Boogie Woogie And The Blues

In his powerfully insightful book of blues-inspired poetry Fattening Frogs for Snakes - Delta Sound Suite, John Sinclair cites blues and jazz scholar Robert Palmer as a source for the theory that the linguistic taproots of the word "boogie" probably reach back to West Africa, as the Hausa "buga" and the Mandingo "bug" both mean "to beat" as in "to beat a drum." This makes sense given the rhythmic potency of boogie-woogie, a style that emerged during the early 20th century among Southern black laborers who lived, toiled, and partied near the very bottom of the U.S. social hierarchy, usually living in an environment that was secluded from the rest of the population and often engaging in the production of turpentine…

Broke, Black & Blue delivers multiple surprises within its 100 songs of prewar blues. Arranged chronologically by Joop Visser, the set admirably covers the first 22 years of recorded blues, 1924 to 1946, from vaudeville and Delta to boogie-woogie and jump blues. It's a swell gift for anyone wanting to learn more about the history of blues. But old-timers will be pleased, too, as special attention has been paid to culling rare and idiosyncratic tracks by the well-known and the obscure. The first three discs present single tracks by artists as diverse as the Memphis Jug Band, De Ford Bailey, Tommy Johnson, Son House, Skip James, Peetie Wheatstraw, Lonnie Johnson, and Bukka White, alongside unknowns such as Isaiah "The Mississippi Moaner" Nelson, Barbecue Bob and Laughing Charley, Ed Andrews, Chicken Wilson, and Bumble Bee Slim. On the fourth disc, this convention is jettisoned to luxuriate in a series of very rare sides of lovely, oddly subdued boogie-woogie and jump blues by Jimmie Gordon, Johnny Temple, and Lee Brown.

The Rhythm and the Blues is the fifteenth solo studio album by Australian rock musician Jimmy Barnes, released through Liberation Music on 28 August 2009. The album was produced by Don Gehman in Los Angeles and peaked at number one on the Australian Albums Chart for two weeks. The Rhythm and the Blues was Barnes' ninth solo album (thirteenth including his Cold Chisel records) to reach number one on the ARIA Charts, an all-time record for an Australian artist. The album was touted as a sequel to Barnes' previous works Soul Deep and Soul Deeper… Songs From the Deep South. It features cover versions of tracks from throughout the late 1940s to the 1960s, with songs by the likes of Ray Charles, Little Richard, Ike & Tina Turner, Bo Diddley, Stevie Wonder and Nina Simone.

While some purists would like to compartmentalize boogie woogie into a nice, neat box as strictly a form of piano blues, this 18 track collection clearly demonstrates that the form lends itself to a wide variety of treatments. Tracks like "Baby Boogie Woogie" by country picker Curley Weaver, "Boogie Woogie" by Delta Cum. Detroit bluesman Calvin Frazier and jazz visionary Art Tatum's "Tatum Pole Boogie" do much to support that claim, as does the inclusion of tracks from Red Saunders, Adrian Rollini and Harry James. Much of the material reprised here comes from one of the very first Columbia 78 RPM 'albums, ' a collection of boogie woogie classics produced by John Hammond, the man who brought the music into national vogue in the late 30s by simply letting giants like Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis, Pete Johnson and Big Joe Turner do their thing…

Here's a very reasonable compromise between the pricey Mosaic box and EMI's incomplete single-disc treatment of Milburn's Aladdin legacy: a three-disc, 66-song package that's heavy on boogies and blues and slightly deficient in the ballad department (to that end, his smash "Bewildered" was left off). Everything that is aboard is top-drawer, though - the booze odes, many a party rocker, and a plethora of the double-entendre blues that Milburn reveled in during his early years.