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Born to boogie: Sirens Records founder Steven Dolins. (Photo by Brian O¹Mahoney / Staff Photographer)

It might have been Pink Floyd, it might have been Led Zeppelin, it even might have been -- oh, the horror -- Iggy and the Stooges.

As fate would have it, though, that day in 1969 or 1970 in Skokie, when impressionable 13-year-old Steven Dolins was raiding an older brother's record collection, only one performer truly spoke to him: 1930s boogie-woogie piano great Pete Johnson, playing "Roll 'Em, Pete."

"I heard that and I was hooked," said Dolins, founder of The Sirens Records, dedicated to preserving authentic Chicago blues, boogie-woogie, gospel and jazz.

(Of course, his appointment with destiny was greatly influenced by the fact that the collection he was browsing belonged to big brother Barry, future founder of the Chicago Blues Festival.)

Thirty-five years later, Dolins is releasing his 11th and 12th recordings on The Sirens label: "Careless Love" by Chicago pianist Erwin Helfer and "Heavenly Keys," featuring the three-part gospel keyboard stylings of the Rev. Dwayne Mason, Leonard Maddox and Willie Jones.

The release party for both records is Friday night at Katerina's club and cafe in Chicago. The Gospel Keyboard Trio also will perform two shows with jazz vocalist Jimmy Scott Nov. 26 at the HotHouse in Chicago.

Dolins, now 48 and a longtime Highland Park resident, fell so hard for piano boogie that he learned everything he could about it -- involving many trips from his Skokie home to the Jazz Record Mart in Chicago and as many performances as he could find.

Soon, just listening wasn't enough. He decided to learn to play and was fortunate enough to find a great teacher: the aforementioned Mr. Helfer. Dolins, who had collected his recordings and seen him perform at a University of Chicago folk festival, simply called him up and asked for lessons.

Making tracks

Looking back on that time, Dolins recalls himself as a shy sort of kid -- but apparently not when it came to pursuing his great passion.

In 1975, a few years after Helfer took him on as a student, the Niles North High School student founded The Sirens label to reissue Helfer's own self-released late-'50s compilation of boogie keyboard greats, "Primitive Piano."

A year later, he also recorded "Heavy Timbre," a meeting of Chicago boogie piano greats Willie Mabon, Sunnyland Slim, Jimmy Walker, Blind John Davis and Helfer.

" Nobody else was recording these guys and I wanted to preserve that music," Dolins said. "I think Erwin was into preserving it too, that's why he introduced me to everyone."

Today, the 69-year-old Helfer is the only performer from the "Heavy Timbre" sessions who is still alive.

After starting a record label as a teen, Dolins studied computer science at Tulane University (where he could also spend four years listening to New Orleans piano greats). He pursued a career as a programming researcher before taking a job as a professor at Bradley University -- a job he still holds, commuting to Peoria.

But in 2001, Dolins decided to revive The Sirens Records, reissuing "Heavy Timbre." Dolins, who had enjoyed a long friendship with Blind John Davis after making that record, wanted to his music alive.

" It didn't seem fair to me that John never received wide recognition," Dolins said. "He was an amazing piano player. He was the house pianist for all the classic RCA Bluebird label recordings and he was one of the major players who defined Chicago blues in the '30s and '40s."

Dolins is in the process of acquiring the rights to enough tracks by Davis to produce a commemorative CD. In the meantime, he plans to record The Sirens 13th release live Jan. 29 when Chicago blues/jazz/gospel singer Katerine Davis performs with Helfer's Chicago Boogie Ensemble at the Old Town School of Folk Music.

Pre-'Sweet Home'

Most people immediately associate blues in Chicago with Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters in the 1950s.

For Dolins, though, the scene goes back a few decades earlier, with players like Jimmy Yancey, Cripple Clarence Lofton, Albert Ammons, Peter Johnson, Meade Lux Lewis, Sunnyland Slim, Little Brother Montgomery, Otis Spann, Pinetop Smith, Montana Taylor, Cow Cow Davenport playing rent parties with a supercharged version of the blues -- eight beats to the bar instead of four -- that came to be known as boogie-woogie.

The artists Dolins records, including Libertyville stride piano master Barrelhouse Chuck, all spring directly from that pre-World War II Chicago blues tradition. No less an authority than jazz writer Nat Hentoff, who produced records by Otis Spann and Sunnyland Smith, has approved The Sirens' fidelity to that era in a 2003 Wall Street Journal article.

" All of my artists are the real deal," said Dolins, whose output in the last five years includes another boogie piano summit ("Eight Hands on 88 Keys"), a solo and duet album by Helfer ("I'm Not Hungry but I like to Eat -- BLUES!" and "St. James Infirmary"), a solo album by Barrelhouse Chuck ("Prescription for the Blues"), an album of gospel standards by the Reverend Dwayne R. Mason ("Glory! Glory!") and a Chicago gospel piano summit ("In the Right Hands").

" I'm pretty good myself and I've been playing for a long time but there are people in Chicago right now who are the best in the world at playing this music," he said.

" Barrelhouse Chuck is carrying on the tradition of Sunnyland Slim. Erwin is very friendly with Jimmy Yancey's wife and the last living link to the Yancey family. And it turns out some of the best blues and boogie pianists today are found among gospel players -- I don't see another generation of blues pianists coming up. Most blues clubs don't even have pianos anymore."

" It's kind of crazy because this isn't a financially sound thing to be doing and I do it more or less all by myself," he said. "I'm the mail clerk, the producer, the liner-notes writer, the marketing man. It takes a lot more money and time than anyone would commit just for the sake of putting out some CDs. But these artists -- Erwin, Chuck, Dwayne, all of them -- deserve to be heard. They make great music and I want people to hear it and enjoy it as much as I do."