Piano | All About Blues Music

ALLEN TOUSSAINT

The Godfather of funky New Orleans R&B, Allen Toussaint’s talents as a singer, pianist, songwriter, producer and arranger shaped the sound of The Crescent City for decades. As a solo artist Allen had a worldwide best-selling record with Southern Nights in 1975, but arguably his most important work was the vision he employed in the…

AMOS MILBURN

Pianist and singer Amos Milburn was one of the biggest R&B stars of the post WWII years. His signature tune ‘Chicken Shack Boogie’ went to No.1 in the R&B charts and he repeated the achievement three more times. He had a string of up-tempo hits with drinking songs like ‘One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer’,…

SPECKLED RED

Speckled Red was a boogie-woogie pianist who was a fixture on the club scene in Memphis and St. Louis in the 30s and 40s. His proto-rap ‘The Dirty Dozens’ was a hit in 1929, and he recorded many versions and updates over the years. Rufus Perryman was the birth name of Speckled Red. He and…

PEETIE WHEATSTRAW

St.Louis pianist and singer Peetie Wheatstraw was not a great player- his piano skills were little more than functional- but his singing, with it’s almost arrogant self-confidence, his trademark ‘Ooh well,well’, and his clever way with a lyric made him one of the best-selling Blues artists of the 30s. William Bunch of Ripley TN arrived…

BIG CHIEF ELLIS

Self-taught pianist Wilbert Ellis played his Blues around Birmingham AL before he was drafted in 1939. He showed up on the Blues scene in New York after WWII, where he played the clubs with many Blues players as they passed through town. ‘Big Chief’ recorded with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee for Capitol but seems…

BLIND JOHN DAVIS

Blind John Davis was an accomplished session pianist who played on many seminal records in Chicago in the 30s and 40s and who was later a missionary of the Blues as it took root in Europe. John went blind at nine years of age and began playing piano in his father’s Chicago ‘speakeasy’ in the…

LITTLE RICHARD

If you took a Gospel shouter, some pounding New Orleans piano R&B, some very cheeky lyrics and an outrageous stage personality, you still wouldn’t quite have the phenomenon that is Little Richard. As R&B and jump-blues transformed into Rock’n’Roll in the mid-50s, Richard was at the cutting edge, all over the radio, the juke-box and…

‘COW COW’ DAVENPORT

‘Cow Cow’ Davenport was a little known Alabama ragtime pianist who made a lasting impression on piano Blues when he incorporated walking bass figures into his left-hand style and played them with a verve and pace that became known as boogie-woogie. A self taught player, Charles Davenport left home as a teenager to accompany singers…

MERCY DEE WALTON

Born in Waco Texas, Mercy Dee took the Sunset Route to play his piano in California just before WWII. His first disc was ‘Lonesome cabin Blues’ for the Spire label, but he soon had a national hit for Specialty with his song ‘One Room Country Shack’, later made even more famous by Mose Allison. Equally…

LEROY CARR

At a time when record companies were scouring the Delta for country Blues talent, Leroy Carr of Indianapolis came along with his sophisticated piano Blues that was rooted in an extremely different urban setting. His measured and melodic style and crooning vocals, especially in the company of his guitarist Scrapper Blackwell, introduced a new, more…