15. Boogie Woogie Piano I
2
15. Boogie Woogie Piano I n a period when jazz meant rhythm and the music was played mostly for dancing, solo pianists were constantly searching for ways to attract attention. Those with less musical skill than Art Tatum - and that includes almost everybody who ever played the piano - had trouble trying to compete with the big bands to win the approval of the dance-crazy public. o Some discovered they could please dancers with a fast-paced blues style. They added repeated eighth notes in the bass line rather than quarter notes and repeated figures, often mterspersed with single-note runs, with the right hand. The style came to be known as "boogie woogie." Two of its most important boogie boogie pianists had strong ties to Cleveland. Cow COW Davenport One of the earliest blues piano players, Cow Cow Davenport, moved to Cleveland in 1930 and spent the last 25 years of his life here after playing in New Orleans ' historic Storyville district , performing with Bessie Smith, and composing a number of songs , Cow Cow Davenport including some that became boogie woogie classics. Charles Davenport was born in Anniston, Alabama in 1894, one of eight children of a minister and a church organist. He taught himself to play the organ and began taking piano lessons at the age of 12. His religious parents objected to his playing blues and ragtime. "So, whenever I'd get a chance," he once told an interviewer, "I would slip away from my home to practice on some neighbor' s piano." He said his grandmother had always told him that if he disobeyed his parents, "The boogie man would get him." He began calling his piano music "boogie music." When Davenport was 16, his parents, fed up with his interest in ragtime piano, sent him to the Alabama Theological Seminary. He was promptly expelled for playing ragtime or "boogie music." He went to Birmingham and began playing for dancers at honky tonk joints. When they began dancing to his piano styles, he started calling his music boogie-woogie. When he was 20, Davenport went to Atlanta and got jobs playing piano at bars and brothels. Within several years, he was touring the South with a carnival tent show, playing in the Storyville section of New Orleans, and working with Bessie Smith on the vaudeville circuit. In his late 20s, Cow Cow teamed up with singer Dora Carr. After playing theatres in the South, they went north (in 1923) to Pittsburgh and New York City. He said, "I went directly to the Okeh record company and they sent me to Clarence Williams. I began to record my numbers and Clarence began to publish them. One ofthe first was "Cow Cow Blues." He later recalled, "I was trying to imitate a train and originally called the song the 'Railroad Blues.' I was trying to get in a part where the switchman boarded the train from the cow-catcher on the front of the locomotive. The word 'cow' somehow stuck with me." He later began referring to himself as "Cow Cow." Davenport claimed his 1923 recording of "Cow Cow Blues" was the first boogie woogie recording. Long before the boogie woogie craze of the late 1930s and early '40s, Davenport took the basic 12-bar blues and added an eight-to-the-bar left hand bass line. He made dozens of records as a leader and as a singer, including "J Ain't No Iceman." Another early song which he co-composed was "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You." The Davenport song became a classic vehicle for Louis Armstrong. Davenport also made a number of piano rolls of his primitive style. He carried dozens of rolls in the trunk of his car and sold them at his performances, just as many o$er musicians later sold their records, tapes and CDs at gigs. With his record and piano roll sales, Cow Cow was making more money than he had ever made before and later said, "I had to go back home and show off." He said he "showed off (his singer) Dora (Carr) too much and somebody took her away from me." By 1927, Davenport found another musical partner named Ivy Smith. They spent a great deal of time performing in Chicago. One night in the late 1920s in Pittsburgh, Davenport said he met a pianist named Pinetop Smith, who, in Davenport's words, "was trying to copy my piano style." Smith was also calling his piano music "boogie woogie," but, according to Davenport, "Smith really didn't know what he was playing." Ironically, in the mid-1930s, Smith's "Pinetop's Boogie" became the first widely- recognized example of the boogie woogie style. Smith's song was recorded by Bing Crosby and it triggered national interest in the style. The Tommy Dorsey big band made a record of "Boogie Woogie" and it sold more than four million copies. It became the most popular of Dorsey's many hit records. While the music of his younger admirer was being played nationally, Davenport was having trouble making a living as an entertainer. In 1930 (at the age of36), he moved to Cleveland where his sister lived and opened a record shop. He continued to compose and tried to tour
Transcript of 15. Boogie Woogie Piano I
15. Boogie Woogie Piano
In a period when jazz meant rhythm and the music was played mostly for dancing, solo pianists were constantly searching for ways to attract attention.
