Henri Herbert keeps the roots of rock alive. Herbert will perform May 10 at the ProArts Playhouse. Courtesy photo

Known for his electrifying live shows, boogie-woogie and blues pianist Henri Herbert is acclaimed as one of the most thrilling musicians on the contemporary blues and rock scene. His dazzling fingerwork, combined with natural charisma has captivated audiences around the world.

How amazing is he? Check out the brilliant YouTube video of him playing in public at one of London’s main train stations, from the doc “Street Pianos-Instrument of Change,” with 73 million views.

The video elicited such comments as, “One of the greatest musicians of our modern time,” “No one on Earth ever can play piano like this” and “There’s really no vocabulary to describe how spectacular he is!”

“There’s two videos,” Herbert explained. “One of them is from when I was on the break from the road and I’d heard about these pianos in London. So I thought I’d go and have a go. My friend was there with his phone and filmed it and whacked it up on his channel. It sat there for a couple of years, not doing anything.

“Then suddenly it blew up. That’s the crazy thing about YouTube. I was on holiday at the time and my phone started pinging and pinging. Suddenly it was one million, two million, 20 million. It was crazy, but very good for me because it exposed my performance to a lot of people. It’s a stroke of luck. The planets aligned for me.”

His video kicked off a bit of a craze.

“All around London, they have pianos in various states of disrepair,” he said. “Different train stations have pianos. Once more people started doing it on YouTube, there’s a whole community of about 10 or 15 people who gather regularly around the pianos and play. It’s like a social thing. Since that happened, they’ve started to maintain the pianos quite a lot. It’s a phenomenon.”

Born in France, Herbert developed a passion for piano at an early age, listening to his father’s record collection.

“Back then it was quite unusual for someone my age to be into that music,” he recalled. “What was happening was Britpop at the time. It was Oasis and Blur and the Spice Girls. I was into Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. I wanted to just play boogie-woogie. I was kind of weird. I used to style my hair like the 1950s and try to look like Elvis, and look like a rocker.”

He was particularly drawn to the fast-paced and rhythmically intense style that emerged in the early 20th century. Influenced by legends such as Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Lewis, Herbert honed his craft by studying the intricate patterns and explosive energy of the greats.

So what is the boogie-woogie style of piano playing?

“It was first recorded in the 1920s, but no one really knows where it started,” he said. “It was meant to get people dancing and having a good time. In the communities where there was not a band, where there was just a piano, people were working long hours and they just wanted to chill out and let off steam. It caught people’s attention pretty fast once the recordings came out. It’s about making a nice rhythm in the left hand, then the right hand does the melody and embellishments. It became rock and roll, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. It’s like the foundations of a modern rock and roll band with the bass and the rhythm and the lead all played by one person. Then it became rock when the guitar’s playing it, with Chuck Berry, through to AC/DC, the Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin. You can hear the boogie-woogie.”

Herbert saw Little Richard in concert in London. “I guess he was in his early to mid-60s and he still had a lot of power. The vocals were incredible. The piano was incredible. He actually said on the show, ‘When I was a little boy, we didn’t have rock and roll. We had boogie-woogie. Then he just played a solo piece on the piano and it was amazing.”

It was a package show with Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. “I met Jerry Lee in Glasgow in Scotland,” he said. “It was very intimidating, and he was very cool.”

Did Lewis know Herbert regarded him as the king? “I think he knows everyone thinks he’s king. He believes that he’s the greatest entertainer that’s ever lived.”

So what can we expect at his Maui gig?

“You’ll just hear an energetic, exciting show with a lot of rock and roll piano, a lot of boogie-woogie and blues and a few originals,” he said. “I love to play ‘What I Say’ by Ray Charles. I was in Lithuania a few months ago, and I played that. Normally, I get the audience singing along to it. But they didn’t know it. They’d never heard it before. I do some of Jerry’s stuff. He did a few great boogie instrumentals that I play, and I sometimes bring his flavor into other songs.”

The last time he played on Maui in 2021, John Cruz joined him on bass. “I did a live show on the radio, which we may release one day. I like to put out live records from time to time. So it’s live in Hawaii. That could be pretty cool.”

Herbert will perform at 7:30 p.m. May 10 at the ProArts Playhouse. Tickets range from $25 to $40.