Mick Hartley

Amos Milburn, R'n'B pioneer, with his 1948 classic, live at the Apollo in the mid-Fifties:

It's all Amos here. Fantastic boogie piano, great vocals. The horns – where you can here them – are distinctly underwhelming. The recorded version, by contrast, has fine pumping horns and solos to drive it along. But then we're missing out on seeing the man in action.

A key figure in the development of rock'n'roll:

Nick Tosches has called Amos Milburn "the first great rock n roll piano man". It is true that Milburn was a crucial figure in the trans- formation of jump blues into R&B and rock 'n' roll. Fats Domino, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis have all cited Amos as a seminal influence on their work. Ironically, Milburn would be swept aside by the very idiom that he had helped create. Milburn picked up his style from a rich variety of sources : the boogie woogie piano of Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, the blasting big bands of Lionel Hampton and Buddy Johnson, and as a contrast, the silky smooth after-hours cocktail blues of Charles Brown, Nat "King" Cole and Ivory Joe Hunter. But the result was pure Amos Milburn.

Also from Showtime at the Apollo:

Down the Road Apiece (later covered by the Stones)

Bad, Bad Whiskey

And (not live this time) the classic One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer.