Jimmy Yancey (1901 - 1951)

By Dave Lewis
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. 

In 1936, Meade "Lux" Lewis first recorded his piece Yancey Special, a boogie-woogie solo in part based on Yancey's economic style of playing. Not long after, record producers and critics began to inquire just who Yancey was. In April of 1939, Jimmy Yancey finally, at age 41, was able to enter the studio for his maiden voyage on record for a short-lived label named Solo Art. Swiftly making up for the time he had lost, Yancey recorded 17 pieces in 18 sides at this first session. Only the first two made it to 78s, and the rest did not appear until after Yancey's death. However, this got things rolling for Yancey, and later that year he recorded the first of two sessions for Bluebird. The following year Yancey recorded for both Bluebird and Vocation.

While critics, who cited the purity and originality of Yancey's approach to boogie woogie, acclaimed his discs, they did not sell well and this chapter of Yancey's recorded work ended after just 15 titles. Yancey returned to the studio just three times more in the decade left to him. The tiny Sessions label of Chicago recorded another 16 titles with Yancey in 1943, and these featured for the first time, Jimmy's wife, Estella "Mama" Yancey on vocals. They had been married in 1917 and often made music together at home, Mama having a beautifully soulful blues voice that matched perfectly with Jimmy's pianism. Only three sides in Yancey's recorded output bear Jimmy's own vocals, and these confirm that the task of vocalizing on Jimmy's records was best left to Mama Yancey. 

There was nothing more from Yancey until December 1950 when John Steiner recorded him in six sides for the resuscitated Paramount label. Jimmy Yancey's final session was made for fledgling indie Atlantic Records and spread over two days in July 1951, producing, as in his first session, 17 masters. He was joined by Mama Yancey on five of these. Two months later Jimmy Yancey died of a diabetic stroke, only 53 years of age. Mama Yancey continued to record for Atlantic, and other labels, long after Jimmy Yancey died.

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