Jazz Articles

Various: Primitive Piano

by Derek Taylor
June 25, 2003

The title of this disc is something of a misnomer, but one with the best intentions. Recorded in 1957 by pianist Erwin Helfer and jazz historian William Russell, it presents a modest sampling of blues and boogie-woogie practitioners. Listening reveals music that is ‘primitive’ in a manner more akin to John Fahey’s breed of Primitive Guitar. That is, music that draws heavily on set traditions, but also relies on the wild card variable of improvisation to create something new.

Perhaps ...

Skinny Williams & Erwin Helfer: St. James Infirmary

by Derek Taylor
June 25, 2003

Chicago sometimes gets lost in the shuffle of rhetoric over New Orleans, Kansas City and New York as jazz focal points past and present. That's an egregious error and one that Skinny Williams and Erwin Helfer, two Windy City regulars, aim to redress. Together, they share the tools necessary to right the wrong and put their town back on the map front and center. Favoring a wide velvet tone completely at odds with his emaciated moniker, Williams fits squarely in ...

Barrelhouse Chuck/Detroit Junior/Erwin Helfer/Pinetop Perkins: 8 Hands on 88 Keys: Chicago Blues Piano Masters

by Dave Nathan
May 3, 2002

The Chicago label The Sirens has been issuing (or reissuing, as the case might be) compilations of piano blues and Boogie Woogie by the Windy City's leading exponents of that pianistic art. The cuts on this album come from a November 2001 session when the label gathered these extraordinary artists in the studio and turned them loose. The result is almost 50 minutes of the blues as heavy or Boogie Woogie as syncopated as the Chicago versions of these genres ...

Erwin Helfer: I'm Not Hungry But I Like to Eat - BLUES!

by Dave Nathan
May 1, 2002

Erwin Helfer has been delivering his own brand of barrelhouse, boogie-woogie, blues piano for more than 40 years. Helfer works in Chicago and that is an appropriate venue to say the least since that city as much as any can lay claim to this unique form of piano jazz/blues. After all, two pioneers, Albert Ammons and Meade “Lux" Lewis were “discovered" by impresario John Hammond while they were driving taxis in the Windy City. Helfer has worked with the best ...