Tuesday Minor: Early Blues Piano 1: The 1920s and '30s.
Level: All/Intermediate
This class will introduce you to some of the seminal blues piano players from the first two decades of recorded blues, including Cow Cow Davenport, Pinetop Smith, Charles Avery, Charlie Spand, Leroy Carr, Clarence Lofton, Montana Taylor, Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson. There will be some listening samples and, where possible, biographical stories. We will look more closely at some of the songs from that era which have become blues classics, such as Davenport's "Cow Cow Blues" with its distinctive left-hand riff that later became the template for songs like Professor Longhair's "Mess Around". We'll also look at some of the classic songs by Leroy Carr that became blues standards, for example "How Long Blues", "Midnight Hour Blues" and "Blues Before Sunrise". (Carr's songs have been covered by the likes of Elmore James, John Lee Hooker, Elvin Bishop, Lou Rawls and Eric Clapton and remain part of the blues "canon".)