Albert Ammons & Meade Lux Lewis - The First Day

Album: The First Day
Size: 172,2 MB
Time: 74:27
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 1992
Styles: Piano blues, jazz, boogie woogie
Art: Full

1. The Blues, Part One (4:14)
2. The Blues, Part Two (4:03)
3. The Blues, Part Three (4:03)
4. The Blues, Part Four (3:55)
5. Boogie Woogie Stomp (3:38)
6. Chicago In Mind (4:02)
7. Suitcase Blues (3:52)
8. Boogie Woogie Blues (3:43)
9. The Blues, Part Five (4:12)
10. Melancholy (4:06)
11. Solitude (4:12)
12. Untitled Ammons Original (4:08)
13. Bass Goin' Crazy (3:22)
14. Backwater Blues (4:06)
15. Changes In Boogie Woogie (4:08)
16. Twos And Fews (4:34)
17. Nagasaki (5:49)
18. Easy Rider Blues (4:10)

Producer Alfred Lion was very impressed when he attended John Hammond's Spirituals to Swing concert of Dec. 23, 1938, which had introduced boogie woogie pianists Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis to New York audiences. Two weeks later, he started the Blue Note label by recording nine Ammons solos, eight by Lewis, and a pair of heated duets during a single day. All of the music (except an untitled original by Meade Lux Lewis slated to be issued by Blue Note in the future) is on this single CD. Ammons, the more forceful (relatively speaking) of the two pianists, generally takes honors, but there are plenty of rewarding performances, including Lewis' five-part "The Blues," Ammons' "Boogie Woogie Stomp," and their duet on "Nagasaki." Highly recommended to collectors who do not already own Mosaic's more extensive three-LP limited-edition Ammons/Lewis set. /Scott Yanow, AllMusic

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Albert Ammons - Boogie Woogie Stomp

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 46:53
Size: 107.3 MB
Styles: Piano blues
Year: 1998
Art: Front

[2:06] 1. Saturday Night
[2:23] 2. Monday Struggle
[1:46] 3. Try Again
[1:46] 4. Jesse James
[2:27] 5. Mama's Blues
[2:22] 6. Sweet Patootie
[2:46] 7. Chapel Blues
[2:19] 8. Has Anyone Seen Corrine
[2:21] 9. Bear Cat Crawl
[2:43] 10. Hersal Blues
[3:24] 11. Dupree Blues
[2:48] 12. St. Louis Blues
[2:50] 13. Four O'clock Blues
[1:33] 14. Shout For Joy
[3:53] 15. Yancey Special
[3:11] 16. Three Little Words
[2:34] 17. Bear Cat Shuffle
[3:33] 18. Boogie Woogie Stomp

Bass – Herbert Marshall; Piano – Albert Ammons, Meade "Lux" Lewis, Pete Johnson. Tracks 01-14: The Hotel Sherman Recordings, 1939. Tracks 15-18: The Frank Lyons Studio Recordings, 1938.

Previously unreleased private recordings from Chicago, featuring ALBERT AMMONS, MEADE LUX LEWIS, PETE JOHNSON. With Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson. 14 of the 18 songs were recorded in September/October '39 at the Hotel Sherman, Chicago for radio broadcast. The remainder are from a late '38 recording at Frank Lyon's home studio. Highlights include Lewis' jive commentary on "Three Little Words" where he addresses fictitious dancers and the notorious landlady at a rent party and the duet on two pianos by Ammons and Lewis on "Saturday Night". Boogie Woogie Stomp is also the name of a book about Ammons by Christopher I. Page (pub. Northeast Ohio Jazz Society, 1997) who provided the source material for the Hotel Sherman material.

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Meade Lux Lewis - Barrel House Piano

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 26:34
Size: 60.8 MB
Styles: Piano blues, Boogie woogie
Year: 1973/2010
Art: Front

[2:34] 1. How Long Blues
[2:39] 2. Someday, Sweetheart
[2:16] 3. Mike
[2:34] 4. Darktown Strutters' Ball
[2:59] 5. Birth Of The Blues
[3:06] 6. Tidal Boogie
[2:51] 7. Mardi Gras Drag
[2:30] 8. Ja-Da
[3:06] 9. Basin Street Blues
[1:54] 10. Bugle Call Rag

