Music: Jam for Jimmy

Jam for JimmyIf Jimmy Yancey didn’t actually originate boogie-woogie, he might as well have: he was playing it 35 years ago, long before it became big time. In Chicago, jazz lovers could find Jimmy in such southside clubs as the old Bear Trap No. 1 and Moonlight Inn, shrouded in cigarette smoke, his big eyelids drooping, playing the rich kind of boogie blues that made his fellow Negroes proud and sad, his white listeners rapt and respectful.

Jimmy flipped through vaudeville with the buck & wing before he was 15. Then he settled down in Chicago’s Negro section, began playing the piano in speakeasies, sometimes for drinks, sometimes for money. He was a familiar guest at gin fests and rent parties. Gradually, he developed his slow-rolling boogie, and the style caught on. Some of his imitators learned to play it better, but with Jimmy the important thing was what you had to say, not how you said it.

It was Meade Lux Lewis and the late Albert Ammons who made boogie famous, while their teacher Jimmy continued to live in a dark, narrow tenement flat, virtually unknown. In baseball season, he worked as assistant groundskeeper at Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox. In his last years, he scraped along mostly on tiny record royalties, a few concerts and club dates. He did not mind fame passing him by. All he wanted, he told “Mama”—his wife Estella—was a Dixieland band to play at his funeral.

One morning last week, after 53-year-old Jimmy had eaten breakfast, says Mama, “he just up and died.” _ When Mama spread the word about Jimmy’s last wish, 26 jazzmen called in, offering to play at his funeral. Four were chosen: Lee Collins and Jimmy Ilia, trumpets; Miff Mole, trombone; and Jimmy Granato, clarinet.

Jimmy lay in state in an orchid casket covered with a rose blanket. There was a canopy from the door of the funeral home to the sidewalk, some fading pink flowers in the yard. “They’re dying out,” said Mama. “But they’re still kinda nice for Jimmy.” Mama held off the burial for eight days, but finally gave in this week. Said she: “I ain’t in no hurry to rush him into the ground. I kept him out just as long as they’d let me.”

The rest of Mama’s plans were complete: Jimmy would be driven off to the cemetery with the Dixieland quartet leading the way. On the way and at the grave, the boys would play High Society, Muskrat Ramble, Jazz Me Blues, and anything else they thought Jimmy might like. But they would finish up with Nearer, My God, to Thee, in hymn tempo. That was Mama’s idea.