became. And some slow rags do suggest the blues; Jelly Roll Morton used to jack up a blues piece and call it a "stomp." So a "stomp" is a musical halfway house between ragtime and the blues.

The blues and ragtime did produce one stepchild, boogie woogie piano. With a blues vocabulary and ragtime technique, boogie woogie has its own special place in American piano music. Meade Lux Lewis and especially Bob Seeley (who this pianist saw in concert over 30 years ago) are its chief practitioners, and a distilled version survives in the hands of Jerry Lee Lewis.

The blues always enjoyed an advantage over ragtime - it was simpler, easier to play. Blues pieces don't change harmonies (chords) all that often, sometimes only three chords in a piece. Ragtime changes