Meade Lux Lewis was recorded in spurts during his musical career. This record features Lewis on a metallic-sounding honky tonk piano, accompanied by an unidentified guitarist and bassist. This gives the album a very dated sound that makes it less desirable than if he had recorded the same tracks on a normal piano. Boogie-woogie aficionados will find desirable material such as Lewis' revival of his "Six Wheel Chaser," tho once popular but now nearly forgotten standards "Jada" and "Darktown Strutters Ball," and enjoyable versions of "Bugle Call Rag" and "St. Louis Blues." Although reissued as an LP by Everest and in 1994 as a Jasmine release under the same title, only the original record has all sixteen tracks; six are omitted from the later releases. ~Ken Dryden

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Meade 'Lux' Lewis - Honky Tonk Train Blues

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 50:34
Size: 115.8 MB
Styles: Piano blues
Year: 2008
Art: Front

[4:18] 1. Honky Tonk Train Blues
[3:39] 2. Bass On Top
[3:52] 3. Six Wheel Chaser
[3:59] 4. Tell Your Story
[3:57] 5. Chicago Flyer
[4:16] 6. Blues Whistle
[3:39] 7. Rising Tide Blues
[4:06] 8. Doll House Boogie
[2:58] 9. Denapas Parade
[2:29] 10. The Boogie Tidal
[2:12] 11. Randinis Boogie
[2:16] 12. Lux's Boogie
[2:27] 13. Yancey's Pride
[2:08] 14. Glendale Glide
[4:08] 15. Yancey Special

Lewis was born in Louisville, Kentucky in September 1905 (September 3, 4 and 13 have all been cited as his date of birth in various sources). In his youth he was influenced by the pianist Jimmy Yancey. His father, a guitarist who made two recordings of his own, introduced Meade to music and arranged for violin lessons. He gave up the violin at age 16, shortly after his father's death, and switched to the piano. The nickname "Lux" was given to him by his boyhood friends. He would imitate a couple of characters from a popular comic strip in Chicago, Alphonse and Gaston, and stroke an imaginary beard as part of the routine. His friends started calling him the Duke of Luxembourg because of this, and the name stuck for the rest of his life. He became friends with Albert Ammons during childhood, a friendship that would last throughout their lives. They went to the same school together briefly and they practiced and learned the piano together on the Ammons family piano.

A 1927 rendition of "Honky Tonk Train Blues" on the Paramount Records label marked his recording debut. He remade it for Parlophone in 1935 and for Victor in 1937 and a recording exists of a Camel Caravan broadcast, including "Honky Tonk Train Blues" from New York City in 1939. His performance at John Hammond's historic From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall in 1938 brought Lewis to public attention. Following the event, Lewis and two other performers from that concert, Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, often appeared as a trio and became the leading boogie-woogie pianists of the day. They performed an extended engagement at Café Society, toured as a trio, and inspired the formation of Blue Note Records in 1939. Their success led to a decade-long boogie-woogie craze, with big band swing treatments by Tommy Dorsey, Will Bradley, and others; and numerous country boogie and early rock and roll songs.

Lewis was quite fond of the Minneapolis area, where a niece lived, and would visit as often as he could. He appeared annually at the White House Restaurant (no longer extant) in Golden Valley. He began a successful three-week engagement there in May 1964. Around two a.m. the morning of Sunday, June 7, leaving the parking lot of the White House and heading east on Olson Memorial Highway, Lewis' Chrysler Imperial was rear-ended by one Ronald Bates, who was traveling an estimated 80 mph. Lewis' car was pushed 400 feet, impacting a tree and killing him instantly. He was 58. Bates survived, but his passenger died the following day.

Honky Tonk Train Blues

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Various - That's Chicago's South Side

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 74:57
Size: 171.6 MB
Styles: Chicago blues
Year: 2002
Art: Front

[2:49] 1. Sam Theard - That's Chicago's South Side
[3:15] 2. Peetie Wheatstraw - Pete Wheatstraw
[2:59] 3. Roosevelt Sykes - Devil's Island Gin Blues
[3:16] 4. Amos Easton - Sail On, Little Girl, Sail On
[3:27] 5. Joe Pullum - Black Gal, What Makes Your Head So Hard
[2:49] 6. Lil Johnson - I Lost My Baby
[2:50] 7. Big Bill Broonzy - Keep Your Hands Off Her
[2:55] 8. Leroy Carr - When The Sun Goes Down
[2:51] 9. Memphis Minnie - Selling My Pork Chops
[3:06] 10. The Sparks Brothers - Every Day I Have The Blues
[2:48] 11. Walter Davis - Sweet Sixteen
[2:57] 12. Meade Lux Lewis - Honky Tonk Train Blues
[2:39] 13. Richard M. Jones - Trouble In Mind
[3:21] 14. Merline Johnson - He Roars Like A Lion
[3:01] 15. Robert Lee Mccoy - Prowling Nighthawk
[2:58] 16. Sonny Boy Williamson I - Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
[3:09] 17. Speckled Red - You Got To Fix It
[2:41] 18. Washboard Sam - Bucket's Got A Hole In It
[2:45] 19. Tommy Mcclennan - Bottle It Up And Go
[2:37] 20. Jazz Gillum - Key To The Highway
[2:56] 21. Tampa Red - Don't You Lie To Me
[2:53] 22. Johnny Temple - What Is That She Got
[3:10] 23. St. Louis Jimmy Oden - Goin' Down To Slow
[3:17] 24. James Yank Rachel - Hobo Blues
[3:15] 25. Lonnie Johnson - He's A Jelly Roll Baker

