| "Crazy About My Baby" | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Single by Blind Roosevelt Graves | |
| B-side | "Bustin' The Jug" |
| Released | 1929 |
| Recorded | 1929 |
| Genre | Boogie woogie |
| Length | 3:10 |
| Label | Paramount |
| Songwriter(s) | Le Moise Roosevelt Graves |
"Crazy About My Baby" is a boogie woogie song, first recorded by Blind Roosevelt Graves in 1929. It was perhaps the first recorded to contain all elements of what would come to be called rock and roll, and has been described as the first song of that genre. [1] [2]
Rock and roll evolved gradually out of boogie woogie, itself a fusion of blues, early ragtime-style jazz, religious and dance music like honky tonk. "Crazy About My Baby" contained all key elements of 1950s rock and roll, over two decades earlier. For example, it is a song with accelerated blues guitar riffs and a danceable back beat, recognized as foreshadowing Chuck Berry compositions. [3] [4] It is therefore on a short list along with "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" (which coined the name for the genre) as "the first rock and roll recording".
In 1929, Le Moise "Blind Roosevelt" Graves and his brother Uaroy [1] began recording boogie woogie music, a style that had acquired its name from the Pinetop song a year earlier. Among their early songs are the first known recording of "Guitar Boogie", and "Crazy About My Baby". They were generally credited either as "Blind Roosevelt Graves and Brother" or the "Mississippi Jook Band". [5]
The song is in the "blues in B flat" mode typical of 1950s rock, with Graves on guitar and vocals, session musician William Ezell on piano, Graves' brother playing tambourine, and Baby Jay James playing cornet. [1]
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes, usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It originated from African-American music such as jazz, rhythm and blues, boogie-woogie, gospel, jump blues, as well as country music. While rock and roll's formative elements can be heard in blues records from the 1920s and in country records of the 1930s, the genre did not acquire its name until 1954.
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Jump blues is an up-tempo style of blues, jazz, and boogie woogie usually played by small groups and featuring horn instruments. It was popular in the 1940s and was a precursor of rhythm and blues and rock and roll. Appreciation of jump blues was renewed in the 1990s as part of the swing revival.
Clarence Smith, better known as Pinetop Smith or Pine Top Smith, was an American boogie-woogie style blues pianist. His hit tune "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie" featured rhythmic "breaks" that were an essential ingredient of ragtime music, but also a fundamental foreshadowing of rock and roll. The song was also the first known use of the term "boogie woogie" on a record, and cemented that term as the moniker for the genre.
The origins of rock and roll are complex. Rock and roll emerged as a defined musical style in the United States in the early to mid-1950s. It derived most directly from the rhythm and blues music of the 1940s, which itself developed from earlier blues, the beat-heavy jump blues, boogie woogie, up-tempo jazz, and swing music. It was also influenced by gospel, country and western, and traditional folk music. Rock and roll in turn provided the main basis for the music that, since the mid-1960s, has been generally known simply as rock music.
Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins was an American blues pianist. He played with some of the most influential blues and rock-and-roll performers of his time and received numerous honors, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and induction into the Blues Hall of Fame.
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"Boogie Chillen'" or "Boogie Chillun" is a blues song first recorded by John Lee Hooker in 1948. It is a solo performance featuring Hooker's vocal, electric guitar, and rhythmic foot stomps. The lyrics are partly autobiographical and alternate between spoken and sung verses. The song was his debut record release and in 1949, it became the first "down-home" electric blues song to reach number one in the R&B records chart.
Le Moise Roosevelt Graves, credited as Blind Roosevelt Graves, was an American blues guitarist and singer, who recorded both sacred and secular music in the 1920s and 1930s.
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"Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" is a song initially recorded on December 29, 1928 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It was released on March 1, 1929 by Clarence "Pinetop" Smith on Vocalion Records, a piano rag that cemented boogie-woogie as the name of its entire genre, which eventually evolved into rock and roll. Along with "Crazy About My Baby", "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" is sometimes cited as "the first rock and roll song", being an early instance of a danceable 12 bar blues with backbeat.
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