Piano | All About Blues Music

PINETOP PERKINS

Eighteen-year-old Joe Willie Perkins started out as a guitar-picker in piano player Willie Love‘s band, which made many appearances on Rice ‘Sonny Boy II’ Miller’s King Biscuit Radio Show. This early career was cut short for Joe Willie when an angry knife-wielding chorus girl severed the tendons in his left arm. Unable to manage his…

JOE LIGGINS

Joe Liggins took his record ‘The Honeydripper’ to the top of the R&B charts for a record 18 weeks in 1945, and when he named his band The Honeydrippers he kept them among the best sellers for ten years. Their infectious jump-Blues was fuelled by the optimistic post-WWII atmosphere of the day, where everybody seemed…

FATS DOMINO

Some say, “The Blues had a Baby and they called it Rock’n’Roll.” Willie Dixon said, “Blues is the roots and the other music is the fruits.” Before anyone knew what Rock’n’Roll was, the rollicking good-time R&B coming out of the West Coast and New Orleans showed the direct connection between uptempo Blues and the music…

ROOSEVELT SYKES

‘The Honeydripper’, Roosevelt Sykes was probably the most important of the several piano Blues innovators who came out of St.Louis the inter-war years. This square cut figure with the elegant suit and the fat cigar was capable of pounding the keys in a rowdy barrelhouse style and he could boogie-woogie with the best of them,…

JOHNNY ‘Big Moose’ WALKER

Shy, retiring characters don’t get called ‘Big Moose’, and loud barrelhouse pianist Johnny Walker got his tag from wearing his hair long and shaggy, but also for his wild personality. He was hugely popular with his fellow musicians for his energy and humour, and onstage he sometimes performed wearing a gorilla mask. When on tour…

MEMPHIS SLIM

Barrel-house and Boogie-woogie pianists don’t come much bigger than Memphis Slim. Standing six-six with a distinctive streak of white hair, this handsome and urbane figure knew how to cut a dash. His command of the 88s and his clear articulate vocals gave him an unmistakable musical style too, which he used to great effect in…

HUGH LAURIE

Highest paid actor in a TV series for his work in ‘House’, film-star, best-selling novelist and hilarious partner to Steven Fry in UK comedies, Hugh is an unlikely Blues icon. His first album, ‘Let Them Talk’ featured 10 classic Blues songs, and included guest appearances from Dr. John, Tom Jones and Irma Thomas. It made…

MEADE ‘LUX’ LEWIS

This ace ‘Boogie-Woogie’ pianist rose to national fame in the late 30’s when his rocking keyboard music was the current dance craze. Boogie-woogie had enjoyed some popularity in Chicago ten years earlier when Lux’s tune, ‘Honky Tonk Train Blues’ was a hit and became a piano standard, but when the style went nationwide, ‘Lux’ lived…