That other boogie woogie number: "Down The Road A Piece"

[highplainsdem]

4. First recorded in 1940 - and a huge hit then - by the Will Bradley Trio.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_the_Road_a_Piece

"Down the Road a Piece" was recorded in 1940 by members of the Will Bradley–Ray McKinley Orchestra as the "Will Bradley Trio" (a misnomer, as Bradley did not perform on the song, while a fourth, the song's writer, Don Raye, did, as well as an uncredited vibraphone player).

Three musicians are mentioned in the lyrics:
The drummer man's a guy they call Eight Beat Mack
And you remember Doc and ol' Beat Me Daddy Slack

"Eight Beat Mack" refers to the drummer Ray McKinley, "Doc" refers to the bass player Doc Goldberg, and "Beat Me Daddy Slack" refers to the pianist Freddie Slack (a reference to "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar", a hit recorded earlier in 1940 by Slack with the Bradley–McKinley Orchestra). Vocals for "Down the Road a Piece" are provided by McKinley and Raye.

-snip-

In his autobiography, Henry Mancini recalled that "Down the Road a Piece" inspired his "Baby Elephant Walk" for the 1962 movie Hatari!: "I looked at the scene [elephants walking to the watering hole] several times [and] I thought, 'Yeah, they're walking eight to the bar', and that brought something to mind, an old Will Bradley boogie-woogie number called 'Down the Road a Piece'... Those little elephants were definitely walking boogie-woogie, eight to the bar. I wrote 'Baby Elephant Walk' as a result".[2]

One of my aunts played piano, most often boogie-woogie, brilliantly, and my understanding was that she'd started playing boogie-woogie in the 1940s. Unfortunately we lost the youngest member of that generation of the family a year ago so there's no one to ask who might remember if the record above is what inspired her.