In 1978, disco group A Taste of Honey scored a number one hit with “Boogie Oogie Oogie”, a lightweight invitation to the dancefloor. That they took home a Grammy for “Best New Artist” in a field that included the Cars and Elvis Costello was surreal, though you have to hand it to the members of the mixed gender ATOH for playing their own instruments, an unusual practice in their chosen genre. Why do I mention it?  Well, “Boogie Oogie Oogie” was the official burial of “boogie,” a once potent, groove-based music with a long history related to rock and blues as well as to dancing, which of course it’s synonymous with.

Before the shame of “Boogie Oogie Oogie”, the boogie had seen some very good years—from the roaring ’20s and the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, up till the ’70s when consummate rocker Marc Bolan of T. Rex claimed he was Born to Boogie. But just what is the boogie, anyway? Perhaps a visit to rock ‘n’ roll’s pre-dawn is in order, just to clarify who put the boogaloo in the boogie oogie oogie.

Originally known as boogie-woogie, the style of piano playing features a repetitive figure that locks into a groove at the bottom of the scale. That puts the rhythm of the left hand in the driver’s seat while the right hand is free to roam. A familiar example of where boogie-woogie piano meets rock ‘n’ roll would be Jerry Lee Lewis and his “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.”

Originating around the turn of the century, “Pine Top” Smith’s “Pinetop’s Boogie” from 1928 is most often cited as the earliest boogie-woogie piano hit. Boogie-woogie would go on to cut a swath through swing and jump blues, music that was especially designed for dancing, though its base was honky tonks and juke joints. The sound enjoyed its real heyday in the late ’30s to early ’40s; everything from Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson (”Roll ‘Em Pete”), as well as fluffed-up swing-time orchestras and vocalists (”Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”), were doing the boogie-woogie. I could list boogie-woogie titles for days here, but it’s time to boogie on…

In 1948, John Lee Hooker, inspired by Detroit’s nightclub district, Hastings Street, came out with what may well be the greatest example of a boogie, performed on a guitar. The repetition in “Boogie Chillen’” is unrelenting as Hooker tells the story of how he came to boogie. “I’m the man that started the boogie,” said Hooker in the liner notes to John Lee Hooker:The Ultimate Collection 1948-1990. He explains that his stepfather taught him the “country boogie” when he was a child growing up in the Mississippi Delta, though he ultimately played it electric.

Like Muddy Waters’s “Trouble No More”, the jam style leads straight back to the Delta where Robert Johnson (”Ramblin’ On My Mind”) and his contemporaries were working out the guitar boogie sound in the ’30s. Certainly “Sweet Home Chicago” which dates back to the pre-Johnson era and is heavily identified with electric, Chicago-style blues, would become among the most abused 12-bar songs in the history of blues rock.

So now it’s 1950-something. B.B. King is boogie-woogieing, as is a lesser-known Southern bluesman, Pinetop Perkins, who cut “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie”, a confusing though self-mythologizing piece that seems to place him in the company of “Pine Top” Smith and the birth of boogie-woogie. He’s not, but Pinetop number two is tangentially connected to the creation of rock ‘n’ roll: ”I looked through the window of the pool hall and saw Pinetop Perkins play piano…That started my musical life,” Ike Turner told me in 1997. In 1951, Turner turned out “Rocket 88″ at Sun Studios, a song that Sam Phillips called the first rock ‘n’ roll song (it stands in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with that distinction). But “Rocket 88″, which refers to a car, didn’t materialize out of nowhere; it took some cues from a 1947 swing cut by Jimmy Liggins (brother of Joe) called, you got it, “Cadillac Boogie.”

At the same time, Turner was literally and figuratively lording over the club scene in East St. Louis; his only competition on the stage was guitar innovator Chuck Berry. Inspired by electric pioneer Charlie Christian, T-Bone Walker, and the jump band sounds of Louis Jordan, Berry and his pianist Johnnie Johnson would go on to lay down “Johnny B. Goode,” and there it is again: The repetitions in the rhythm, the distinct melody on top, and that essential chugging quality which equals the birth of uptempo boogie-based rock.

Hillbilly boogie in various forms came in the guise of Elvis (”Milkcow Blues Boogie”) and an entire rockabilly genre. The Beatles boogied in early times as they dabbled with Chuck Berry’s songs and Little Richard’s piano-boogie. Berry’s guitar innovations were turned into rock riffs of the ages by Keith Richards and the Rolling Stones; their version of Slim Harpo’s “Shake Your Hips” classifies as boogie hall o’ fame material. Booker T and the MGs boogied on 1962’s “Green Onions” while that year Hooker also cooked up “Onions”; they are essentially the same song. The boogie would be used as a base for greats like Jimi Hendrix (”Rainy Day, Dream Away”), the Allman Brothers Band (”One Way Out”), and Led Zeppelin (”Whole Lotta Love”). The Doors dumbed it down with “Roadhouse Blues”, but while we’re on the subject of comedy, the link between the boogie and the beards in ZZ Top is undeniable: Their “La Grange” played Hooker’s “Boogie Chillen’” so close that it was subject of a lawsuit.

In 1972, Marc Bolan of T. Rex immortalized the boogie with his Ringo-starring film, Born to Boogie. His “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” is a high watermark for boogie, as is “Jeepster”; both songs capitalize on the important boogie essential, the upstroke on the guitar. Bolan nailed the connections between the boogie and shaking that thing, between Chuck Berry and the barrelhouse, between Robert Johnson imagery and “tutti frutti aw-rooti” nonsense. In the same era, the Stooges caught a case of the boogie woogie flu in “1969″, while the Flamin’ Groovies flew the boogie banner in their Roy Loney phase (”Teenage Head”), as well as in their “Jumpin’ in the Night” period.