Those with less musical skill than Art Tatum - and that includes almost everybody who ever played the piano had trouble trying to compete with the big bands to win the approval of the dance-crazy public.
o Some discovered they could please dancers with a fast-paced blues style. They added repeated eighth notes in the bass line rather than quarter notes and repeated figures, often mterspersed with single-note runs, with the right hand. The style came to be known as "boogie woogie." Two of its most important boogie boogie pianists had strong ties to Cleveland.
Cow COW Davenport One of the earliest
blues piano players, Cow Cow Davenport, moved to Cleveland in 1930 and spent the last 25 years of his life here after playing in New Orleans ' historic Storyville district , performing with Bessie Smith, and composing a number of songs ,
Cow Cow Davenport including some that became boogie woogie
classics. Charles Davenport was born in Anniston, Alabama
in 1894, one ofeight children ofa minister and a church organist. He taught himself to play the organ and began taking piano lessons at the age of 12. His religious parents objected to his playing blues and ragtime. "So, whenever I'd get a chance," he once told an interviewer, "I would slip away from my home to practice on some neighbor' s piano." He said his grandmother had always told him that if he disobeyed his parents, "The boogie man would get him." He began calling his piano music "boogie music."
When Davenport was 16, his parents, fed up with his interest in ragtime piano, sent him to the Alabama Theological Seminary. He was promptly expelled for playing ragtime or "boogie music."
He went to Birmingham and began playing for dancers at honky tonk joints. When they began dancing to his piano styles, he started calling his music boogie-woogie.
When he was 20, Davenport went to Atlanta and got jobs playing piano at bars and brothels. Within several years, he was touring the South with a carnival tent show, playing in the Storyville section ofNew Orleans,
and working with Bessie Smith on the vaudeville circuit. In his late 20s, Cow Cow teamed up with singer Dora
Carr. After playing theatres in the South, they went north (in 1923) to Pittsburgh and New York City. He said, "I went directly to the Okeh record company and they sent me to Clarence Williams. I began to record my numbers and Clarence began to publish them. One ofthe first was "Cow Cow Blues." He later recalled, "I was trying to imitate a train and originally called the song the 'Railroad Blues. ' I was trying to get in a part where the switchman boarded the train from the cow-catcher on the front ofthe locomotive. The word ' cow' somehow stuck with me." He later began referring to himself as "Cow Cow."
Davenport claimed his 1923 recording of "Cow Cow Blues" was the first boogie woogie recording. Long before the boogie woogie craze of the late 1930s and early '40s, Davenport took the basic 12-bar blues and added an eight-to-the-bar left hand bass line.
He made dozens of records as a leader and as a singer, including "J Ain 't No Iceman." Another early song which he co-composed was "I'll Be Glad When You' re Dead, You Rascal You." The Davenport song became a classic vehicle for Louis Armstrong.
Davenport also made a number of piano rolls of his primitive style. He carried dozens of rolls in the trunk of his car and sold them at his performances, just as many o$er musicians later sold their records, tapes and CDs at gigs. With his record and piano roll sales, Cow Cow was making more money than he had ever made before and later said, "I had to go back home and show off." He said he "showed off (his singer) Dora (Carr) too much and somebody took her away from me."
By 1927, Davenport found another musical partner named Ivy Smith. They spent a great deal of time performing in Chicago.
One night in the late 1920s in Pittsburgh, Davenport said he met a pianist named Pinetop Smith, who, in Davenport's words, "was trying to copy my piano style." Smith was also calling his piano music "boogie woogie," but, according to Davenport, "Smith really didn 't know what he was playing." Ironically, in the mid-1930s, Smith ' s "Pinetop' s Boogie" became the first widelyrecognized example ofthe boogie woogie style. Smith' s song was recorded by Bing Crosby and it triggered national interest in the style. The Tommy Dorsey big band made a record of "Boogie Woogie" and it sold more than four million copies. It became the most popular of Dorsey' s many hit records.
