CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Mitch Woods

American boogie-woogie, jump blues and jazz musician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ15438856
Source-derived summary

Mitch Woods (born April 3, 1951, Brooklyn, New York) is an American modern day boogie-woogie, jump blues and jazz pianist and singer. Since the early 1980s he has been touring and recording with his band, the Rocket 88s. Woods calls his music, "rock-a-boogie," and with his backing band has retrospectively provided a 1940s and 1950s jump blues style.

Biography

Woods got his start playing clubs near the State University of New York Buffalo campus. He moved to San Francisco in 1971.

Originally a student of jazz and classical music, on relocation to the West Coast, Woods started playing jump and rhythm and blues. Upon hearing Louis Jordan's jive, Woods played throughout the 1970s as a soloist at local clubs. In 1984, Blind Pig released the debut album of the Rocket 88s, the band he had formed with HiTide Harris four years earlier. Steady Date with Mitch Woods & His Rocket 88s led to a national concert tour, including the San Francisco Blues Festival in 1985, as well as several European engagements. In 1988, they issued their second LP, Mr.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Mitch Woods” as american boogie-woogie, jump blues and jazz musician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1951, 1971, 1984, 1985—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1951-04-03. The account is most persuasive where Mitch, Woods and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american boogie-woogie, jump blues and jazz musician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15438856. VIAF identifies the subject as 79952967. The Library of Congress control number is n92038390. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1951, 1971, 1984 and 1985.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mitch Woods”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mitch Woods primary sources, Mitch Woods archive and Mitch research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mitch Woods”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Mitch Woods” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.