| Axel Zwingenberger & Vince Weber The Boogiemeisters Vagabond VRCD 8.99026, 1999
Who is Axel Zwingenberger, some of you may wonder. In the USA he is virtually unknown. "Axel Zwingenberger is the world's best living boogie-woogie pianist," Says Pete Bowenberger in Now Dig This 170, May 1997. I'm not going to argue with that. For some time I have intended to write a piece on Axel and the appearance of this new CD seems as good an occasion as any. Born in 1955 in Hamburg, Germany, Axel Zwingenberger received eleven years of formal piano tuition. He was becoming disenchanted with playing the classics and was on the point of giving up his studies when he discovered boogie-woogie by accident in 1973 after listening to some old 78 recordings of Pete Johnson which belonged to the father of one of his friends. With his interest in the piano once again stimulated, he started to finger out some of the numbers for himself. Real progress in mastering the style came after he met George Moller and Vince Weber. Since 1976 Zwingenberger and Weber have recorded and toured extensively, but to my knowledge this is their first CD together. What we get on this (live) album is two pianos for the price of one, in the grand tradition of the Albert Ammons / Pete Johnson duets from the early forties. But where messrs. Ammons and Johnson always wisely refrained from any attempts at singing, Vince Weber's vocals can be heard on 7 of the 13 tracks. He's not a great singer, but it doesn't spoil the CD too much. You won't be surprised to hear, though, that my favourite tracks on "The Boogiemeisters" are the instrumental numbers. Highlights are the two Ammons / Johnson compositions, "Foot Pedal Boogie" and "Sixth Avenue Express". It feels almost like sacrilege to write this, but I prefer these new versions to the original 1941 duets (for the Victor label) by Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson. The sound is much fuller and more powerful. Zwingenberger plays the boogie-woogie in all its forms and contexts, fast and flashy, slow and reflective. His technical prowess is unrivalled. Other strong points are his talents for improvisation and composing. He never plays the same song in the same manner twice. The version of the old Pete Johnson / Joe Turner favourite, "Roll'em Pete" on this CD is so different from Axel's 10-minute version on the "Boogie Woogie Classics" CD from 1992 that you would hardly recognize it as the same song. Like British-born boogie player Carl Sonny Leyland, Zwingenberger writes a lot of his own material. It must be said, however, that Leyland has strayed much further from the straight path of boogie-woogie than his German colleague. "The Boogiemeisters" is Zwingenberger's 25th album. This includes the releases where he restricts himself to the role of backing pianist of a legend. He has recorded albums with Joe Turner, Sippie Wallace, Champion Jack Dupree (all dead and gone), Jay McShann and Lionel Hampton (both still alive and kicking at the age of 90) and other famous blues artists. The majority of these recordings has been issued on Axel's own Vagabond label, which, unfortunately, has poor distribution outside the German-speaking countries. For instance, I bought his (excellent) 1994 CD "Boogie in the Barrelhouse" in Vienna, shortly after it came out, but since then I've never seen it anywhere else and it was not reviewed in NDT until May 1997. Readers who share my love for the piano, but don't know too much about boogie woogie, would be well advised to try a compilation by the two masters of the genre, Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson. (Meade Lux Lewis is not quite in the same league, in my opinion.) For instance: "Albert Ammons, Blues and Boogie King, 1936-1947" (EPM 159142) and "Pete Johnson : Boogie Woogie Master" (EPM 158972), both in the "Jazz Archives" series. Most record shops file boogie woogie under jazz. Recommended reading: Peter J. Silvester, "A Left Hand Like God : A History of Boogie-Woogie Piano" (UK: Quartet, USA : Da Capo, 1988). Try it. A whole new world of listening and collecting enjoyment might open for you. Dik de Heer, heer@rulub7.leidenuniv.nl |