While the music of his younger admirer was being played nationally, Davenport was having trouble making a living as an entertainer. In 1930 (at the age of36), he moved to Cleveland where his sister lived and opened a record shop. He continued to compose and tried to tour
162 Cleveland Jazz History
several more times, but his popularity was fading and he was forced to sell his tour bus. At one point, he opened a cafe in Cleveland.
In the 1940s, several of Davenport's old songs were resurrected. In the midst ofthe boogie woogie boom, Ella Mae Morse, Ella Fitzgerald, and others made hit records of his best remembered song, "Cow Cow Boogie."
After Davenport finally achieved some national attention, he was afflicted with a partial paralysis that all but deprived him ofthe use ofhis right hand. Unable to play, he went to New York City in 1942, and worked as a washroom attendant at the famous Onyx Club, a citadel of bebop, on 52nd Street.
After regaining the use of his hand, he played a number of local gigs in Cleveland and married a singer named Peggy Taylor who also happened to be a snake charmer. Newspaperman Julian Krawcheck, who had formed a jazz organization called the Hot Club of Cleveland, invited Davenport to play at some of the club' s sessions at the Cabin Club at East 105th and Euclid. "He must have been in his late 50s," recalled Krawcheck, "but he looked to be in his 60s."
"One night, he brought his wife to sing and she brot!ght a snake with her! Oh, my God," recalled Krawcheck, "I was scared to death! 1 didn't know what to do. 1 wanted to stop the music and tell the people to run like hell!" Krawcheck said Davenport' s wife was never invited back.
In the early 1950s, Davenport and his wife became involved in theatrical productions at Cleveland' s Karamu House.
Davenport died of hardening of the arteries in 1955 at the age of 61 at his home on East 92nd Street in Cleveland. He was buried in Cleveland's Evergreen Cemetery.
Davenport never won the wide recognition he probably deserved as an early pioneer ofjazz piano, a developer of the boogie boogie style, and as the composer of several classic jazz songs.
Freddie Slack Probably the most popular boogie woogie piano
player of the 1930s and '40s, Freddie Slack, a native of La Crosse, Wisconsin, came to Cleveland in 1935 to play with the Ben Pollack Orchestra at the Mayfair Casino, a plush nightclub in the Ohio Theatre Building on Euclid Avenue. A year later, Slack left the Pollack band and joined Jimmy Dorsey' s Orchestra which included Cleveland trumpeter George Thow and drummer Ray McKinley.
In 1939, McKinley teamed up with trombonist
Will Bradley to form a new big band and hired Slack to play piano and arrange. With so many big bands playing at the time, success for the new Will Bradley-Ray McKinley band depended on a distinctive sound. The Bob Crosby Orchestra had become popular by playing big band arrangements of dixieland jazz. McKinley and Slack had heard Cow Cow Davenport, Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons and others playing boogie woogie with small groups and wondered how a big band would sound playing boogie woogie jazz. They decided to experiment with the eight-to-the-bar form.
McKinley remembered, "We were playing one of those songs one night at the Famous Door and two songwriters were there. There was a part where I had a drum break, and for some reason or other, instead of playing the break, I sang out,
Oh, beat me, daddy, eight to the bar! After the set, McKinley said one of the songwriters "called me over to the table and asked if they could write a song using the vocal break."
"Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar," composed by Don Raye and Hughie Prince and played by the Will Bradley Orchestra with drummer Ray McKinley and pianist Slack became a big national hit. The band quickly made a series of other popular big band boogie woogie records including "Fry Me, Cookie, With a Can ofLard," "Scrub Me, Mama, With a Boogie Beat," and "Bounce Me, Brother, With a Solid Four." Slack became the national personification ofthe boogie woogie piano style.
Two years later (in 1941), Slack formed his own band, but he had little success until he hired a singer he had met with the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra. Ella Mae Morse's recordings with Slack's band of Davenport's "Cow Cow Boogie" and "Blacksmith Blues" helped put the new Capitol Record Company in the black.
Slack appeared in two Hollywood movies but gave up the band business in the early 1950s.
In August of 1965, at the age of 55, Slack was found dead in his Hollywood apartment ofundetermined causes. It was 30 years after he had come to Cleveland to play at the Mayfair Casino and 25 years after he had become the most popular boogie woogie piano player in the country.
Freddie Slack
