Little Brother Montgomery
photo: jeff titon · cc by-sa 4.0 ↗Eurreal 'Little Brother' Montgomery grew up around his father's Louisiana honky-tonk, absorbing barrelhouse piano before he could properly reach the keys — he was reportedly playing by age four. By eleven he'd left home to work juke joints and lumber camps across Louisiana and Mississippi, refining a self-taught style that folded ragtime, blues, and boogie-woogie into one rolling left hand. His signature 'Vicksburg Blues,' cut in 1930, became a Delta standard, and in Jackson he fronted the jazz outfit the Southland Troubadours through the 1930s. Settling in Chicago in 1942, he became an elder statesman of that scene, mentoring pianists like Otis Spann — while his own juke-joint sound had already reached a boy named Willie Dixon back in Vicksburg.
Montgomery's father ran a Louisiana honky-tonk that pulled in touring New Orleans pianists, and among the regulars was family friend Jelly Roll Morton — by most biographical accounts, the single biggest influence on Montgomery's playing. From Morton, Montgomery absorbed a fully composed, ragtime-schooled left hand and the habit of treating a blues or stomp as a structured piece with distinct strains, rather than a single vamped groove — a discipline that set his barrelhouse sound apart from looser juke-joint playing.
listen forSet Morton's 'Black Bottom Stomp' against Montgomery's own 'Vicksburg Blues' — both hold a steady, syncopated left-hand pulse that never just vamps, moving through distinct sections the way a composed rag would rather than riding one groove straight through.