Origins of Boogie Woogie Piano

[kh1958]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/music/stories/DN-sharriff_18ent.ART0.State.Edition2.297b21a.html

Pianist helps Marshall, Texas, validate claim as boogie's birthplace

12:00 AM CDT on Friday, June 18, 2010

By LEE HANCOCK / The Dallas Morning News

lhancock@dallasnews.com

MARSHALL, Texas – Omar Sharriff thought boogie-woogie piano was his one-way ticket out of town. When he left Marshall in 1955, he never looked back, even as his life narrowed from big shows to a dingy Sacramento, Calif., apartment, meals-on-wheels and gigs that barely covered cab fare.

Then came a phone call from a Texas music historian, who said he'd prove that Sharriff's hometown gave birth to boogie-woogie piano. The historian knew that Sharriff's father played boogie in East Texas and might have learned it from the genre's originators. That made 72-year-old Sharriff Marshall's last, best living link.

Sharriff thought someone was playing a joke, even after the part-time historian, a San Antonio psychiatrist named John Tennison, asked to visit him in California. Sharriff had hated Marshall ever since he saw another black teenager get beaten up by rednecks on the courthouse lawn while white cops stood by. Sharriff left as soon as he could, certain that staying meant prison or an early grave....

[AllenLowe]

nice story, but generally bogus - no real proof provided. No one really knows where the style started, most likely it was just a generalized idea and way of playing that spread itself around.

[paul secor]

Seems like a pretty shakey premise, but good for Marshall, Texas that they had a concert/celebration honoring the music and one of their own.

Edited June 18, 2010 by paul secor

[kh1958]

I would have liked to have heard the concert, but of course there was no publicity in Dallas.