Editing Boogie-woogie (section)

===1870s–1930s===
Several African terms have been suggested as having some interesting linguistic precursors to "boogie": Among them are the:

# [[Hausa language|Hausa]] word "Boog", and 
# [[Mandinka language|Mandingo]] word "Booga" (both of which mean "to beat", as in beating a drum) 
# West African word "Bogi" (which means "to dance")<ref name="Boogie Woogie 1986">''[[The South Bank Show]]'' (UK television series), episode on Boogie Woogie, 1986, with commentary by Paul Oliver.</ref> 
# [[Bantu languages|Bantu]] term "Mbuki Mvuki" (Mbuki: "to take off in flight"; Mvuki: "to dance wildly, as if to shake off one's clothes").<ref>''They Have a Word for It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words and Phrases'', by [[Howard Rheingold]], Published 2000 by Sarabande Books.</ref>

The African origin of these terms is consistent with the African-American origin of the music.

In sheet music literature prior to 1900, there are at least three examples of the word "boogie" in music titles in the archives of the [[Library of Congress]].<ref>Liner Notes (p. 20), written by Jean-Christophe Averty, for CD album, ''Original Boogie Woogie'' by [[Claude Bolling]], 1968, Universal Music S.A.S., France.</ref> In 1901, "Hoogie Boogie" appeared in the title of published sheet music, the first known instance where a redoubling of the word "Boogie" occurs in the title of published music. (In 1880, "The Boogie Man" had occurred as the title of published music.) The first use of "Boogie" in a recording title appears to be a "blue cylinder" recording made by Edison of the "American Quartet" performing "That Syncopated Boogie Boo" in 1913.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://digilib.syr.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/cylinder&CISOPTR=179&CISOBOX=1&REC=1 |title=CONTENTdm Collection : Item Viewer |website=Digilib.syr.edu |access-date=2016-10-05}}</ref> The ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' states that the word is a [[reduplication]] of ''boogie'', which was used for "[[rent party|rent parties]]" as early as 1913.

"Boogie" next occurs in the title of [[Wilbur Sweatman]]'s April 1917 recording of "Boogie Rag". None of these sheet music or audio recording examples contain the musical elements that would identify them as boogie-woogie. The 1919 recordings (two takes) of "[[Weary Blues]]" by the [[Louisiana Five]] contained the same boogie-woogie bass figure as appears in the 1915 "Weary Blues" sheet music by [[Artie Matthews]]. Tennison has recognized these 1919 recordings as the earliest sound recordings which contain a boogie-woogie bass figure.

[[Blind Lemon Jefferson]] used the term "Booga Rooga" to refer to a guitar bass figure that he used in "Match Box Blues".<ref>Price, Sammy, ''What Do They Want?'' (autobiography), 1990, University of Illinois Press.</ref> Jefferson may have heard the term from [[Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter]], who played frequently with Jefferson. Lead Belly, who was born in [[Mooringsport]], La., and grew up in [[Harrison County, Texas]], in the community of Leigh, said he first heard boogie-woogie piano in the [[Caddo Lake]] area of northeast Texas in 1899.<ref name="Just Jazz pages 13-40">[[Ernest Borneman|Borneman, Ernest]], Chapter 2. "Boogie Woogie" (pp. 13–40), in [[Sinclair Traill]] and [[Gerald David Lascelles|The Hon Gerald Lascelles]] (eds), ''Just Jazz'', published 1957 for Peter Davies Ltd by The Windmill Press, Kingswood, Surrey, UK.</ref> He said it influenced his guitar-playing. Lead Belly also said he heard boogie-woogie piano in the Fannin Street district of [[Shreveport, Louisiana]]. Some of the players he heard were Dave Alexander, who recorded for Decca in 1937 as "[[Black Ivory King]]",<ref>{{Cite book|last=Tomko|first=Gene|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5ZKzDwAAQBAJ|title=Encyclopedia of Louisiana Musicians: Jazz, Blues, Cajun, Creole, Zydeco, Swamp Pop, and Gospel|publisher=Louisiana State University Press|year=2020|isbn=9780807169322|location=Baton Rouge|pages=270}}</ref> and a piano player called Pine Top (not Pine Top Smith, who was not born until 1904, but possibly Pine Top Williams or Pine Top Hill).<ref name="Just Jazz pages 13-40"/><ref>[[Ross Russell (jazz)|Russell, Ross]], "Illuminating The Leadbelly Legend", ''Down Beat'', August 6, 1970, Vol. 37, No. 15.</ref> Lead Belly was among the first guitar-players to adapt the rolling bass of boogie-woogie piano.

