ABSTRACT
Tracing back the history of a particular style in country music can sometimes lead into strange byways. Through the 1940s, there was a fad in the music for “country boogie,” exemplified by hits like Moon Mullican’s “Cherokee Boogie,” Arthur Smith’s “Guitar Boogie,” the Turner Brothers’ “Zeb’s Mountain Boogie,” and even a “Hadacol Boogie,” named after a well-known patent medicine. The original “Boogie Woogie” was a driving eight-to-the-bar piano solo by a Chicago pianist named Pine Top Smith. He had recorded it in 1928, and it became a major hit, but Pine Top didn’t get to enjoy it: He was shot and killed in 1929. A big-band version of his song became an even bigger hit in 1938 when it was recorded by bandleader Tommy Dorsey, and in the late 1930s there was a renewed interest in traditional boogie woogie pianists like Albert Ammons and Meade Luxe Lewis.
