Double dose of boogie jump-starts folk festival

By LAWRENCE COSENTINO

Transcript of a conspiracy: Detroit’s Bob Seeley, one of the world’s foremost boogie-woogie piano men, grinds, tickles and hammers through a set of barrelhouse piano at MSU’s Music Practice Building one hot August morning. Perpendicular to him is another piano, manned by Lansing’s own music legend Bob Baldori. Once the moon-faced heartthrob of the Woolies ("Who Do You Love?"), Baldori worked with Chuck Berry for 40 years, and has become an on-and-off partner to Seeley for the past four years.

Bob Seeley (left) and 'Boogie' Bob Baldori will kick off the 2005 Great Lakes Folk Festival with a set of boogie-woogie at 6 p.m. Friday, Aug 12, on the M.A.C. Stage in downtown East Lansing. They will also play at 3:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday adn at 3:15 p.m. on Sunday at the Valley Court Stage.

They’re rehearsing together, two linked chains in American music history, for the rolling-thunder four-handed kickoff concert of the Great Lakes Folk Festival, running Friday, Aug. 12, through Sunday, Aug. 14. With artists from all over the world converging on Lansing this weekend, Seeley is tickled that domestic boogie, straight up, will provide the lighter fluid for the torch.

"We’re the Americans," he grins. "Wanna make something out of it?"

Though weathered a bit, Baldori has that same puppy face he had in the ‘60s. Gray-haired Seeley, on the other hand, is the gimlet-eyed uncle who’d happily snap your tibia if he ever got the chance to arm-wrestle you. Seeley made his bones hanging out and playing with one of the all-time boogie greats, 300-pound giant Meade Lux Lewis, destroyer of pianos (and occasionally harpsichords). They worked together 50 years ago at the 4 Dukes club, at the corner of James Couzens Freeway and Wyoming Street in Detroit.

"I played intermissions with him," Seeley says. "He was a pounder, the steam train coming down the tracks."

Seeley’s own intense, athletic discipline is palpable as he plays, sits, talks, stands.

This morning he is full of ideas, and it’s Baldori’s job to keep up.

"Let’s try something," Seeley says, head cocked toward Baldori, shoulders square with his own piano. "When I go [whunga-whunga-whunga-whunga] and you [ting-illy ting-illy ling ling], how about [ba-da-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dump]?"

"I was looking for something there," Baldori says, looking slightly dazed.

"That’s a kick," Seeley says. "Now from the top."

They roll on, working through the changes like tugboats in a rolling ocean. When they’re done, Seeley suggests a chestnut — Duke Ellington’s "C Jam Blues." Baldori, understandably, seems to find the idea routine.

Suddenly, Seeley drops the familiar tune like a hot Slinky down the fire escape of a burning building. Baldori shakes his head in amazement and darts into the chase, adding a scalding high-register obbligato. They’re off again.

"It’s like riding a bucking bronco," Baldori says when they’re done.

"That’s the slow version," Seeley says with a straight face.

"Shut up."

For both men, stretching out on a boogie tune is like rolling through fields of catnip.

"When I was younger I’d practice 16 hours a day," Seeley says.

"I do four or five hours all the time," Baldori adds.

When Seeley admits to a certain edge of nervousness on stage, Baldori shrugs. "Nervous? I get nervous when I can’t pay the rent." He names a colleague who wears shades onstage to avoid eye contact. "Not me," Baldori says. "I’m there for the eyes."

"I get nervous when I can’t pee," Seeley says.

Pause.

There are a lot of theories about where boogie-woogie came from. "I would guess that ‘boogie’ meant ‘party,’ just like it does now among young people," Seeley says. Several people have claimed to coin the term, but Seeley is skeptical.

"Jelly Roll Morton claimed he invented jazz on a Sunday afternoon in 1907," he says. "There are a lot of colorful stories like that."

Seeley finds one bottom line to all the myth. "It came from African-American tradition and culture," he says. "Partly from the church."

As a living link to Lewis and other self-created jazz and blues legends, Seeley epitomizes the Great Lakes Folk Festival’s focus on uncommercialized, unacademic, people-driven musical traditions.

"The musicians go to schools now, and come out sounding pretty much the same," Seeley says. "The black people way back when didn’t have money for this fancy stuff — they listened to it, they felt it, they experimented. Everybody sounded different — Errol Garner, Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson."

He tells the story about meeting his idol, Lewis.

"I was about 17. Me and three buddies went to see him play at the Masonic Temple in Detroit. After the concert, we introduced ourselves to him, and he told us we could come to a house party at 410 E. Warren Ave. I don’t know if he meant to invite us, but we sure went."

When Seeley and his buddies got to the party Count Basie singer Helen Humes was already there.

Asked to play something, Seeley sat down and dove into "Chicago Flyer," from Lewis’ 12-inch 78-rpm Blue Note recording. At that moment Seeley spotted Lewis through the window as the big man approached the house.

"Who’s that stealing my stuff?" Lewis boomed.

Seeley laughs at the memory, which sums up his own position in music history in a nice nutshell. Exalted stealing — theft with passion and respect — is the engine that has driven American music forward for over 100 years.

Seeley’s story reminds Baldori of a more well-known piece of high theft.

"Chuck loved boogie-woogie," Baldori says, recalling his longtime employer, Chuck Berry. "He told me all the time that’s where he got everything from."

"And that was the beginning of rock and roll," Seeley says.

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