Boogie at Birdland!

Two Bob’s, four hands, twenty fingers, 100 years of boogie! Two phenomenal performers with two pianos 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.

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. Both artists play a relentless keyboard in the truest sense of jazz playing – infectious rhythms and dizzying improvisation.

The relationship started when the two men 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. Together, their styles are at the crossroads of American music with an encyclopedic repertoire of jazz, boogie, stride, blues and backbeat rock and roll.