Country Boogie

Country boogie is the uptempo country style of the late 1940s and early 1950s that set country instrumentation to the eight-to-the-bar piano patterns of boogie-woogie. *The Delmore Brothers*' "Hillbilly Boogie" (1945) announced it; *Moon Mullican*, a pianist himself, *The Maddox Brothers and Rose* and *Merle Travis* — whose fingerpicked guitar supplied its own boogie figures — made it country's dance music of the postwar years. With prominent electric lead guitar, walking bass and a hard backbeat, country boogie fed directly into rockabilly and early rock and roll, and produced durable hits including *Tennessee Ernie Ford*'s "Sixteen Tons".