New York Boogie-Woogie

"New York Boogie-Woogie" (acrylic on canvas) 38" x 32"
Boogie-woogie originated as an African American style of piano-based blues as early as the 1870s. It is characterized by a regular bass figure in the left hand and is transposed according to chord changes.
 




Over time, the style was extended from piano to three pianos at once, guitar, big band, country and even gospel.

In 1938 and 1939, concerts produced by John Hammond in Carnegie Hall brought Boogie-woogie into the limelight. Concerts featured Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson and included "Roll 'Em Pete," which is now considered an early "rock and roll" song.

After the Carnegie Hall concerts, swing bands began incorporating the boogie-woogie beat into their music. Tommy Dorsey's band even had a hit in 1938 with an updated version of "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie."

Boogie-woogie came to the forefront in the visual arts with Piet Mondrian's  unfinished painting, "Victory Boogie Woogies" which has been in the collection of the Germeentemuseum in The Hague since 1998, having been purchased from a private collector for 35 million euros.

George Rothacker's painting "New York Boogie Woogie" is in tribute to both Mondrian and the musicians who created an art form that got America "swingin'."