Abie Ames

Abie "Boogaloo" Ames
Personal details
Born May 23, 1918
Cruger, Mississippi, USA
Died February 4, 2002(2002-02-04) (aged 83)
Greenville, Mississippi, USA
Spouse(s) Gracie

Abie "Boogaloo" Ames was a blues and jazz pianist.[1][2]

Ames was born on May 23, 1918 on Big Egypt Plantation in Cruger, Mississippi.[3]

He began playing the piano at the age of five, and by the time he was a teenager sometime in the 1930s, his family moved to Detroit where swing and boogie-woogie records were very popular. And once they moved there, he learned to play the popular songs of the time.

By the late 1940s, Boogaloo was leading his own band, and became popular. Throughout the following decade, he played all throughout Detroit and other Northern cities, performing with headliners of the day at nightspots like the Brass Rail Theater Bar and Baker’s Keyboard Lounge. Many of the name musicians passing through Detroit sat in with him. His popularity among audiences and musicians alike brought peer notoriety, and the Ames’ household became a regular stop for local and visiting musicians. Two contemporary pianists, Nat King Cole and Erroll Garner were among them. It is said that he picked up the nickname “Boogaloo” during these years.

In the early 1960s, Boogaloo did session work at Berry Gordy’s fledgling Motown studio, but as the Detroit jazz scene gave way to the sounds of Motown, Boogaloo feel in love with a woman named Gracie and followed her back to Carrolton, Mississippi, not far from his birthplace at Cruger. In Mississippi, he found a job as a piano tuner at the Baldwin Piano Company in Greenwood and a brand new audience in the predominantly white, wealthy social class. For nearly forty years, Boogaloo was a fixture at Mississippi’s elite parties, country clubs and restaurants, becoming an increasingly adored personality. He performed often as a soloist but was also the principal member of several jazz groups. With the blues revival of the 1970s and for the remainder of his life, he added his unmistakable boogie-woogie and blues to a rich Mississippi music history, performing regularly at the Mississippi Delta Blues Festival and even performing the prestigious Chicago Blues Festival.

Boogaloo taught many students over the years. He offered noted pianist and Greenwood native Mulgrew Miller his first jazz piano lessons. He moved to Greenville in 1980.[3] After Gracie's death in the 1980s, Boogaloo moved to Greenville and began teaching Eden Brent.[4] Their long relationship (until his death) was the subject of an award-winning 1999 television documentary, Boogaloo & Eden: Sustaining the Sound.[5][6][7][8] The duo received the Mississippi Arts Commission Folk Arts Apprenticeship, toured the state, and then traveled to New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., where they performed at the Kennedy Center. His last performance took place in October 2001 in Greenville.[9] The duo’s final appearance together was in the 2002 South Africa television production, Forty Days in the Delta, a blues documentary series taped in Mississippi shortly before Ames’ death. In addition to this posthumous appearance, Boogaloo performed the duet “Darkness on the Delta” with Cassandra Wilson on her 2002 album, Belly of the Sun.[10][9]

In his last years, Boogaloo accepted numerous awards including the Greenville Arts Council Lifetime Achievement, the Mississippi Arts Commission Artist Fellowship and the Mississippi Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He is memorialized on the Greenville Blues Walk in the Walnut Street entertainment district. He died February 4, 2002 following a long illness and is buried at Lakewood Cemetery in Greenville.[7][9]

References

  1. ↑ "Even babies get down to singer Eden Brent's brand of the blues". Washington Post. Retrieved 2018-10-07.
  2. ↑ McCain, William David (2002). The Journal of Mississippi History. Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
  3. 1 2 "Abie Ames obituary 2002". Poughkeepsie Journal. Retrieved 2018-10-07.
  4. ↑ Norton, Jon. "Boogie-Woogie Is In Good Hands". Retrieved 2018-10-07.
  5. ↑ "Video Premiere: Eden Brent, "Everybody Already Knows" « American Songwriter". American Songwriter. 2014-03-18. Retrieved 2018-10-07.
  6. ↑ "Eden Brent: Carefree Blues With Mississippi Flavor". NPR.org. Retrieved 2018-10-07.
  7. 1 2 Cheseborough, Steve (2018-10-15). Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues, Fourth Edition. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781496819024.
  8. ↑ Ames, Abie; Brent, Eden; Mississippi Authority for Educational Television; Mississippi Educational Television; Cypress Bend Productions (1999), Boogaloo and Eden: sustaining the sound, MAET, retrieved 2018-10-07
  9. 1 2 3 Staff, Variety (2002-02-10). "Abie Ames: Blues and jazz pianist". Variety. Retrieved 2018-10-07.
  10. ↑ "Eden Brent - Boogaloo Ames". www.edenbrent.com. Retrieved 2018-10-07.
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