Boogie-woogie is a style of piano-heavy jazz
whose origins date to the early 1930s. Boogie-woogie enjoyed wide popularity throughout the
1930s and 1940s, perhaps because it actively involved the audience, getting them up on their
feet and dancing to its contagious rhythms. For example, here is an excerpt from an early
boogie-woogie hit tune by blues pianist Clarence Pinetop Smith, called Pinetops Boogie
Woogie:
Now, when I tell you to hold yourself, don't you
move a peg.And when I tell you to get it, I want you to Boogie
Woogie!
While Pinetop was popular, and others were as
well: if you wanted to crown one person as the king of Boogie Woogie, that person would be
pianist Albert Ammons.
Ammons was born in Chicago, Illinois, on September
23, 1907. His family was a musical one; both of this parents were pianists and Albert himself
played well by the age of ten. Albert didnt stop at piano. By the time he was a teenager, he
had mastered percussion and learned to play the bugle. He began performing in the local club
scene during his high school years. In those venues, he was exposed to, and became interested
in, the blues, primarily through influential people in his life like pianist Hersal Thomas.
During these years, Ammons developed the powerful piano style for which he would become well
known. Jazz and blues historian, Scott Yanow, (author of
Guide), calls Ammons one of the big three of late-'30s boogie-woogie,
along with Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis."
Of course, fame did not
come immediately. In the early 1920s, Ammons was a cab driver for the Silver Taxicab Company.
While picking up fares in Chicago, Ammons met another cabbie who also played piano, Meade Lux
Lewis. The two musicians hit it off and began playing together wherever they could find gigs.
Some of the places they played were called house €˜kados. These were underground
establishments that served alcohol during prohibition.
House €˜kados could be
dangerous gigs to accept, for they were frequently raided by the police. In his book
Jazzmen,
Russell recalls that When a house party was raided, Albert and Lux hid outside on
the window sill; after the Law had cleared out the mob they climbed back inside and finished the
unemptied jugs." It seems that both Ammons and Lewis were good cabbies as well as
sought-after musicians. Their cab company eventually created a clubroom on the premises, so
that the friends could be found when fares called for rides.
In 1934, when
Ammons was twenty-seven, he formed is own band at the Club de Lisa, where he remained for two
years. The band members were Guy Kelly, Dalbert Bright, Jimmy Hoskins, and Israel Crosby. In
1936, Ammons recorded Albert Ammons Rhythm Kings for the influential jazz label, Decca
Records. The gamble was a good one for Decca; the Rhythm Kings interpretation of Swanee River
Boogie sold a million copies.
Although he could have stayed in Chicago and
enjoyed his success, Albert was ready for a new challenge and moved to New York City.
Boogie-woogie was enjoying enormous popularity as the 1930s continued, and would continue,
through the 1940s. So popular was the style in general and Ammons in particular that he was
invited to play at Carnegie Hall in 1938. The program he appeared in was called Spirituals to
Swing, an homage to the recently deceased Empress of the Blues,
At Carnegie, Hammons took the opportunity to make a powerful political statement. He
pointed out that the majority of the artists performing in the concert were forced to work
menial jobs to make ends meet, and that most received very little compensation from the
performance. His frequent partner, Meade Lux Lewis, for example, continued to work in a garage
and often made as little as nine dollars a week from his music.
While Ammons
assertion did not change anything for musicians at the Carnegie immediately, his words did
garner much attentiton. Jazz historian Colin Davey explains: "Although this concert also
included Count Basie, Sidney Bechet, Benny Goodman ... and many other top jazz and blues
performers of the period, the Boogie Woogie Trio, as they came to be called, stole the show.
Almost instantly, they became international celebrities." The attention brought more work
to Ammons personally as well. He worked with trumpeter Harry James and the two recorded for the
Library of Congress.
Of all Ammons accomplishments, perhaps his most enduring
is the label he help found, Blue Note records, a name that is now synonymous with jazz. Ammons
continued to play for many years, although in 1941, a freak accident with a kitchen knife
sidelined him for a couple of years (while making a sandwich, Ammons accidentally cut the top of
one of his fingers, and then suffered paralysis in both hands for some time).
The boogie-woogie craze was dying out by 1945, but Ammons had no trouble still booking
gigs. He toured as a solo artist and recorded for Mercury records. He was so successful that
he was asked to perform for the Presidential Inauguration of Harry S Truman in 1949.
Albert Ammons died suddenly following a performance in 1949 at age 42. The exact cause
of his death was never determined.
Source: Contemporary
Musicians, ©2006 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved.
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