Entry · catalog no. 1397
boogie-woogie
/ ˈbʊɡi ˈwʊɡi /BOO-ghee-WOO-ghee
noun · Southern juke joints; Chicago · 1920s
✓ Verified
1.
A blues piano style built on a rolling, accented bass figure under improvised right-hand runs — and, by extension, the dancing and the good time that came with it.
“He played boogie-woogie till the floorboards jumped.”
Origin & Attribution
Out of Black barrelhouse and rent-party piano in the South and in Chicago. Clarence "Pinetop" Smith put the name on record with "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie" in 1928; Cab Calloway's 1938 dictionary defines it as "harmony with accented bass." The style fed directly into rock and roll, which is where most of the credit went.
1913
Boogie recorded meaning a rent party
1928
Clarence "Pine Top" Smith cuts "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie," Chicago, 29 Dec
1938
Carnegie Hall's From Spirituals to Swing launches the national craze
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Southern juke joints; Chicago · 1920s
Spoken by
Barrelhouse and juke-joint pianists in Southern lumber, turpentine and railroad camps
$BOOGIEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Faded98 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
92/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1928
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
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Citations & Sources
■
Clarence "Pinetop" Smith, "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie" — recording · 1928
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceCab Calloway, Hepster's Dictionary — dictionary · 1938
submitted
See also