Texas, as the state of origin, became reinforced by [[Jelly Roll Morton]], who said he heard the boogie piano style there early in the 20th century, as did Leadbelly and [[Bunk Johnson]], according to [[Rosetta Reitz]].<ref>Liner Notes by Rosetta Reitz for Album: ''Boogie Blues: Women Sing and Play Boogie Woogie'', 1983, Rosetta Records, New York.</ref>

The first time the modern-day spelling of "boogie-woogie" was used in a title of a published audio recording of music appears to be Pine Top Smith's December 1928 recording titled "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie", a song whose lyrics contain dance instructions to "boogie-woogie".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.oed.com/start;jsessionid=5148C80477C409D88F9AA163E493F4F0?authRejection=true&url=%2Fview%2FEntry%2F21408%3FredirectedFrom%3Dboogie-woogie|title=Home : Oxford English Dictionary|website=www.oed.com|language=en|access-date=2020-01-17}}</ref>

The earliest documented inquiries into the geographical origin of boogie-woogie occurred in the late 1930s when oral histories from the oldest living Americans of both African and European descent revealed a broad consensus that boogie-woogie piano was first played in [[Texas]] in the early 1870s. Additional citations place the origins of boogie-woogie in the [[Piney Woods]] of northeast Texas.

{{Blockquote
|text=The first Negroes who played what is called boogie-woogie, or house-rent music, and attracted attention in city slums where other Negroes held jam sessions, were from Texas. And all the Old-time Texans, black or white, are agreed that boogie piano players were first heard in the lumber and turpentine camps, where nobody was at home at all. The style dates from the early 1870s.<ref name=Paul />
|author=Elliot Paul
|title=
|source=''That Crazy American Music'' (1957)
}}

===="Fast Western" connection to Marshall and Harrison County, Texas====
Max Harrison (in the book ''Jazz'' edited by Hentoff and McCarthy in 1959) and [[Robert "Mack" McCormick|Mack McCormick]] (in the liner notes to his Treasury of Field Recordings, Vol. 2) concluded that "Fast Western" was the first term by which boogie-woogie was known.  He stated that "in [[Houston]], [[Dallas]], and [[Galveston]]—all Negro piano players played that way. This style was often referred to as a 'fast western' or 'fast blues' as differentiated from the 'slow blues' of [[New Orleans]] and [[St. Louis]]. At these gatherings the [[ragtime]] and blues boys could easily tell from what section of the country a man came, even going so far as to name the town, by his interpretation of a piece."<ref>Campbell, E. Simms Campbell, ''Jazzmen: The Story of Hot Jazz Told in the Lives of the Men Who Created It'', 1939, Chapter 4: "Blues", pp. 112–113.</ref>

According to Tennison, when he interviewed Lee Ree Sullivan in [[Texarkana]] in 1986, Sullivan told him that he was familiar with "Fast Western" and "Fast Texas" as terms to refer to boogie-woogie in general, but not to denote the use of any specific bass figure used in boogie-woogie. Sullivan said that "Fast Western" and "Fast Texas" were terms that derived from the Texas Western Railroad Company of Harrison County.<ref name="Lee Ree Sullivan 1986">Interview with Lee Ree Sullivan, Boogie Woogie pianist, 1986, Texarkana, AR-TX, by John Tennison and Alfred Tennison, Jr.</ref> The company was chartered on February 16, 1852, and changed its name to "Southern Pacific" in 1856. It built its first track from [[Marshall, Texas]] Swanson's Landing at Caddo Lake in 1857.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/eqt20 |title=TEXAS WESTERN RAILROAD &#124; The Handbook of Texas Online&#124; Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) |website=Tshaonline.org |access-date=2016-10-05}}</ref> (This Texas-based "Southern Pacific" was not connected to the more well known [[Southern Pacific Transportation Company|Southern Pacific]] originating in San Francisco, California.) The Southern Pacific of Texas was bought by the newly formed [[Texas and Pacific Railway]] on March 21, 1872.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Werner |first1=George C. |title=Texas Western Railroad |url=https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/texas-western-railroad |website=Handbook of Texas Online |publisher=Texas State Historical Association |access-date=6 April 2021}}</ref>

