15. Boogie Woogie Piano

n a period when jazz meant rhythm and the music and working with Bessie Smith on the vaudeville circuit. was played mostly for dancing, solo pianists were In his late 20s, Cow Cow teamed up with singer Dora I constantly searching for ways to attract attention. Carr. After playing theatres in the South, they went north Those with less musical skill than Art Tatum - and that (in 1923) to Pittsburgh and New York City. He said, "I includes almost everybody who ever played the piano ­ went directly to the Okeh record company and they sent had trouble trying to compete with the big bands to win me to Clarence Williams. I began to record my numbers the approval ofthe dance-crazy public. and Clarence began to publish them. One ofthe first was

o Some discovered they could please dancers with a "Cow Cow Blues." He later recalled, "I was trying to fast-paced blues style. They added repeated eighth notes imitate a train and originally called the song the 'Railroad in the bass line rather than quarter notes and repeated Blues.' I was trying to get in a part where the switchman figures, often mterspersed with single-note runs, with boarded the train from the cow-catcher on the front ofthe the right hand. The style came to be known as "boogie locomotive. The word 'cow' somehow stuck with me." woogie." Two of its most important boogie boogie He later began referring to himself as "Cow Cow." pianists had strong ties to Cleveland. Davenport claimed his 1923 recording of"Cow Cow Blues" was the first boogie woogie recording. Long Cow COW Davenport before the boogie woogie craze of the late 1930s and One of the earliest early '40s, Davenport took the basic 12-bar blues and blues piano players, added an eight-to-the-bar left hand bass line. Cow Cow Davenport, He made dozens of records as a leader and as a moved to Cleveland in singer, including "J Ain't No Iceman." Another early 1930 and spent the last song which he co-composed was "I'll Be Glad When 25 years of his life here You're Dead, You Rascal You." The Davenport song after playing in New became a classic vehicle for Louis Armstrong. Orleans ' historic Davenport also made a number of piano rolls of his Storyville district, primitive style. He carried dozens of rolls in the trunk performing with Bessie of his car and sold them at his performances, just as Smith, and composing a many o$er musicians later sold their records, tapes and number of songs, CDs at gigs. With his record and piano roll sales, Cow Cow Cow Davenport including some that Cow was making more money than he had ever made became boogie woogie before and later said, "I had to go back home and show classics. off." He said he "showed off (his singer) Dora (Carr) Charles Davenport was born in Anniston, Alabama too much and somebody took her away from me." in 1894, one ofeight children ofa minister and a church By 1927, Davenport found another musical partner organist. He taught himself to play the organ and began named Ivy Smith. They spent a great deal of time taking piano lessons at the age of 12. His religious performing in Chicago. parents objected to his playing blues and ragtime. "So, One night in the late 1920s in Pittsburgh, Davenport whenever I'd get a chance," he once told an interviewer, said he met a pianist named Pinetop Smith, who, in "I would slip away from my home to practice on some Davenport's words, "was trying to copy my piano style." neighbor' s piano." He said his grandmother had always Smith was also calling his piano music "boogie woogie," told him that if he disobeyed his parents, "The boogie but, according to Davenport, "Smith really didn't know man would get him." He began calling his piano music what he was playing." Ironically, in the mid-1930s, "boogie music." Smith' s "Pinetop' s Boogie" became the first widely­ When Davenport was 16, his parents, fed up with his recognized example ofthe boogie woogie style. Smith's interest in ragtime piano, sent him to the Alabama song was recorded by Bing Crosby and it triggered Theological Seminary. He was promptly expelled for national interest in the style. The Tommy Dorsey big playing ragtime or "boogie music." band made a record of "Boogie Woogie" and it sold He went to Birmingham and began playing for dancers more than four million copies. It became the most at honky tonk joints. When they began dancing to his popular of Dorsey' s many hit records. piano styles, he started calling his music boogie-woogie. While the music of his younger admirer was being When he was 20, Davenport went to Atlanta and got played nationally, Davenport was having trouble making jobs playing piano at bars and brothels. Within several a living as an entertainer. In 1930 (at the age of36), he years, he was touring