A young Clay Swafford would spend an hour at a time working on just the left-hand patterns. Listening to tracks from blues albums again and again, trying to learn by-ear the hip-shaking boogie-woogie-style of piano-playing he’d become obsessed with.

Growing up in Oakman, a small town in central Alabama’s Walker County, Swafford had already been big into Southern rock. He loved Billy Powell’s rollicking piano solos on Lynyrd Skynyrd songs like “I Know a Little” and Skynyrd’s cover of J.J. Cale’s song “Call Me the Breeze.” Swafford also enjoyed Chuck Leavell’s piano-playing on Allman Brothers and Rolling Stones tracks. Eddie Harsch’s keyboards with the Black Crowes was another fave.

Swafford had started playing piano at age 6, learning gospel hymns on his family’s old Kimball piano. His earliest public performances on the instrument were in church. By the time Swafford was 12 or so, he was playing different types of music in a little garage band.

Around then, Eric Clapton released his 1994 blues album “From The Cradle.” In addition to showcasing Clapton’s special guitaring and vocals, the album benefited from eloquent piano by Chris Stainton, known for his playing on classic Joe Cocker recordings like 1970 live album “Mad Dogs & Englishmen.”

“That album really just really hit home with me,” Swafford, now 40, recalls. “The liner notes of that Clapton record, that’s where I learned about [bluesmen] Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Howlin’ Wolf and those guys. It really took on a whole new passion. I started studying that stuff inside and out and really sunk my teeth into it.”

Swafford kept following the roots downward. He got into sophisticated boogie-woogie pianists from decades long past, like Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson. In addition to playing along with recordings, Swafford learned vital boogie-woogie skills up close from Wayne Gross, a local musician who lived about 10 miles from the Swafford family.

Fast-forward to his 20s, and Swafford was playing gigs on piano with blues stars like harmonica god James Cotton and guitarist Hubert Sumlin, whose riffs on Howlin’ Wolf songs were a huge inspiration on Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page.

Swafford says Sumlin, who died in 2011, “was probably one of the nicest guys I’ve met, period. I mean, he just always had a smile on his face. He was good to tell you stories and just a great guy to be around.” Swafford got connected to Cotton through his friend and mentor David Maxwell, a Boston pianist who’d played in guitar-hero’s-guitar-hero Freddie King’s band in the 1970s.

Swafford is largely a creature of the bandstand. His career has mostly focused on playing live rather than studio recordings. He’s performed onstage at many top blues events, including Arkansas’ King Biscuit Blues Festival and Memphis’ Blues Music Awards, the blues equivalent of the country music’s CMAs, and share the stage with the likes of ‘60s music/Southern rock icon Elvin Bishop.

Initially, Swafford was drawn to the blues by the feeling in it. How the music expressed life’s highest of highs and lowest of lows. A little later, after Swafford got the change to travel the Mississippi Delta, the blues’ birthplace, he appreciated the music on a different level.

“The landscape in the area where those guys come from, and the struggles they went through, it took on a whole new depth to me,” Swafford says. “And I just wanted to become immersed in that. Some of the characteristics that made those guys really great blues players has to do with those cultural and geographical and aspects of it. Especially during sharecropping times when those guys were coming up, there was not much vehicle transportation. A lot of walking. Time just really slowed down. And I think that’s one reason their timing is so dead on.”

By his early teens, Swafford was playing with local band called The Levee Breakers over in Tuscaloosa, doing shows at festivals and bars, including Birmingham’s old 22nd Street Jazz & Blues Café. At 22nd Street, Swafford met and played with Alabama harmonica legend Topper Price. The club is also where Swafford met “Microwave” Dave Gallaher, the internationally touring Huntsville blues guitarist/singer, who’d play at 22nd with his band The Nukes.

About four years ago, Swafford moved to Huntsville. Since then, he and Gallaher have played gigs together frequently, including in a trio they call The Blue Band with Darrell Tibbs on drums.

Swafford and Gallaher may be decades apart in age, but they’re musically simpatico, Swafford says. “There’s a world of people that they can play blues and structurally understand what’s going on. But it’s just a little bit different when you’re playing with somebody who’s put the time in and studied it like a historian. There’s a deeper connection play with Dave that I really, really enjoy.”