Although the Texas Western Railroad Company changed its name to Southern Pacific, Sullivan said the name "Texas Western" stuck among the slaves who constructed the railroad.<ref name="Lee Ree Sullivan 1986" />

====Railroad connection to Marshall and Harrison County, Texas====
A key to identifying the geographical area in which boogie-woogie originated is understanding the relationship of boogie-woogie music with the steam railroad, both in the sense of how the music might have been influenced by sounds associated with the arrival of steam locomotives as well as the cultural impact the sudden emergence of the railroad might have had.

The railroad did not arrive in northeast Texas as an extension of track from existing lines from the north or the east. Rather, the first railroad locomotives and iron rails were brought to northeast Texas via steamboats from New Orleans via the Mississippi and Red Rivers and Caddo Lake to Swanson's Landing, located on the Louisiana–Texas state line. Beginning with the formation of the Texas Western Railroad Company in Marshall, Texas, through the subsequent establishment in 1871 of the Texas and Pacific Railway company, which located its headquarters and shops there, Marshall was the only railroad hub in the Piney Woods of northeast Texas at the time the music developed. The sudden appearance of steam locomotives and the building of mainline tracks and tap lines to serve logging operations was pivotal to the creation of the music in terms of its sound and rhythm. It was also crucial to the rapid migration of the musical style from the rural barrel house camps to the cities and towns served by the Texas and Pacific Railway Company.

<blockquote>Although the neighboring states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Missouri would also produce boogie-woogie players and their boogie-woogie tunes, and despite the fact that Chicago would become known as the center for this music through such pianists as [[Jimmy Yancey]], [[Albert Ammons]], and [[Meade Lux Lewis|Meade "Lux" Lewis]], Texas was home to an environment that fostered creation of boogie-style: the lumber, cattle, turpentine, and oil industries, all served by an expanding railway system from the northern corner of East Texas to the Gulf Coast and from the Louisiana border to [[Dallas]] and West Texas.<ref>David Oliphant, ''Texan Jazz'', University of Texas Press, 1996, p. 75.</ref></blockquote>

[[Alan Lomax]] wrote:

<blockquote>Anonymous black musicians, longing to grab a train and ride away from their troubles, incorporated the rhythms of the steam locomotive and the moan of their whistles into the new dance music they were playing in jukes and dance halls. Boogie-woogie forever changed piano playing, as ham-handed black piano players transformed the instrument into a polyrhythmic railroad train.<ref>Alan Lomax, Chapter 4, "Lonesome Whistles", p. 170, ''The Land Where the Blues Began'', New York: The New Press, 1993.</ref></blockquote>

In the 1986 television broadcast of Britain's ''[[The South Bank Show]]'' about boogie-woogie, music historian [[Paul Oliver]] noted:

<blockquote>Now the conductors were used to the [[logging camp]] pianists clamoring aboard, telling them a few stories, jumping off the train, getting into another logging camp, and playing again for eight hours, barrel house. In this way the music got around—all through Texas—and eventually, of course, out of Texas. Now when this new form of piano music came from Texas, it moved out towards Louisiana. It was brought by people like [[George W. Thomas]], an early pianist who was already living in New Orleans by about 1910 and writing New Orleans Hop Scop Blues", which really has some of the characteristics of the music that we came to know as Boogie.<ref name="Boogie Woogie 1986"/></blockquote>

Paul Oliver also wrote that George W. Thomas "composed the theme of the New Orleans Hop Scop Blues—in spite of its title—based on the blues he had heard played by the pianists of East Texas."<ref>Oliver, Paul, ''The Story of the Blues'', London, 1969, p. 85.</ref> On February 12, 2007, Oliver confirmed to John Tennison that it was [[Sippie Wallace]] who told Oliver that performances by East Texas pianists had formed the basis for George Thomas's "Hop Scop Blues".<ref>Interview with Paul Oliver by John Tennison, February 12, 2007.</ref>

