Seeley & Baldori

Two Bob's, four hands, twenty fingers, 100 years of boogie. Two phenomenal performers have combined their talents for an evening of extraordinary jazz, blues, boogie, stride and rock. Bob Seeley and Bob Baldori are both living connections to a musical heritage that is the backbone of American music.

Both of them play a relentless keyboard in the truest sense of jazz playing Infectious rhythm and dizzying improvization. Both have unparalleled credentials in the genre.

Bob Seeley spent his formative years playing with Meade Lux Lewis and other jazz greats in the 1950s and early 60s. Over the years Seeley has become known as the best boogie woogie and stride player in the world.

"Boogie" Bob Baldori has been playing piano and harmonica with Chuck Berry since 1967. In addition to fronting his own group he has spent years playing blues, boogie and backbeat rock and roll in Chicago and Detroit.

Together, their styles are at the crossroads of American music.

The relationship started when they met at a tribute to Chuck Berry's original piano player, Johnny Johnson. They started working together soon after Baldori sat in at Seeley's regular gig at Charley's Crab in Detroit. A mutual interest in the "two piano" boogie style of Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons led them to work out some of the original four hand classics. They also discovered a repertoire of mutually familiar blues, boogie and jazz tunes that Baldori could double on harmonica. From there it was a short step to creating original pieces for their live show.

Between them, they have an encyclopedic repertoire of jazz, boogie, stride, blues and backbeat rock and roll.

Bob Seeley

Bob Seeley is arguably America's greatest living boogie woogie pianist. Peter Silvester's book on the history of boogie woogie, A Left Hand Like God (1988), mentions him extensively, but at the time that book was written, Seeley had not yet been recorded. Since then, Seeley has released five CD's and is working on number six with Boogie Bob Baldori.

Detroiter Bob Seeley is a piano player like Mickey Mantle was a ball player. The 77-year-old pianist has been a fixture at the piano bar at Charlie's Crab in suburban Troy, Michigan, just outside of Detroit, where he entertained the locals and visiting dignitaries for over 32 years. It isn't just that he's an extraordinary pianist. He's an indomitable soul who has played Carnegie Hall several times and most of the major venues throughout Europe. He is universally hailed as possibly the greatest proponent of boogie woogie and stride alive today.

His most conspicuous influence was Meade Lux Lewis, one of the three giants of boogie woogie (along with Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson), and a great friend of Seeley's. Bob first met the maestro during a Detroit gig in the late 1940s and a longstanding friendship in the 1950s and 1960s developed, which influenced Seeley's piano styling and has resulted in a very rhythmical form of boogie woogie. He also had a chance to chauffer and play piano with none less than Art Tatum, who reportedly was duly impressed with the music of the relative youngster. Eubie Blake was also among Seeley's circle of friends and mutual fans.

Well versed in classic blues, Seeley worked for a while as accompanist to Sippie Wallace, the Great blues vocalist who was rediscovered in the 1980s and would eventually be nominated for a Grammy. Seeley is an all-around pianist whose interest and repertoire span piano music from the entire 20th century. It includes the music of Kern, Gershwin and Debussy as well as the standard works of ragtime, stride, blues and of course boogie woogie. Peter Silvester writes, "His solos are notable for their coherence and logical progression, which propels them to a satisfying climax. Of all the contemporary pianists, Seeley reproduces the sound and spirit of Meade Lux Lewis with the most conviction and sometimes even surpasses the master" (p. 247–248).

Bob Baldori

Boogie Bob Baldori has been a mainstay of blues, boogie and rock in the midwest for over 40 years. He has performed hundreds of dates in venues from Detroit to Chicago, LA to New York to the White House for President Clinton. In addition to recording and performing his own material, Boogie Bob has produced and engineered over 200 albums. He also wrote and starred in ALMOST FAMOUS, a rock/musical that had five successful productions starting at the Boarshead Theater in Lansing, Michigan, moving to the Wharton Center at MSU, Les Idee in Grand Rapids, The Apollo Theater in Chicago and in 1998 at The Limelight Theater, Toronto. He also combines a law practice with his recording/performing career, representing many clients including Hubert Sumlin and Chuck Berry in the entertainment field.

Baldori has written a collection of original piano solos that were published in 2005 and is completing an instructional book on improvisational piano and a book of over 250 exercises for jazz/blues/boogie improvisation.

Baldori started his career in the late sixties in Detroit with his group, The Woolies, and soon released a national hit, Who Do You Love. In the following years, in addition to touring and performing extensively and recording on his own, he backed up Chuck Berry, playing hundreds of dates and recording two albums with Mr. Berry. In addition to Berry, Boogie Bob has worked and recorded with many other blues and rock legends, playing piano and harmonica. They include Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Luther Allison, Del Shannon, John Hammond, Hubert Sumlin and Bo Diddley. Along the way he developed a style of piano playing heavily influenced by boogie, jazz, and the relentless blues styles of Lafayette Leake, Otis Spann, James Booker and Johnny Johnson. If you like classic, no holds barred rocking piano boogie, this is for you!

Visit Boogie Bob Baldori's web site.