Ask a rock & roller to discuss Chicago's contributions to the blues, and he/she is likely to talk about Chess Records and electric post-World War II greats like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, Little Walter, Buddy Guy, and Junior Wells. But the Windy City had a healthy blues scene long before the rise of Chess -- one that went back to the days of Al Capone and Prohibition. Spanning 1931-1942, When the Sun Goes Down, Vol. 3: That's Chicago's South Side spotlights the acoustic pre-Chess, pre-Muddy Waters era of Chicago blues -- an era that helped pave the way for Chess Records as well as rock & roll. The recordings on this excellent CD point to fact that, long before Chicago became synonymous with electric blues, the city had its own unique blues sound. Gems like Sonny Boy Williamson's "Good Morning, Schoolgirl" (1937), Roosevelt Sykes' "Devil's Island Gin Blues" (1933), and Tommy McClennan's "Bottle It Up and Go" (1939) are quite different from the blues that were coming from the Deep South in the '30s and early '40s -- these artists offer an acoustic sound, but a harder, tougher acoustic sound than the Southern country blues that were coming from Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee back then. Of course, some of the artists who blues fans associate with Chicago blues were originally from the South; Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, for example, were born in Mississippi. But when Southern bluesmen moved north and interacted with Chicago-based musicians, their music could easily take on a more urban outlook. And an urban outlook definitely prevails on this CD, which underscores the richness of Chicago's pre-Chess blues scene. ~Alex Henderson

That's Chicago's South Side

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Various - Picking The Blues: Boogie Woogie Pioneers Compiled By John Mayall

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 70:29
Size: 161.4 MB
Styles: Boogie Woogie Piano blues
Year: 2006
Art: Front

[3:09] 1. Cow Cow Davenport - Cow Cow Blues
[3:18] 2. Pinetop Smith - Jump Steady Blues
[3:16] 3. Charlie Spand - Moanin' The Blues
[3:01] 4. Romeo Nelson - Head Rag Hop
[3:10] 5. Wesley Wallace - Fanny Lee Blues
[2:53] 6. Little Brother Montgomery - No Special Rider Blues
[3:15] 7. Jabo Williams - Pratt City Blues
[3:18] 8. Turner Parrish - Fives
[2:58] 9. Walter Roland - Jookit Jookit
[2:26] 10. Cleo Brown - Boogie Woogie
[3:06] 11. Jesse James - Lonesome Day Blues
[3:39] 12. Albert Ammons - Bass Goin' Crazy
[4:02] 13. Pete Johnson - Holler Stomp
[2:41] 14. Jimmy Yancey - 35th And Dearborn
[3:51] 15. Meade Lux Lewis - Six Wheel Chaser
[2:36] 16. Jay Mcshann - Vine Street Boogie
[2:43] 17. Cripple Clarence Lofton - In The Mornin'
[2:56] 18. Big Maceo Merriweather - Chicago Breakdown
[2:46] 19. Montana Taylor - Indiana Avenue Stomp
[2:42] 20. Memphis Slim - Slim's Boogie
[3:56] 21. Speckled Red - Early In The Morning
[4:35] 22. Otis Spann - Otis In The Dark

British musician, bandleader, and blues historian John Mayall was tapped by the excellent jazz and blues archival label Document to dig through his record collection and present the best of the boogie-woogie pioneers. Not only did Mayall select the 22 songs for the disc, but he also wrote the liner notes in which he recalls his life-altering discovery of this music by hunting down used 78s back in the early '50s. The lineup Mayall chose speaks for itself. Not only does he pay tribute to the professors of boogie-woogie, but also a cross reference of blues pianists recorded between 1928 and 1960, none of which are represented by more than one track, serving the listener with a full scope of variations in style. ~Al Campbell

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