There are thousands of piano players, amateur and professional, who can plow
through a few boogie-woogie tunes. Then there’s Carl Sonny Leyland. A British
expat who lived in New Orleans in the ’90s before settling in California,
Leyland is probably the most complete boogie stylist ever. In addition to the
obvious masters—Pete Johnson, Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis, Jimmy Yancey—he’s
absorbed the music of the second and third-tier boogie-and-bluesmen: Little Brother
Montgomery, Moon Mullican, Montana Taylor, Roosevelt Sykes and many others. Chances
are good that Leyland can play a piece by any reasonably esteemed boogie player
you can name. But he doesn’t just reproduce the stuff like an automaton
(as some boogieites do): he is very inventive within the idiom, and has written
some terrific pieces. He plays fine stride, rag and Western swing piano, and
he sings great too.

Railroads and boogie-woogie go hand-in-hand; the genre’s most famous piece
may be Meade Lux Lewis’ “Honky Tonk Train Blues.” There’s
a fine version here, along with obscurities like Wesley Wallace’s strange
and very tricky “Number 29,” Cripple Clarence Lofton’s “Streamline
Train” and 19 others. Accompanying Leyland unobtrusively are two early
American music scholars, drummer Hal Smith and bassist Marty Eggers. This CD
is highly recommended to anyone who loves early jazz piano.