Barrel House Piano - Meade Lux Lewis

 

Fast "A" Blues

Barrel House Piano

Meade "Lux" Lewis

Tops L1533

From the back cover: The strong influence of Barrelhouse Piano on popular music supports the contention that it is a pure form in jazz – an American idiom. The best Barrelhouse players and Meade Lux Lewis has always ranked high among them, have much to say through their pianos. Their music is honest and forthright, without equivocation or sophistication. It is a means of expression and interwoven with the rhythm and melody to perceive a real and plaintive urgency.

Meade Lux Lewis is an expert ivory-tickler whose rapid fingers, sure from thousands of hours of playing from a sitting or standing position under the most adverse conditions, is said to have worn out 14 uprights in his lifetime, and actually had one of them collapse under him as he played.

In years past Barrelhouse players operated principally in saloons and honky-tonks, pianos were seldom the best, and invariably out of tune for the style of playing was vigorous, calling for all a man's energy. No piano played day after day in that manner could possibly stay in tune. Customers and admires would often sit on the piano through the small hours of the smoky night, and frequently drinks were inadvertently spilled into the action.

This, then was the climate of the Barrelhouse piano player when Meade Lux Lewis came on the scene. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1905. From the beginning, it seems, music was as much part of him as the air he created. You might as well have deprived him of food and drink as to shut him out of melody and rhythm. Jimmie Yantey in Chicago served as his inspiration in becoming a night club pianist. Deserved recognition was not overlong in coming. Meade steadily gathered about him a coterie of enthralled devotees who regarded him as the most.

The old Paramount cable realizing that here was a positive find asked him to record Honky Tonk Train Blues. Its success was immediate and tremendous. It brought him national recognition. His career has been a most exciting and varied one, including, together with Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson many appearances at New York's Cafe Society and the mecca of music itself, Carnegie Hall.

Six Wheel Chaser

How Long Blues

Someday Sweetheart

Bugle Call Rag

I Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None Of My Jelly Roll

Mike

Darktown Strutters Ball

Birth Of The Blues

Tidal Boogie

Mardi Gras Drag

Tisho Mingo Blues

Jada

Basin Street Blues

Fast "A" Blues

12th Street Rag

St. Louis Blues