[Dixielandjazz] Bob Seeley (was Ghost Monk)

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Bob Seeley produced his own solo CDs, including one of stride piano. He turned 
up on a decent jam session record ROCKIN' THE SPIRIT, which I reviewed -- review 
copied below --  and Bob Seeley liked my review. He told me he had no idea how 
to start and suddenly went into a wonderful Boogie Woogie on St. Louis Blues. 

I liked Eric Reed and he had some nice unaccompanied items on an early CD, but 
some of his trio CDs can be fairly described as unexciting. Maybe his left hand 
needed to be working before his right came to life, though I don't know what 
he's been doing the past few years. I don't know whether the link below still 
works. 

Unfortunately his e-mail address and his mails to me did not get backed up 
before the hard drive on which they may still exist was enfolded in the 
tentacles of a virus. 

There may be younger and indeed actually young players able to emulate him, but 
he was head and shoulders above his contemporaries, And he's still only 81

 


Rockin' the Spirit: Piano Blues, Boogie and Spirituals
(Chesky; US: 26 Apr 2005;
Various Artists: Rockin' the Spirit: Piano Blues, Boogie and Spirituals
By Robert R. Calder 12 August 2005
This terrific record’s being  marketed with a little handful of hooey. The 
music’s none the worse for  not being quite that combination of gospel piano and 

boogie woogie  mentioned on the pack, but listeners who don’t suspect the 
difference  probably won’t be disappointed.

One example of the slight inaccuracies can be found in the liner  notes. The 
CD’s paperwork alleges that boogie boogie dates from the  1930s. Just like the 
landmass on which it came into being existed only  after 1492!

The 1930s was when lots of people started to hear the idiom, and in  which it 
was subjected to simplification, vulgarization, and  increasingly unmusical 
exploitation. The idiom is named after the “Pine  Top’s Boogie Woogie” of a long 

lean Mr. Smith, who recorded the  subsequently eponymous tune less than two 
years before his traditional  death from a stray bullet in a bar. Elements of 
the idiom started  showing up on records earlier, such as the walking bass on 
Fletcher  Henderson’s “Chimes Blues” of 1923. As an idiom of faster-paced 
playing  of blues, almost always 12-bar, very rarely 8 (eight-to-the bar was a  
slang 1930s term based on tempo indication within the bar), it had been  
perfected by (among others) Meade Lux Lewis on his one issued recording  of 
1927. With Pine Top’s work (his “Jump Steady Blues” is his real  masterpiece), 
the circulation of copies of this disc generated learned  interest, and John 
Hammond’s retrieval of Lewis from washing taxis  precipitated the craze. 

The idiom flourished notably in Chicago -- also  Detroit, St, Louis, Memphis, 
Birmingham, Alabama, Austin, Texas, and  environs -- within the repertoire of 
some blues pianists. Records helped  Pete Johnson, Jay McShann, and others work 
their own approaches within  the bluesier music of Kansas City. The straight 
Europeanised styles of  New York players were alien to it. The fingering's wrong 

for it,  although, for instance, Jimmy Blythe seemed to be developing from  
barrelhouse into an all round jazz pianist when he died not long after  Pine 

Johnson, Lewis, and his buddy Albert Ammons played the 1938 
Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall and a craze began. Besides hollow 
rubbish, it  inspired some narrower later players like Willie Littlefield and 
Joe  Duskin, came naturally to the ‘til then unrecorded Tennesseean Cecil  Gant, 

and allowed such formerly mainly ragtime players as Arnold Wiley  odd recording 
dates.
The brilliant home-made piano style of Bob Zurke fitted it well, but  the Bob 
Crosby band with which he recorded was a little jolly for the  music. Avery 
Parrish took some traditional Alabama piano blues picked up  on the wrong side 
of the tracks and created “After Hours” with the  Alabama big band of Erskine 
Hawkins, in perfect idiom. The adopted  Chicagoan Earl Hines combined experience 

of pre-jazz piano playing with  his unique talents to create a “Boogie Woogie on 

St. Louis Blues” whose  piano part is reprised in the course of the opening 
title here.
Bob Seeley’s adaptation of W.C. Handy’s neo-tango starts on the model  of a 
jazzy-raggy Lewis or Ammons intro, then dives into the Hines,  proceeding into a 

Chicagoan stride piano (Teddy Weatherford, Sonny  Thompson) then an alternation 
of boogie choruses with stride ones.  Ammons and Lewis could do that, and Seeley 

when very young became a  friend of Lewis. For his interesting memoir of the 
older player, Google.  Written up in Peter Silvester’s A Left Hand Like God, 
Seeley  hadn’t, it seems, recorded when that study of the idiom was written.  
There are now four CDs, one of them demonstrating his extended talent as  a 
stride player, and the discrepancy between his gifts and his  reputation demands 

a link:  www.boogiewoogie.com/TEST/ARTIST/SEELEY/bsmaster.htm (The reference 
to  
his longstanding gig is out of date, as several press notices observe.  
Superstitious notions of the need for something new removed the pianist  on a 
whim. He played on ‘til the proprietor had another whim, but what’s  cultural 
continuity?) Seeley also takes “Amazing Grace” at a decent  holy-rolling lick, 
something the saw-voiced Blind Willie Johnson did to  his own guitar 
accompaniment in the 1920s.

