Who started boogie-woogie?Boogie-woogie is a style of piano-based blues that became popular in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but originated much earlier, and was extended from piano, to three pianos at once, guitar, big band, and country and western music, and even gospel. While theblues traditionally depicts a variety of emotions, boogie-woogie is mainly associated with dancing.[1] The lyrics of one of the earliest hits, "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie", consist entirely of instructions to dancers:
- 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!
It is characterized by a regular bass figure, in the left hand. The bass figure is transposed according to the chord changes.
Another interesting site is: http://boogiewoogie.com/index.php/history/ and to listen, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn3mnrm8-YA
BUT HERE ARE SOME ALTERNATIVE THEORIES - Taken from letters to the daily paper some years ago:
- Anyone ready to testify that boogie-woogie piano started with Chopin's A Flat Major Polonaise ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFvqvZOtCF0 )should first listen to Mozart's Piano Concerto in D Minor (K466), first movement, bars 108 - 113 ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTqpqGIIYU ). There is the real seed of boogie-woogie piano - some half a century before Chopin.
- Not Chopin but Beethoven was the first to write down boogie-woogie. The syncopated section in the last movement of his last piano sonata ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEFkmmAAE4Y )was where piano jazz really began - Vienna, 1822.
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