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Boogie Woogie

Alright alright alright you maniacs...you say you wanna boogie?

 


Before my time but not my parents.
 
Like the OP eluded to the left hand on the piano has basic cords in playing the boogie. And it is at your discretion how you play them. And it is also at your discretion on how you deliver with the right hand. If you are good at what you do, it all works out and sounds marvelous. As a kid Dad taught me how to play the boogies but when I started taking piano lessons and they asked me if I could play anything. Yes I played boogies. She liked it but started in on correcting my fingering but once corrected, it didn't sound any different. I still have the piano that both my Dad and Mom played. I can't remember ever living in a home where there was not a piano.

I came across this young lady playing the boogie and it shows the basics the OP eluded to . She is quite good.

 
nota bene said:
<shrieking> Barry Manilow?!!!

My father put himself through med school playing boogie woogie at a whorehouse on Post Office Road in Galveston (I am not making this up), so I grew up with it and was taught enough to appreciate those who play well. Keeping that left-hand beat while your right is improvising is really, really hard.

(Shout-out to all bass players.)
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I have long heard the expression, "I'd rather be a piano player in a whore house than a <fill-in-your-crappy occupation here.>" (Usually referred to lawyers.)

I once had a bumper sticker that read, "Don't tell anyone I work in the oilfield. They think I'm a piano player in a whore house."

But this is the first time I ever heard of anyone who actually WAS a piano player in a whore house. Thinking about it, probably half of the whores there were putting themselves through medical school too. LOL!

Boogie chillun'!
 
Captain America said:
I have long heard the expression, "I'd rather be a piano player in a whore house than a <fill-in-your-crappy occupation here.>" (Usually referred to lawyers.)

I once had a bumper sticker that read, "Don't tell anyone I work in the oilfield. They think I'm a piano player in a whore house."

But this is the first time I ever heard of anyone who actually WAS a piano player in a whore house. Thinking about it, probably half of the whores there were putting themselves through medical school too. LOL!

Boogie chillun'!
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Galveston, oh, Galveston! Casinos, prostitution...the Balinese Room and its cigarette girls--yep, it was pretty wild back in the day.
 
 
nota bene said:
Galveston, oh, Galveston! Casinos, prostitution...the Balinese Room and its cigarette girls--yep, it was pretty wild back in the day.
Click to expand...

I went to the Balinese after my high school prom. Mostly I remember the smell of stale beer and some skinny stripper who was more of a contortionist than a dancer. It was just nasty.

Me and my friend's rented a house there on Jamaica Beach for the weekend. Had to dig my car out of the sand, wearing a tuxedo.

We were beyond totaled. Good times.
 
nota bene said:
<shrieking> Barry Manilow?!!!

My father put himself through med school playing boogie woogie at a whorehouse on Post Office Road in Galveston (I am not making this up), so I grew up with it and was taught enough to appreciate those who play well. Keeping that left-hand beat while your right is improvising is really, really hard.

(Shout-out to all bass players.)
Click to expand...

I believe you, and it makes perfect sense.

The lazy left hand rolling base of bogie woogie first caught on in the oil fields in East Texas in the late 20’s and early 1930’s.

True jazz men hated it. Fats Waller actually had a clause in his contract that forbid any venue he played in from asking him to play the “walking base”, preferring the stride piano that was the pattern of ragtime and “classic” jazz.

But it is relatively easy to play, and when “Pinetops Boogie Woogie” was adapted and considerably sweetened by Tommy Dorsey in 1940, the genre crossed over to mainstream white audiences and bobbysoxers.

Liberace?????????? Seriously????????
 
nota bene said:
I was doing some research on boogie woogie this afternoon and am looking for recommendations to add to my library. In the meantime, I stumbled across a YouTube of Liberace and am now feeling guilty that I knew him more for his fabulous costumes and piano-shaped pool than I did for his talent. So I'm sharing the video and ask you to notice that he's looking at the camera and not at his left hand while playing. Incredible self-confidence.

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I have done some research into American music myself, particularly between 1850 and 1950. Boogie is really just Blues played in a major key without using dominant seventh chords. I put together my own Boogie Woogie, stealing riffs from great Boogie musicians like Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, Meade "Lux" Lewis, Jimmy Yancey, and of course Clarence "Pinetop" Smith, to name a few. It is my homage to the Boogie Woogie greats.

 
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Captain America said:
I went to the Balinese after my high school prom. Mostly I remember the smell of stale beer and some skinny stripper who was more of a contortionist than a dancer. It was just nasty.

Me and my friend's rented a house there on Jamaica Beach for the weekend. Had to dig my car out of the sand, wearing a tuxedo.

We were beyond totaled. Good times.
Click to expand...

 
Glitch said:
I have done some research into American music myself, particularly between 1850 and 1950. Boogie is really just Blues played in a major key without using dominant seventh chords. I put together my own Boogie Woogie, stealing riffs from great Boogie musicians like Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, Meade "Lux" Lewis, Jimmy Yancey, and of course Clarence "Pinetop" Smith, to name a few. It is my homage to the Boogie Woogie greats.

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This is great. I need to do more research; the only "Pinetop" I know is Perkins!

Update:

Clarence “Pine Top” Smith’s 1928 tune "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie,” the first record in history to be labeled with a Boogie Woogie moniker, had great influence on subsequent Boogie Woogie stylings. Throughout the 1920s, Smith toured on the TOBA vaudeville circuit, often performing with blues singer Mamie Smith and the comedy duo Butter Beans and Susie. Pine Top met a fatal accident in a 1929 shootout at a Chicago dance hall. Riverwalk Jazz - Stanford University Libraries
 
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TomFitz said:
I believe you, and it makes perfect sense.

The lazy left hand rolling base of bogie woogie first caught on in the oil fields in East Texas in the late 20’s and early 1930’s.

True jazz men hated it. Fats Waller actually had a clause in his contract that forbid any venue he played in from asking him to play the “walking base”, preferring the stride piano that was the pattern of ragtime and “classic” jazz.

But it is relatively easy to play, and when “Pinetops Boogie Woogie” was adapted and considerably sweetened by Tommy Dorsey in 1940, the genre crossed over to mainstream white audiences and bobbysoxers.

Liberace?????????? Seriously????????
Click to expand...

The "lazy" left hand? And you think boogie-woogie is easy to play?! I think it's a bitch hitting all those octaves accurately, and that's while looking at what I'm doing. My point about Liberace was that he wasn't even looking.
 
nota bene said:
The "lazy" left hand? And you think boogie-woogie is easy to play?! I think it's a bitch hitting all those octaves accurately, and that's while looking at what I'm doing. My point about Liberace was that he wasn't even looking.
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I believe the "lazy left hand" reference is to swing, which began around 1918 with jazz but was quickly adapted to other musical genre. Boogie can be played swing/stride, or it can be played in completely straight time. Your original Liberace video is a classic example of a straight time Boogie Woogie. In my studies I also put together an example of a straight time Boogie Woogie, using almost the identical repetitious rolling left-hand that Liberace used.



The only real rules to a Boogie Woogie is that it must be a 12-measure phrase:
  • Four measures in the tonic;
  • Two measures in the sub-dominate;
  • Two measures in the tonic;
  • Two measures in the dominate; and
  • Two measures in the tonic.

The same 12-measure phrase is repeated for as many times as the player is able to improvise, and it is also always played in a major key. As it was previously pointed out, Boogie Woogie was developed from Blues for the purposes of dancing. Major keys are always up-beat.
 
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