It was quite difficult to dance to the Blues. And even if you were skilled enough on your feet to pull it off, the sentiment and mood of most Blues tracks didn’t lend itself too well to strutting your stuff. So Boogie Woogie was invented at some point in the early 1900′s and grew up alongside the Blues as its more out-going, upbeat, sister on the dance-floor – whilst the Blues sat in the corner and drank.
Meade was one of its early commercial pioneers, releasing his first vinyl as early as 1927. But Boogie Woogie’s heyday was from around 1936 until just after WWII when its younger kid sister Rock’n'Roll started turning up at the party.
Recorded 1936.
Availability. Meade recorded ‘Honky Tonk’ several times on vinyl starting in 1927. This version, the best I think, is from 1936 and is available on the Document Records CD ‘Lewis, Ammons & Johnson – 1936-1941′ which also features the other two great 1930′s Boogie Woogiers, Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons: Amazon
this is pretty great, except it always reminds me that Keith Emerson did a version of it (thats a bad thing btw)