This week Spinning Tales will be taking a tour through the raucous, upbeat piano blues that had emerged as dance music in the barrelhouses and juke joints of the south at the end of the 19th century and had found its way into the bars and dancehalls of the urban north as the recording industry took off in the 1920's.
Often played in the same 12 bar chord structure as the guitar based blues, what became known as the boogie woogie, had a distinctive percussive quality, relying on a strong left hand bass line and distinctive treble embellishments on the piano.
That may sound awfully technical, but if you tune into the show or take a spin through a few of this week's YouTube selections you'll catch the drift. It'll sound quite familiar. Whether these artist are labeled barrelhouse players or masters of the boogie woogie--and some are called both by various writers--to folks of my age, (Michael's too) it sounds a whole lot like the "rock and roll" that we heard as kids from the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and Bill Haley. A rose is a rose is a rose.