Rock, Church, Rock! is plainly an idea in this set, and  besides “Pinetop’s 
Boogie Woogie”, the younger boogie revivalist Mark  Braun (follow above link 
too) performs “My Sunday Best”, beginning in a  sort of gospel style (like Ray 
Bryant’s essays in neo-boogie, which like  much of that wonderful veteran’s 
work, is steeped in gospel). Braun  goes into boogie basses later in this “Let 
It Shine” adaptation. Braun  and Seeley also duet on “Fourplay Boogie Woogie”, 
which actually has  more to do with climaxes.

The early swing style of Eric Reed’s “You Took Advantage of Me” was  possible in 

the 1930s and remains good for the soul, especially at  Reed’s level of 
execution, and even rarer full and mellow piano sound.  His “Three Hymns” is 
just that, concluding with a stomp quite distinct  from secular jazz and blues. 
Reed has ears, and the swingless drive he  achieves is fascinating.

“You Took Advantage of Me” admittedly appealed to the mainstream jazz  pianist 
with the oldest style on record, the late Cliff Jackson, but it  has nothing to 
do with blues or boogie or gospel, and prodigious young  Eric Reed looks for 
none in a performance in an earthy swing-cum-stride  style. Benny Golson’s 
“Whisper Not” doesn’t fit the sales pitch either,  in any performance, though 
the mainstream-modern duo performance by Reed  and the far too little known 
Johnny O’Neal is upbeat and does swinging  justice (I don’t mean a hanging!) to 
Golson’s rhythmic conception.

O’Neal’s appearance as Art Tatum in the recent Ray Charles biopic  angered a few 

of his peers and seniors, one of whom reported (I missed  the film) that O’Neal 
was heard playing only ‘country boogie-woogie’,  and surmised that O’Neal was 
such a gifted performer in a Tatum style  that he might have stolen the scene if 

allowed to do his stuff. At least  the reader can hear brief samples of O’Neal’s 

playing on (for instance)  www.amazon.co.uk. He has made a fair few recordings, 
and I hope this  set gives him a little more prominence. The nearest he comes to 

boogie  woogie is a devil-may-care flinging in of joke left hand business here  
and there in “Jitterbug Waltz”, which even his prestidigitations can’t  combine 
into the musicality of the performance. O’Neal’s “Glory, Glory  Hallelujah”, 
footstomping with funk flourishes, suggests plainly that he  was definitely 
having fun. More ears should hear the nonetheless real  glory of this man’s 
playing!

Monty Alexander needs no plugging, though his “Boogie Woogie Keys”  does go into 

crowd-pleasing with a conclusion including cliché choruses  ne’er so well 
expressed. “Nobody Knows the Trouble I Seen” transitions  into “No Woman, No 
Cry”, interesting in its demonstration of rhythms  common to Kingston, Jamaica 
and the House of God. Alexander seems to  have been the patron of this 
recording, a necessary selling—and who  knows, even saving—presence.

It was all an amazing concert, and if programming a jazz duet between  Reed and 
O’Neal as the closer was intended to help open some ears  appealed to by the 
sales pitch, that’s very fine indeed! Reed’s debut as  a Wynton Marsalis protégé 

might suggest to some of the prejudiced a  Marsalafia connection. In truth, it’s 

an occasion for gratitude, as is  the demonstration that being less famous than 
Monty Alexander doesn’t  mean anything. At moments he sounds slightly facile in 
comparison with  the rest, but nobody here lets anybody down. 




________________________________
From: Bill Haesler <bhaesler at bigpond.net.au>
To: ROBERT R. CALDER <serapion at btinternet.com>; Dixieland Jazz Mailing List 
<dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Thursday, 26 May, 2011 1:43:12
Subject: Bob Seeley (was Ghost Monk)

ROBERT R. CALDER wrote [in part]:
> Genuine blues and barrelhouse pianists are the easiest to  misrepresent, with 
>the exception of the venerable and glorious Bob Seeley, who spent his youth in 
>prudent association with Meade Lux Lewis.  
>

Dear Robert,
Your mention of Bob Seeley reminded me of the extensive coverage given to Mister 

Seeley in the 1988 Peter J Silvester book 'A Left Hand Like God. A History of 
Boogie boogie Piano.'
I was intrigued about him when I read it, but there were no recordings readily 
available.
Then forgot about him.
A search of the internet this morning turned up some YouTube examples which 
supports your comment.
Thank you for the lead.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLPvprjSLE0
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1paAV0R-Oc&feature=related
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKlyjIlXYgc&feature=related
Now to locate some Bob Seeley CDs.
I hope this finds you well.
Very kind regards,
Bill.