Bach and Boogie-Woogie

Boogie-woogie is a kind of blues piano playing in which the left hand drones a set bass phrase over & over, while the right hand goes to town with whatever variations the player can think up. Its form is identical with that of the classical passacaglia, a kind of dance music (of Spanish origin) that was old stuff to Bach's grandfather. Though boogie-woogie's mournful thump and clatter had long been heard in the humbler dives of New Orleans and Chicago, it was not taken up by the connoisseurs until 1938. In Manhattan the temple of boogie-woogie has been a subterranean Leftist cabaret in Greenwich Village called Cafe Society. Its high priests: Negroes Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, Meade Lux Lewis.

Last week a fourth stocky figure joined Cafe Society's three boogie-woogie graces. Though similarly barrel-shaped, the new comer was white and wore a beard. He was Proseur Elliot Paul, longtime Paris expatriate, onetime editor of the word-shattering magazine Transition, author of one good book, The Life and Death of a Spanish Town (TIME, June 28, 1937). A humdinger on the piano-accordion, Novelist Paul last winter got so interested in boogie-woogie that he took time off from writing detective stories to study boogie-woogie piano, under High-Priest Ammons. Last week he showed himself so proficient at boogie-woogie that the pale young critics who heard him rated him a mere notch below his teacher. Said Pianist Paul ponderously: "[Boogie-woogie] is a kind of modern Bach, in so far as the left hand does not play a mere accompaniment but a distinct theme that is woven in with the theme of the right hand in a definite counterpoint style, with Bach-like improvisations on the themes."

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