If blues strikes some listeners as unrelentingly gloomy, a bracing encounter with Roosevelt Sykes quickly dispels that notion. The pianist’s irrepressible spirit animated a career that bridged the pre-war and postwar periods, marked by buoyant boogie-woogie patterns and lyrics laced with playful bawdiness on such numbers as “Dirty Mother for You,” “Ice Cream Freezer,” and “Peeping Tom.” Equally foundational were the instrumentals “44 Blues,” “Driving Wheel,” and “Night Time Is the Right Time,” each a landmark in the idiom’s piano tradition.
Sykes first took up the keys while living in Helena. By fifteen he was already traveling, sharpening a vigorous barrelhouse approach amid the fertile scene around St. Louis. His recording debut arrived in 1929 on OKeh; the following year he appeared on four separate labels under four aliases—Dobby Bragg, Willie Kelly, Easy Papa Johnson, and his own name. A 1935 contract with Decca brought wider recognition. After moving to Chicago, he joined Bluebird in 1943 and, fronting the Honeydrippers, scored two R&B hits in 1945 with renditions of Cecil Gant’s “I Wonder” and Joe Liggins’s “The Honeydripper.” Another chart entry, the stark “Sunny Road,” appeared on the Victor imprint the next year. He frequently collaborated on stage and in the studio with St. Louis Jimmy Oden, author of the enduring “Going Down Slow.”
Sykes moved to United Records in Chicago in 1951 and continued to produce strong material for the next two years. Two 1955 sessions in New Orleans for Imperial, supervised by Dave Bartholomew, yielded an energetic reading of “Sweet Home Chicago” that anticipated later covers. During the 1960s a series of LPs on Bluesville, Folkways, Crown, and Delmark kept his work available, while repeated European tours occupied much of his schedule. Late in the decade he made New Orleans his home, remaining a cherished figure there until his death. Few pianists have matched the sheer force of Roosevelt Sykes’s rolling, thunderous style.
