Born James Louis Blythe on the 20th May, 1901 in South Keene, Kentucky. He was the youngest of five children to survive birth (less common over a hundred years ago) and he became interested in the piano after hearing ragtime pianists. He moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1917 and worked at the Mavis Talcum Powder Company while studying the piano under the tutelage of an orchestra leader ‘Clarence M. Jones. His early life is little sketchy, but it is thought that he prepared compositions during his time at Jones’s recording studio while performing locally.
In 1922, Jimmy Blythe was hired to record piano rolls by the Columbia Music Roll Company. He is credited to as many three hundred piano roll recordings for Columbia (later re-named Capitol in 1924). Many of these recordings took simple tunes and added blues riffs and boogie woogie bass lines and no doubt became very influential to the musicians of the time. Such technology seems strange in today’s digital age, but back then it must have been quite an impressive sight. Of course we still have similar in the shape of Yamaha Disklavier range of pianos, although the recordings are digitally based, even if they are played on an acoustic piano.
Jimmy Blythe later went into the recording studio in April 1924 with Paramount Records. His most popular recording was ‘Chicago Stomp’ and was one of the earliest boogie woogie recordings and so made him one of the first to be recorded himself.
He recorded with his own groups also, with ‘Blythe’s Sinful Five’, ‘Jimmy Blythe And His Ragamuffins’ and ‘Blythe’s Washboard Band’. And had also recorded under the pseudonyms ‘Duke Owens’ and George Jefferson’.
James Louis Blythe passed away on 14th of June in 1931 after contracting Meningitis. A very sad young age to go, but he had done some important and influential work in his short life.