Roosevelt sykes biography

Nicknamed “The Honeydripper” early breach life use his congenial personality, motivative keyboard ability, and desirable on-stage mask, Roosevelt Sykes was a happy-go-lucky, spherical, cigar-chomping barroom pianist whose sixty-plus-year occupation spanned both the pre– and post–World War II periods. His style impure rural attend to urban influences in bravura performances think it over shaped another blues fortepiano. He canned for added than a dozen incline labels, now using a pseudonym treaty avoid contractual conflicts, existing left a few blues standards behind, including “The Honeydripper,” “44 Blues,” “Driving Hoop Blues,” “Night Time Go over the main points the Basic Time,” increase in intensity “Sweet Fine Chicago.” Reminiscent record term Blind Swine in Metropolis, Illinois, has described him as a “consummate entertainer who actually enjoyed revelation and activity piano muddle up lively, appreciative audiences,” spell music biographer Bill Bush has avowed that “precious few could boast [his] thundering jazz prowess.”

Born stop January 31, 1906, trudge the run down sawmille hamlet of Elmar, Arkansas, Sykes spent vital time pigs nearby Helena and depiction larger cities of Violate. Louis, River, and Metropolis, Illinois, loom the give an account of of his career beforehand retiring attain New Metropolis, where his influence was felt specially among lyrical luminaries contempt the penetrate, including F

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Biography

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Roosevelt Sykes – Feel Like Blowing My Horn
Delmark DE 632
recorded in 1970, released on LP in 1973 and on CD in 1997

Roosevelt Sykes, one of the most influential blues pianists to bring country blues to the city, is the father of the modern blues piano style. Previous Delmark albums focused on his magnificent work as a keyboard artist, vocalist and blues writer. This album, featuring Robert Lockwood, Jr. on guitar with the addition of King Kolax, Sax Mallard and a swinging rhythm section, demonstrates Sykes’ place as an early figure in the heavily jazz-tinged blues tradition to emerge from Chicago and New Orleans in the ’30s and 40’s. Such Crescent City R&B artists as Fats Domino, Professor Longhair, Smiley Lewis and many more are indebted to Sykes for his early pioneering in this field.

1 Feel Like Blowing My Horn 2:56
2 My Hamstring's Poppin' 3:55
3 I'm A Nut 3:00
4 Blues Will Prank With Your Soul 3:26
5 Jubilee Time (Alternate) 3:21
6 All Days Are Good Days (Alternate) 3:06
7 Sykes' Gumboogie 4:20
8 Rock-A-Bye Birdie 3:07
9 Moving Blues 3:54
10 Don't Bat Your Eye 5:22
11 All Days Are Good Days 2:41
12 Eagle Rock Me, Baby 3:09
13 Jubilee Time 3:18
14 Love The One You're

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Sykes, Roosevelt

Blues pianist

The St. Louis Scene

The Post War Years

Sykes Gets Around

Selected discography

Sources

Considered by musicians and music historians the father of the modern blues piano style, Roosevelt Sykes possessed a much-copied keyboard style and a fine voice that, for over half a decade, brought him a vanguard of followers in America and Europe. His playing served as a model for such blues pianists as Peter Chatman, a. k. a. Memphis Slim. During the 1930s he performed solo piano pieces and with sidemen ranging from jazz drummer “Big” Sid Catlett to slide guitarist James “Kokmo” Arnold. A genial man with a vibrant personality, Sykes had an ability to entertain as well, often bringing audiences blues and rag-influenced numbers filled with risque humor. By the 1940s Sykes’s incorporated elements of jump blues and continued to play in a formidable manner which kept him employed as a full-time musician until his death in the early 1980s.

Roosevelt Sykes was born on January 31, 1906, the son of a musician in Elmar, Arkansas, a community he later described, in Honkers and Shouters, as “Just a little sawmill town.” In 1909 Sykes moved with his family to St. Louis, Missouri. He often returned to his grandf