A little gift of music — three minutes of Sammy Price and Sidney Catlett playing a boogie-woogie blues in July 1945:
To me, this is not simply piano, drums, and the blues. It is a small glowing exercise in bringing infinite variety into what could otherwise be a closed form. Listen to the textures — the varied and ever-shifting sound of Sidney’s drums alongside the piano, the shifting rhythms he and Sammy set up and move through, the varied harmonies and melodies. Of course, listened to casually from another room, “it’s just boogie-woogie.” But that would be so limiting, so unjust to the rich textures heard here.
And Sammy and Sidney did not set out to make a classic; they had time at the end of a King Jazz record session and decided to play some blues: this is what they casually and splendidly created.
This post is for my departed friend Michael Burgevin, who loved this record. And for Carl Sonny Leyland, who is deeply in the music and creates it infallibly: he understands!
May your happiness increase!
Mike Burgevin was a friend and tasty drummer who I would visit as often as possible at Brews on E 34th Street. His front line quartet would be a Fats Waller Rhythm Boy: Herman Autry, Al Casey with Jimmy Andrews on piano. Al Hall added on String Bass. Of course they
swung! I also saw Doc Cheatham, Jack Fine cornet sing “Make Me a Pallet on the Floor”. Who do you remember?