Very little is known of Jimmy Blythe outside of the fact he was a prolific piano player who died young, around the age of thirty, from meningitis. But from the time he showed up in Chicago in 1919, from his native Kentucky, he was incredibly busy. There are at least forty copyright entries in his name with the Library of Congress, signifying music he had composed.
Jimmy Blythe, Messin' Around Blues, is the first release in Delmark Records' new series of enhanced pianola roll recordings that have been digitally re-mastered from the original rolls (borrowed from the private collection of Bill Burkhardt). produced by Ed Sprankle, and restored by Frank L. Himpsl. Mr. Sprankle's participation is significant because he was the original producer of the material. While single piano rolls were sold with the name of the performer and the composer written on them, it is more difficult to figure out the provenance of the old Nickelodeon roll with ten songs on each scroll. It's been the work of musicologist Mike Montgomery that has assured the identification of individual performers on those rolls, and it was through him that a number of the songs on Messin' Around Blues were identified as being performed by Jimmy Blythe.
The title, Messin' Around Blues, is slightly misleading as the music has more in common with Scott Joplin than Janis; ragtime piano instead of twelve to the bar blues. However, it's not what you'd call ragtime either. It has many of the characteristics that modern audiences have come to associate with ragtime, (especially those of us who remember the movie The Sting featuring Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" as its main theme), a lilting, melodic line, that repeats throughout the song with little or no embellishment or variation. The big difference is that the bass on all the songs is much stronger and given more emphasis then I'm used to with ragtime, and that is probably what would have given it a "Blues" designation during its time period.
Thinking about it, and thinking about piano rolls, you can see how this music was ideally suited to that technology. I doubt that a scroll could have handled anything as complex as a Bach or Beethoven piano concerto with all their inherent complexities. But songs like "Black Gal Made It Thunder" with its simple bass chords and basic melody played over and over again were made for it. It's interesting to think about the relationship between the two and wonder how much influence the technology had on the structure of popular music at the time. How many people like Blythe churned out song after song that was appropriate for the technology instead of writing more complex pieces?
Article comments
1 - Anonymous
I'm positive that Ed Sprankle did not appreciate being called "Mr. Sparkles" in this article.