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for the now-famous “Spirituals to Swing” concert in 1938.
    Those same boogie rhythms were the building blocks of early rock and roll. In Hellfire , Nick Tosches’s fine biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, Tosches recounts a scene where young Jerry Lee is playing a Pentecostal hymn at a chapel service and, “the preacher shot him a glance of reproach, for he was playing it boogie-woogie style…and he beat the boogie so hard there was nothing left of the hymn, nothing but the sounds of the Holy Ghost that inspired it.”
    The phrase boogie-woogie possibly came from “booger-rooger,” which meant a wild party or a musical good time—and was first coined by Blind Lemon Jefferson, a Texas bluesman who came to prominence in the 1920s. By the 1940s, “boogie” was used to describe a chugging guitar style, as illustrated by tunes like Albert Smith’s “Guitar Boogie.”
    Of course, the most famous boogieman of all time is John Lee Hooker, whose primal “Boogie Chillun” was a hit for the Modern record label in 1948. In “Boogie Chillun” Hooker sang these now-immortal words,
    Â 
    One night I was layin’ down,
I heard mama ’n papa talkin’
I heard papa tell mama, let that boy boogie-woogie,
it’s in him, and it got to come out
    Â 
    John Lee’s fanatical one-chord stomps are classics of the boogie genre and his haunting, stream-of-consciousness boogies inspired musicianslike the Lovin’ Spoonful, Van Morrison, and ZZ Top, to name a few.
    The most notable boogie band of all is Canned Heat. Canned Heat was named after a brand of cooking fuel that came in small metal containers—from which desperate members of Skid Row would filter out the alcohol to drink.
    Formed in 1966, Canned Heat featured heavyset singer Bob “The Bear” Hite and nearsighted Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson on guitar, harmonica, and vocals. With songs like “Let’s Work Together,” “Goin’ Up the Country,” and “On the Road Again,” the Heat were much loved and they boogied the world over, including an appearance at the original Woodstock festival, where they played (what else?) the “Woodstock Boogie.”
    Canned Heat even made a couple of albums with Sir John Lee Hooker, thereby confirming their claim to the estimable boogie throne. Sadly, “The Bear” and “Blind Owl” died before their time and it fell to the band’s drummer, Adolfo “Fito” De La Parra, to keep the Heat boogieing on down the road.
    Born of the blues and birthing rock and roll, boogie can be found in R&B, hard rock, country music, rockabilly, jazz, and Texas swing. The Delmore Brothers performed “Hillbilly Boogie,” Ella Fitzgerald sang “Cow Cow Boogie,” and everyone from Louis Jordan to Asleep at the Wheel recorded “Choo Choo Cha Boogie.”
    In the 1970s, concerts by southern rock ensembles like Black Oak Arkansas and English groups like Foghat expanded the boogie concept to new, sometimes ridiculous heights. As the years went on, catchphrases like “Born to Boogie” and “Boogie Till You Puke” were transformed into song. Obviously, pop tunes like “Boogie Bands and One-Night Stands” and “Boogie Nights” had little in common with the original boogie style.
    And no requests for “The Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy,” please.
    Revivalists like Alvin Lee, former guitarist and singer of Ten Years After—an archetypal British boogie band from the 1960s—have helped keep boogie alive. Just like Canned Heat, Ten Years After played at the original Woodstock festival, where Alvin boogied well beyond reason with his over-the-top performance of “I’m Going Home.”
    In the twenty-first century, Alvin made a CD called Alvin Lee in Tennessee , which featured the bedrock talents of Elvis Presley’s old Memphis sidemen, drummer DJ Fontana and guitarist