Boogie - History

History

The boogie was originally played on the piano in boogie-woogie music and adapted to guitar. Boogie-woogie is a style of blues piano playing characterized by an up-tempo rhythm, a repeated melodic pattern in the bass, and a series of improvised variations in the treble. Boogie woogie developed from a piano style that developed in the rough barrelhouse bars in the Southern states, where a piano player performed for the hard-drinking patrons. Wayne Schmidt remarks that with boogie-woogie songs, the "bass line isn't just a time keeper or 'fill' for the right hand"; instead, the bassline has equal importance to the right hand's melodic line. He argues that many boogie-woogie basslines use a "rising/falling sequence of notes" called walking bass line.

The origin of the term boogie-woogie is unknown, according to Webster's Third New International Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary states that the word is a redoubling of boogie, which was used for rent parties as early as 1913. Boogie has been thought to be ancient West African vernacular for prostitute and boogie-woogie to be a sexually transmitted disease. The term may be derived from Black West African English, from the Sierra Leone term "bogi", which means "to dance"; as well, it may be akin to the phrase "hausa buga", which means "to beat drums." In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the term "could mean anything from a racy style of dance to a raucous party or to a sexually transmitted disease." In Peter Silvester’s book on boogie woogie, Left Hand Like God — the Story of Boogie Woogie he states that, in 1929, “boogie-woogie is used to mean either dancing or music in the city of Detroit.”

Schmidt claims that the "earliest record of boogie woogie was Texan pianist George W. Thomas' release of New Orleans Hop Scop Blues as sheet music in 1916." Boogie hit the charts with Pine Top Smith's Pine Top's Boogie in 1929, which garnered the number 20 spot. In the late 1930s, boogie became part of the then popular Swing style, as big bands such as "Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Louis Jordan...all had boogie hits." Swing big band audiences expected to hear boogie tunes, because the beat could be used for the then-popular dances such as the jitterbug and the Lindy Hop. As well, country artists began playing boogie woogie in the late 1930s, when Johnny Barfield recorded "Boogie Woogie". The Delmore Brothers "Freight Train Boogie" shows how country music and blues were being blended to form the genre which would become known as rockabilly. The Sun Records-era rockabilly sound used "wild country boogie piano" as part of its sound.

However, by the early 1950s, boogie became less popular, and by the mid-1950s, its related form, rock & roll, became the most popular style. By the mid-1970s, the meaning of the term returned to its roots, in a certain sense, as during the disco era, "to boogie" meant "to dance in a disco style". In the 1980s, country bands such as The Charlie Daniels Band used boogie woogie in songs such as the 1988 "Boogie Woogie Fiddle Country Blues". In 1991 Brooks & Dunn released "Boot Scootin' Boogie".