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Some of you already know this, but I’m currently teaching biology at the University of North Texas in Denton which has a noted jazz program.
The musicologists have been tracing the origins of boogie-woogie piano to the areas around Marshall and Shreveport. The current belief is it began camps for track workers and loggers with individuals who would get off a train, entertain the workers, and get back on the train very quickly (presumably after absconding with the money from a rigged dice or Faro game) to another location.
The left hand piano patterns were always referred to as “Tee Pee Stops” by the musicians with names like “Fast Texas” or “Fast Western” from the old Texas Western (before it became the T&P) or “The Marshall” or “The Fannin street” from a street in Shreveport notorious for its bars and “sportin’ women” in the 1890s. Someone finally figured out “Tee Pee stops” referred to stations on the T&P railroad and many of these patterns got more elaborate as one gets farther from Marshall. There is even a “Big Sandy” pattern invented in “Big Sand Switch” which was what the locals always called the town anyway.
So a case can be made the T&P began boogie woogie.
Jim Ogden
