Jimmy Yancey was a native of Chicago and learned to play piano from his elder brother, Alonzo, who was a Ragtime picker. Yancey's father was a buck and wing dancer, and the kids were part of the act; sometime before 1915, the Yanceys appeared at Buckingham Palace before English Royalty.
During the First World War, Jimmy Yancey played baseball in a Negro league team, the Chicago All-Americans. It is widely stated that Yancey "invented" boogie-woogie; not possible given its rural mid-western roots, and that traces of this style appear in sources which lead back to the late 1870s. However, inasmuch as Chicago style of boogie-woogie is concerned, Yancey is known to have been playing such music in Chicago prior to 1920.
In the early 1920s, Jimmy Yancey was a regularly seen player on the rent party circuit in Chicago, and under his spell a number of boogie pianists emerged, including Meade "Lux" Lewis, Albert Ammons and, probably, Clarence "Pinetop" Smith. In 1925, Yancey got a full time job as the groundskeeper of Comiskey Park in Chicago, and afterwards cut back on his rent party appearances.
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