Brothers [[George Washington Thomas|George Thomas]] and [[Hersal Thomas]] migrated from Texas to Chicago and brought boogie-woogie with them, influencing a number of pianists, including Jimmy Yancey, Meade Lux Lewis, and Albert Ammons.{{Citation needed|date=June 2021}} Many elements now recognized as foundational elements of boogie-woogie are present in their 1922 song "The Fives".{{Citation needed|date=June 2021}}

====Texas and Pacific Railway stops associated with names for boogie-woogie left-hand bass lines====
Early generation boogie-woogie players recognized basic boogie-woogie bass lines by geographical locations with which they associated them. Lee Ree Sullivan identified a number of these left hand bass lines for Tennison in 1986.<ref name="Lee Ree Sullivan 1986"/> From the primitive to the complex, those identifications indicate that the most primitive form of the music was associated with Marshall, Texas—and that the left-hand bass lines grew more complex as the distance from Marshall increased.

The most primitive of these left hand bass lines is the one that was called "the Marshall". It is a simple, four-beats-to-the-bar figure. The second-most primitive bass-line, called "the Jefferson", is also four-beats-to-the-bar, but goes down in pitch on the last note in each four-note cycle. It has been suggested that this downturn in pitch reveals a possible New Orleans influence. [[Jefferson, Texas]], about 17 miles north of Marshall, was the westernmost port of a steamboat route that connected to New Orleans via Caddo Lake, the Red River, and the Mississippi River.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hgj02 |title=JEFFERSON, TX (MARION COUNTY) |work=[[The Handbook of Texas|The Handbook of Texas Online]] |publisher=Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) |access-date=2016-10-05}}</ref>

The remaining bass lines rise in complexity with distance from Marshall, Texas as one would expect variations and innovations would occur as the territory in which the music has been introduced expands.

====Marshall and Harrison County, Texas, and the origin of boogie-woogie====
In January 2010, John Tennison summarized his research into the origins of boogie-woogie with the conclusion that Marshall, Texas is "the municipality whose boundaries are most likely to encompass or be closest to the point on the map which is the geographic center of gravity for all instances of Boogie Woogie performance between 1870 and 1880".

Tennison states:

<blockquote>Given the account of Elliot Paul, and given that Lead Belly witnessed boogie-woogie in 1899 in the Arklatex; and given the North to South migration of the Thomas family; and given the Texas & Pacific headquarters in Marshall in the early 1870s; and given that Harrison County had the largest slave population in the state of Texas; and given the fact that the best-documented and largest-scale turpentine camps in Texas did not occur until after 1900 in Southeast Texas, it is most probable that boogie-woogie spread from Northeast to Southeast Texas, rather than from Southeast to Northeast Texas, or by having developed diffusely with an even density over all of the Piney Woods of East Texas. It would not be surprising if there was as yet undiscovered evidence of the earliest boogie-woogie performances buried (metaphorically or literally) in Northeast Texas.</blockquote>

On May 13, 2010, the Marshall City Commission enacted an official declaration naming Marshall as the "birthplace" of boogie-woogie music, and embarked on a program to encourage additional historical research and to stimulate interest in and appreciation for the early African-American culture in northeast Texas that played a vital role in creating boogie-woogie music.<ref>Lee Hancock, Dallas Morning News, June 18, 2010.</ref> "Birthplace of Boogie Woogie" was registered by the Marshall Convention and Visitors on June 21, 2011.

====Development of modern boogie-woogie====
A song titled "[[Tin Roof Blues]]" was published in 1923 by the Clarence Williams Publishing Company. Compositional credit is given to [[Richard M. Jones]]. The Jones composition uses a boogie bass in the introduction with some variation throughout. In February 1923, [[Joseph Samuels]]' Tampa Blue Jazz Band recorded the George W. Thomas number "The Fives" for [[Okeh Records]], considered the first example of jazz band boogie-woogie.

[[Jimmy Blythe]]'s recording of "Chicago Stomps" from April 1924 is sometimes called the first complete boogie-woogie piano solo record.

The first boogie-woogie hit was "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" by [[Pinetop Smith]], recorded in 1928 and first released in 1929. Smith's record was the first boogie-woogie recording to be a commercial hit, and helped establish "boogie-woogie" as the name of the style. It was closely followed by another example of pure boogie-woogie, "[[Honky Tonk Train Blues]]" by Meade Lux Lewis, recorded by [[Paramount Records]](1927), first released in March 1930. The performance emulated a railroad trip, perhaps lending credence to the "train theory".