Along those lines, I ask Gallaher what makes the kind of blues piano Swafford plays special. Gallaher says, “Coming from a long way back, the piano was the sole instrument in many American music halls, theaters, churches and saloons. A good pianist could rock the house before there was such a thing. I think it’s the fact that it is a melodic instrument, yet it also plays harmony. Add to that it’s vital percussive quality, and it’s an ensemble in itself.”

Throughout decades of gigs, Swafford has played different portable keyboards, including Roland, Yamaha and Casio synths, with acoustic piano sounds. Away from the stage, Swafford’s interests include motorcycles and camping.

Around 2011, Swafford’s rep was big enough he got to be part of a boogie-woogie piano documentary called “Falsifyin’” featuring the likes rock pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis, blues standout Marcia Ball and Muddy Waters sideman Pinetop Perkins, and narrated by actor Morgan Freeman.

Unfortunately, the documentary really never got a proper release. But Swafford did get some incredible memories out of the experience. The doc included the filming of a concert, and Swafford got to be the opening act for Lewis. Later, after the concert, Swafford says during an interview Lewis said, “As long as there’s guys like Clay, this music will never die.”

“I’ll never forget that,” says Swafford, calling Lewis’ words the best compliment he’s ever received as a musician.

Swafford isn’t the last boogie-woogie blues pianist standing, but there’s not a ton of them anymore. There are some talented players like Chase Garrett and Arthur Migliazza from Swafford’s generation. But after that, not so much.

Gallaher says, “Playing it as well as Clay does is rarified these days. Many keyboardists can run off a few choruses of standard boogie-woogie riffs, but Clay is among very few these days who have studied the masters in depth, discerning the facets in their styles — which he can quote perfectly when he chooses — to merge into his own right-hand phrasing while keeping the left hand pumping.

Swafford thinks a lot of it comes down to exposure, noting there are many great young pianists, but not many of them have been exposed to blues playing. And while blues guitar isn’t the sensation it was during popular music’s rock-dominated era, the number of blues guitarists still going steeply dwarfs the number of blues pianists now.

The blues’ last significant pop culture moment was the early-2000s rise of blues-indebted garage rockers The White Stripes and Black Keys. The blues genre itself last achieved real mainstream impact and commercial success in the ‘90s, thanks to young guns like Jonny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

Swafford concedes boogie-woogie piano may be a dying art. But he hears the blues influence – even if it’s secondhand — in the emotive vocals of popstars.

“Miley Cyrus may not have gotten it from [classic blues singers] like Koko Taylor and Bessie Smith, those influences that have influenced people that she listened to, it’s like a chain reaction kind of deal,” he says. “I kind of think you hear it everywhere in singers, in pop and in country. A lot of times it’s not a super strong presence, but it’s there.

“I think the blues will never die because it’s such a heavy foundation of American music in general. It’s like taking the roux out of gumbo and if you don’t have the roux, you don’t have gumbo. It may not be as prominent as it was in other times, but I think that those elements are still gonna be influential in all different styles of music.”

Clay Swafford will perform with Microwave Dave Gallaher and drummer Darrell Tibbs from 6 – 7 p.m. today at the 9th Microwave Dave Day. Held from 3 – 10 p.m. at Stovehouse, address 3414 Governors Drive S.W., Microwave Dave Day will present more than 50 local artists across two stages. The event is free to attended, with donations to the Microwave Dave Music Education Foundation, welcomed.

MORE ON HUNTSVILLE CULTURE:

How a classic Huntsville festival was revived for a new era

Huntsville’s best nachos: Our top 5

How to hear a lot of great Huntsville music in less than an hour

Singer’s new release features 2 of Huntsville’s greatest guitarist

The spirit of classic Huntsville restaurant Zesto rides again

What’s next for Huntsville’s best young singer/songwriter?

The origins and continuing impact of Huntsville’s signature beer

New Huntsville music venue aims for vintage vibes, rising touring acts