in the book "Jazz" edited by Hentoff and McCarthy in 1959) and Mack McCormick (in the liner notes to his Treasury of Field Recordings, Vol. 2) concluded that "Fast Western" was the first term by which boogie-woogie was known. He stated that "in Houston, Dallas, and Galveston—all Negro piano players played that way. This style was often referred to as a 'fast western' or 'fast blues' as differentiated from the 'slow blues' of New Orleans and St. Louis. At these gatherings the ragtime and blues boys could easily tell from what section of the country a man came, even going so far as to name the town, by his interpretation of a piece."
According to Tennison, when he interviewed Lee Ree Sullivan in Texarkana in 1986, Sullivan told him that he was familiar with "Fast Western" and "Fast Texas" as terms to refer to boogie-woogie in general, but not to denote the use of any specific bass figure used in boogie-woogie. Sullivan said that "Fast Western" and "Fast Texas" were terms that derived from the Texas Western Railroad Company of Harrison County. The company was chartered on February 16, 1852, and changed its name to "Southern Pacific" in 1856. It built its first track from Marshall, Texas Swanson's Landing at Caddo Lake in 1857. (This Texas-based "Southern Pacific" was not connected to the more well known Southern Pacific originating in San Francisco, California.) The Southern Pacific of Texas was bought by the newly formed Texas and Pacific Railway on March 21, 1872.
Although the Texas Western Railroad Company changed its name to Southern Pacific, Sullivan said the name "Texas Western" stuck among the slaves who constructed the railroad.
Railroad connection to Marshall and Harrison County, Texas.
A key to identifying the geographical area in which boogie-woogie originated is understanding the relationship of boogie-woogie music with the steam railroad, both in the sense of how the music might have been influenced by sounds associated with the arrival of steam locomotives as well as the cultural impact the sudden emergence of the railroad might have had.
The railroad did not arrive in northeast Texas as an extension of track from existing lines from the north or the east. Rather, the first railroad locomotives and iron rails were brought to northeast Texas via steamboats from New Orleans via the Mississippi and Red Rivers and Caddo Lake to Swanson's Landing, located on the Louisiana–Texas state line. Beginning with the formation of the Texas Western Railroad Company in Marshall, Texas, through the subsequent establishment in 1871 of the Texas and Pacific Railway company, which located its headquarters and shops there, Marshall was the only railroad hub in the Piney Woods of northeast Texas at the time the music developed. The sudden appearance of steam locomotives and the building of mainline tracks and tap lines to serve logging operations was pivotal to the creation of the music in terms of its sound and rhythm. It was also crucial to the rapid migration of the musical style from the rural barrel house camps to the cities and towns served by the Texas and Pacific Railway Company.
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 lumber, cattle, turpentine, and oil industries, all served by an expanding railway system from the northern corner of East Texas to the Gulf Coast and from the Louisiana border to Dallas and West Texas.
Alan Lomax wrote:
Anonymous black musicians, longing to grab a train and ride away from their troubles, incorporated the rhythms of the steam locomotive and the moan of their whistles into the new dance music they were playing in jukes and dance halls. Boogie-woogie forever changed piano playing, as ham-handed black piano players transformed the instrument into a polyrhythmic railroad train.
In the 1986 television broadcast of Britain's "The South Bank Show" about boogie-woogie, music historian Paul Oliver noted:
Now the conductors were used to the logging camp pianists clamoring aboard, telling them a few stories, jumping off the train, getting into another logging camp, and playing again for eight hours, barrel house. In this way the music got around—all through Texas—and eventually, of course, out of Texas. Now when this new form of piano music came from Texas, it moved out towards Louisiana. It was brought by people like George W. Thomas, an early pianist who was already living in New Orleans by about 1910 and writing New Orleans Hop Scop Blues", which really has some of the characteristics of the music that we came to know as Boogie.
Paul Oliver also wrote that George W. Thomas "composed the theme of the New Orleans Hop Scop Blues—in spite of its title—based on the blues he had heard played by the pianists of East Texas." On February 12, 2007, Oliver confirmed to John Tennison that it was Sippie Wallace who told Oliver that performances by East Texas pianists had formed the basis for George Thomas's "Hop Scop Blues".
Brothers George Thomas and Hersal Thomas migrated from Texas to Chicago and brought boogie-woogie with them, influencing a number of pianists, including Jimmy Yancey, Meade Lux Lewis, and Albert Ammons. Many elements now recognized as foundational elements of boogie-woogie are present in their 1922 song "The Fives".
Texas and Pacific Railway stops associated with names for boogie-woogie left-hand bass lines.
Early generation boogie-woogie players recognized basic boogie-woogie bass lines by geographical locations with which they associated them. Lee Ree Sullivan identified a number of these left hand bass lines for Tennison in 1986. From the primitive to the complex, those identifications indicate that the most primitive form of the music was associated with Marshall, Texas—and that the left-hand bass lines grew more complex as the distance from Marshall increased.
The most primitive of these left hand bass lines is the one that was called "the Marshall". It is a simple, four-beats-to-the-bar figure. The second-most primitive bass-line, called "the Jefferson", is also four-beats-to-the-bar, but goes down in pitch on the last note in each four-note cycle. It has been suggested that this downturn in pitch reveals a possible New Orleans influence. Jefferson, Texas, about 17 miles north of Marshall, was the westernmost port of a steamboat route that connected to New Orleans via Caddo Lake, the Red River, and the Mississippi River.
The remaining bass lines rise in complexity with distance from Marshall, Texas as one would expect variations and innovations would occur as the territory in which the music has been introduced expands.
Marshall and Harrison County, Texas, and the origin of boogie-woogie.
In January 2010, John Tennison summarized his research into the origins of boogie-woogie with the conclusion that Marshall, Texas is "the municipality whose boundaries are most likely to encompass or be closest to the point