the South with a carnival tent moved to Cleveland where his sister lived and opened a show, playing in the Storyville section ofNew Orleans, record shop. He continued to compose and tried to tour 162 Cleveland Jazz History several more times, but his popularity was fading and he Will Bradley to form a was forced to sell his tour bus. At one point, he opened new big band and hired a cafe in Cleveland. Slack to play piano and In the 1940s, several of Davenport's old songs were arrange. With so many resurrected. Inthe midst ofthe boogie woogie boom, Ella big bands playing at the Mae Morse, Ella Fitzgerald, and others made hit records time, success for the of his best remembered song, "Cow Cow Boogie." new Will Bradley-Ray After Davenport finally achieved some national McKinley band attention, he was afflicted with a partial paralysis that all depended on a but deprived him ofthe use ofhis right hand. Unable to distinctive sound. The play, he went to New York City in 1942, and worked as Bob Crosby Orchestra a washroom attendant at the famous Onyx Club, a had become popular by citadel of bebop, on 52nd Street. playing big band After regaining the use of his hand, he played a arrangements of Freddie Slack number of local gigs in Cleveland and married a singer dixieland jazz. named Peggy Taylor who also happened to be a snake McKinley and Slack had heard Cow Cow Davenport, charmer. Newspaperman Julian Krawcheck, who had Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons and others playing formed a jazz organization called the Hot Club of boogie woogie with small groups and wondered how a Cleveland, invited Davenport to play at some of the big band would sound playing boogie woogie jazz. They club' s sessions at the Cabin Club at East 105th and decided to experiment with the eight-to-the-bar form. Euclid. "He must have been in his late 50s," recalled McKinley remembered, "We were playing one of Krawcheck, "but he looked to be in his 60s." those songs one night at the Famous Door and two "One night, he brought his wife to sing and she songwriters were there. There was a part where I had a brot!ght a snake with her! Oh, my God," recalled drum break, and for some reason or other, instead of Krawcheck, "I was scared to death! 1 didn't know what playing the break, I sang out, to do. 1 wanted to stop the music and tell the people to Oh, beat me, daddy, eight to the bar! run like hell!" Krawcheck said Davenport's wife was After the set, McKinley said one of the songwriters never invited back. "called me over to the table and asked if they could In the early 1950s, Davenport and his wife became write a song using the vocal break." involved in theatrical productions at Cleveland' s "Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar," composed by Karamu House. Don Raye and Hughie Prince and played by the Will Davenport died of hardening of the arteries in 1955 Bradley Orchestra with drummer Ray McKinley and at the age of 61 at his home on East 92nd Street in pianist Slack became a big national hit. The band quickly Cleveland. He was buried in Cleveland's Evergreen made a series of other popular big band boogie woogie Cemetery. records including "Fry Me, Cookie, With a Can ofLard," Davenport never won the wide recognition he "Scrub Me, Mama, With a Boogie Beat," and "Bounce probably deserved as an early pioneer ofjazz piano, a Me, Brother, With a Solid Four." Slack became the developer of the boogie boogie style, and as the national personification ofthe boogie woogie piano style. composer of several classic jazz songs. Two years later (in 1941), Slack formed his own band, but he had little success until he hired a singer he Freddie Slack had met with the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra. Ella Mae Probably the most popular boogie woogie piano Morse's recordings with Slack's band of Davenport's player ofthe 1930s and '40s, Freddie Slack, a native of "Cow Cow Boogie" and "Blacksmith Blues" helped put La Crosse, Wisconsin, came to Cleveland in 1935 to the new Capitol Record Company in the black. play with the Ben Pollack Orchestra at the Mayfair Slack appeared in two Hollywood movies but gave Casino, a plush nightclub in the Ohio Theatre Building up the band business in the early 1950s. on Euclid Avenue. A year later, Slack left the Pollack In August of 1965, at the age of 55, Slack was found band and joined Jimmy Dorsey' s Orchestra which dead in his Hollywood apartment ofundetermined causes. included Cleveland trumpeter George Thow and It was 30 years after he had come to Cleveland to play at drummer Ray McKinley. the Mayfair Casino and 25 years after he had become the In 1939, McKinley teamed up with trombonist most popular boogie woogie piano player in the country.