Episode 4 - Piano: Barrelhouse to Boogie

One beat-up upright, one player, and a left hand rolling like a freight train — and suddenly one person is the whole band. The most underappreciated instrument in blues rock: the piano.

• The barrelhouse: rough sawmill/turpentine joints where one pianist was the entire band
• The two-hand division of labor: left hand = bass + drums, right hand = bluesy melody
• Boogie-woogie: the relentless rolling left-hand ostinato — a direct ancestor of the rock beat; Pinetop Smith; the 1938 Carnegie Hall "Spirituals to Swing" craze (Ammons, Johnson, Lewis)
• The masters: Roosevelt Sykes, Memphis Slim, Champion Jack Dupree; Otis Spann as Muddy Waters' soulful heart
• Crossover to rock and roll: Professor Longhair/Dr. John (New Orleans), Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis; Johnnie Johnson's piano behind Chuck Berry's riffs
• Gospel fusion: Ray Charles ("What'd I Say") invents soul; the church piano teaches rock to reach the heavens
• The Hammond B3 & Leslie: Booker T, Al Kooper, Deep Purple, Procol Harum; Gregg Allman & Chuck Leavell; Ian Stewart, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, Nicky Hopkins
• Tone Recipe: acoustic piano vs Hammond+Leslie vs Wurlitzer/Rhodes; the blue-note "crush"; comping
• Progression Spotlight: 12-bar in full view — dominant-seventh harmony, turnarounds, the left hand as bass + roadmap, gospel passing chords