Piano Jazz - Volume 1

The Dirty Dozen No. 1 & 2

Piano Jazz 

Volume 1

Barrel House and Boogie Woogie

Featuring Pine Top Smith, Montana Taylor, Romeo Nelson, Cow Cow Davenport and Speckled Red (Rufus Perryman)

Brunswick BL 54014

1954

From the back cover: The Language Of Jazz has always been as lusty and colorful as the music itself. While some of the words of jazz have managed to remind the private property of its musicians, many have found their way into the mainstream not only of America's, but the entire world's everyday speech and writing. And why not? How wonderful those words and expression are! Think of "funky" – and "gut bucket" – and "dig," "groove," "crazy," "solid," "cool." And "barrel house" and "boogie woof" too.

Approached semantically, "boogie boogie" and "barrel house" are far from obscure eighteen in meaning or origin. "One Top Smith, whose most famous recordings are heard here, is generally credited with the invention of the name for the distinctive piano style of which he was a master. It was, as a matter of fact, on these records made in Chicago in 1928 that the words were first believed to have been publicity used.

But the sound of the words boogie boogie somehow manages to convey something of the sound of the music too. Actually, boogie boogie is probably an outgrowth of a kind of free style blues pino laying that flourished throughout the South until relatively recently. Its most striking characteristic is the steady, insinuating repetitive bass usually played eight beat to the measure or "eight to the bar' while the right hand freely improves, playing against the bass and creating intricate counter-rhythms. 

Barrel house, on the other hand, is a much more general term used more often to convey a feeling rather than to describe a specific style of playing. According to the late New Orleans trumpeter, Bunk Johnson, "a barrel house was a piano in a hall... When I was a kid, I'd go into a barrel house and play 'long with them piano players 'til early in the mornin'z. We used to play nothin' but the blues."

To others, however , barrel house signifies the kind of occasion or circumstance where "the drinks come right out of the barrel." Applied to jazz it is a low-down, m rough-and-ready, no holds barred kind of expressiveness – a lusty, rowdy and honest music. The term then, is an all-inclusive on, able to take in a great variety of musical material – including boogie woogie.

Barrel house and boogie woogie playing ws for many years the exclusive property of a band of little-known, musically self-educated itinerant pianist-entertainers. These 20th Century minstrels could be heard in the obscure dives and honky tonks of the South, at rent parties in St. Lous, Memphis, Chicago, Kansas City and Detroit, and at neighborhood and small town dances. They could also be heard on a few re]rods made exclusively for Negro audiences in the South and those larger cities of the North with large Negro populations.

Five of the most exciting of those "Breakdown" pianist-blues singers are represented in this collection. We know almost nothing about the lives of some of them, but despite their obscurity, they live on and will be remembered because of these performances. These records offer indisputable evidence of the enduring qualities of the music hey created and live by.

Clarence "Pine Top" Smith is probably the most famous of the pianist you will hear on this record. Born in Troy, Alabama in 1904, he first came to attention in Pittsburgh, Pa. where his unique stile of playing in Negro theaters and night clubs earned him more than a slight measure of popularity. A comedian, singer and dancer as well as a pianist, Smith was a natural showman and had not trouble at all in finding work.

It was in Chicago, however that he came to the attention of recording direct Mayo Williams who quickly set about putting Pine Top's music on records. The four selection heard here, all original Smith compositions, were recorded at the Brunswick studios in Chicago in 1928. Less than six moths later, Smith died, the victim of a stay bullet fired in a barroom brawl. These four sides, representing the best of Pine Top's recorded output are magnificent demonstrations of his earthy folk humor, his sensitive approach to the blues and his driving eight to the bar attack.

The late Charles "Cow Cow" Davenport, who died penniless and almost completely forgotten in 1955 was perhaps best known for his compositions Cow Cow Boogie, Cow Cow Blues, I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You and Momma Don't Allow No Piano Playing In Here. The latter tune has a them was a basis of fact in Davenport's youth. As he told it, his father sent him to Selma University when he was sixteen. "Selma was a place where they turned out practically all the preachers in Alabama," related Cow Cow. "That's what Pa wanted me to be – a preacher. Now, I couldn't read music in those days, but I could fund out a few rags. But Pa would say, 'Play all the reels you want, but I don't want all them rages played in here.""

At twenty-three Cow Cow got his first gob in vaudeville, in a theater in Augusta, Georgia that also featured ta blues singer named Bessie Smith. Soon after he teamed up with Dora Carr with whom he subsequently recored and toured the country. The records heard here were made in Chicago in 1928, when Cow Cow was at the height of his popularity. Vaudeville, however was on th way out a the gook a job in 1929 with the Vocalion record Company as a composer. A few years later he ventured forth into show business again with a unit called Cow-cow's Chicago Steppers. When that failed, Cow Cow retired from show business, and although he attempted to make a come-back in the '40s, it was in vain.

One of the main features of Daveport's playing as the walking bass, which he claims to have inv ended. On both his Two Cow Blues and State Street Ice, the latter with talking by Ivy Smith, Davenport gives ample evidence of his mastery of the blues and boogie woogie idioms.

About the three other pianist presented here, we known almost nothing. Like so many other folk artist of early jazz, their lives have gone undocumented, and only their record remain. The two solos by Montana Taylor ere made for Vocalion in Chicago in 1929 and are vigorous example of this unknown musician's considerable talents. Speckled Red, whose real name is Rufus Berryman, is only slightly less a mysterious figure that Taylor. Dirty Dozen No. 1 and Dirty Dozen No. 2, made in 1929 and 1930, respectively are compositions built around an old folk custom regulating the way in which bitter insults were exchanged. Wilkins Street Stomp, on the other hand, is a driving, slightly eccentric blues – a fine display of Perryman's energetic, unorthodox boogie piano.

Romeo Nelson is also a shadowy figure and the only thing we seem to know for sure was that he lived in Chicago and made just a few records for Vocalion late in 1929. The sensational aspects of  his keyboard style are demonstrated in Head Rag Hop on which Nelson talks as well as played. Indeed, fe pianist can boast of the ckind of overwhelming exuberance that Nelson manages to convey on this recording. – Notes by Nat Shapiro

Detroit Rocks - Montana Taylor - Piano Solo

Indiana Avenue Stomp - Montana Taylor - Piano Solo

The Dirty Dozen No. 1 - Speckled Red - Piano with Singing

The Dirty Dozen No. 2 - Speckled Red - Piano with Singing

Wilkins Street Stomp - Speckled Red - Piano Solo

Head Rag Hop - Romeo Nelson - Piano Solo with Talking

Pinetop's Boogie Woogie - Pine Top Smith - Piano Solo with Talking

Pinetop's Blues - Pine Top Smith - Blues Singing with Piano

Jump Steady Blues - Pine Top Smith - Piano Solo with Talking

I'm Sober Now - Pine Top Smith - Talking and Singing with Piano

Cow Cow Blues - Cow Cow Davenport - Piano Solo

State Street Jive - Cow Cow Davenport - Piano Solo with Talking by Ivy Smith