response 26 of 256:

Sep 27 21:25 UTC 1993

It's a ghost's playing that you hear in the middle of the night.

response 28 of 256:

Oct 8 17:35 UTC 1993

Last week in St. Louis, I visited Scott Joplin's house, now a museum.
Except for a couple of buildings on either side, the neighborhood is
practically all gone, just weeds and rubble and burned-out buildings.

T.S. Eliot grew up only a few blocks away, at the same time that Joplin
lived here; but Eliot's home is no longer standing.

The Scott Joplin house museum is owned and operated by the state of
Missouri.  There was just the one tour guide while I was there, and I
was the only visitor during the hour or so that I spent there.

The exhibits are fairly sparse.  There's one or two rooms which have
to do with ragtime music in general, including other composers, etc.

The museum consists of two adjoining townhouses, built at the same time.
Some time before 1900, they were each divided into upper and lower flats.
Scott Joplin and his first wife lived in one of the upper flats for a
few years after 1900, after they moved to St. Louis from Sedalia MO.

Joplin's own flat, which has been restored to something approaching
what it might have been like (and without the usual museum paraphenalia
of velvet ropes and such), is dark and narrow, with a few small rooms.

His connection with this specific apartment hangs on the single thread
of one city directory entry.  It could have been a typo.  For someone
of such national prominence (he'd already published "Maple Leaf Rag"
before he came to St. Louis), the documentary record is depressingly
scant.

Two things I had forgotten about Joplin, if I'd ever known: (1) he was
college-educated, and (2) he died of syphilis.

response 30 of 256:

Oct 11 22:39 UTC 1993

"Graceful Ghost" is one of the more difficult ragtime pieces I've
undertaken to learn.  I've got the first two strains down reasonably
well, but the third -- which goes all over the map key-wise and
mood-wise -- is slower going.

Recently added James Scott's "Grace and Beauty" to my repertoire.
A sunny piece in A flat major with brief teasing excursions into
into a stormier minor mode, it lives up to its title.

response 32 of 256:

Oct 14 07:49 UTC 1993

Good choices!

response 34 of 256:

Feb 12 02:29 UTC 1994

John, would you care to expand on the comparison of Joplin-Mozart and
Scott-Beethoven?

response 36 of 256:

Feb 29 06:32 UTC 1996

  I recently fell into a bargain: A $5 CD of Joplin's rags called "The
Entertainer" played by Richard Zimmerman, and it's worth every penny!

1- The Entertainer
2- Maple Leaf Rag
3- Swipsey
4- Sunflower Slow Drag
5- Easy Winners
6- Ragtime Dance
7- The Cascades
8- Bethena
9- Gladiolus Rag
10-Heliotrope Bouquee
11-Fig Leaf Rag
12-PineApple Rag
13-Solace
14-Euphonic Sounds
15-Stomptime Rag
16-Scott Joplin's New Rag

   What I like about this disc, is that they are played completely; the
average time of a track is 4 mins. I especially like Solace, which is 
6 mins long and absolutly fine. I found this one at Meijer. I don't think
that there was another one, which is a shame.

response 38 of 256:

Mar 2 05:11 UTC 1996

Of all the rags I've heard my favorite is "The Graceful Ghost".
Moody, slippery, and incredibly elegant.

response 40 of 256:

Apr 12 10:29 UTC 1996

For a while I've been looking for a book of Joseph Lamb rags
called "Ragtime Treasures". Used to own it, but seem to have
lost it some time ago, probably in one of my changes of
residence. It was published a few years after Lamb's death
in 1960 and contains a number of previously unpublished rags,
including such gems as "Arctic Sunset", "Cottontail Rag",
and "Ragtime Bobolink". The book has been out of print for
quite a while and some recent attempts on my part to obtain
a copy were unsuccessful. Then Mary told me about Southern
Music, a sheet music outlet that stocks a lot of old, hard-
to-find items. A call revealed that they had *one* copy,
which I ordered forthwith. It arrived via priority mail
yesterday, just three days after I ordered it. Now *that*
is service!

So if you're looking for some obscure, out-of-print piece of
sheet music, I'd advice giving Southern Music a call.

As part of the same order I acquired "Rialto Ripples", a 1917
rag by George Gershwin and Will Donaldson. I have a couple of
recordings of it and have been wanting to work on it myself.

response 42 of 256:

Nov 5 20:12 UTC 1996

FESTIVAL REPORT
---------------
Late last month I attended the Tom Turpin Ragtime Festival, held
in Savannah, Georgia. Turpin was a contemporary of Scott Joplin
(late 19th, early 20th centuries), and Savannah was his home
town.  The festival is an annual event.

What happens at a ragtime festival? Well, they bring in several
guest performers and have concerts, dances, and after-hours jam
sessions over a period of several days. Several ragtime festivals
are held around the country every year. This was the first I've
attended; it was a real treat and has whetted my appetite for
more.

The guest artists were a mixed bag of old-timers and newcomers
and form an almost complete roster of today's leading ragtimers.
The old-timers group included "Ragtime Bob" Darch and Trebor
Tichoner.  Darch has been performing and promoting ragtime since
the 1940's and prior to the Scott Joplin revival in the early
1970's was one of the few people doing so. Tichoner is perhaps
best-known today as the editor of the Dover series of early
ragtime anthologies: "Ragtime Rarities", "Ragtime Rediscoveries",
etc. -- invaluable sources for anyone wishing to study or perform
ragtime. When these guys sit down at the piano and start playing,
it seems as natural as breathing.

Then there were the young composers and players -- e.g. Frank
French, Scott Kirby, Jeff Barnhart. French and Kirby perform
together a lot -- their compositions seem to be spiritually
descended from Scott Joplin: lyrical, with strong folk, European,
and Latin American influences. Barnhart is a knock-your-socks-off
stride pianist whose style reminds me a lot of Fats Waller and
Michigan's "Mr. B". He comes to ragtime from a jazz background;
this was only his second ragtime festival, but he took it by
storm.

Other featured players were Bob Ault, J. Hamilton Douglas, David
Jasen, Glenn Jenks, Terry Parrish, David Reffkin, Mike Schwimmer,
Terry Waldo, and Richard Zimmerman. I've known about Zimmerman
for a while, being an admirer of his recording of the complete
piano works of Scott Joplin, released in the 1970's and recently
reissued on CD. Good as his early recordings are, he seems to
have developed substantially as a performer since then --
prodigious technique, dazzling improvisatory skill, a grandiose
playing style that I'm tempted to describe as "Beethovenesque".

Some of the performers make their living at music; for others
it's an avocation. Terry Parrish is an MD whose day job is
director of a mental health center in Indianapolis. Richard
Zimmerman performs and teaches magic when he's not ragtiming.

One reason for my attending the festival -- in addition to
hearing lots of good music -- was to see how my own playing
skills stack up against the people who perform at these
things. Although I'm not in the same league as the best of the
performers listed above (nor did I expect to be), I could hold my
own with some of the folks I heard.

At one of the after-hours sessions, around midnight, with a
smallish audience remaining, I worked up the courage to the step
up to the piano and do some stuff. Started out with James Scott's
"Evergreen Rag". They applauded and asked for more. Did Joe
Lamb's "Cottontail Rag". (Lamb, along with Joplin and Scott, is
considered to be one of the "big three" classical ragtime
composers.) They asked for more Lamb, so I did "Ragtime
Bobolink". Also Joplin's "Bethena" and Scott's "Caliope Rag".

After I was done they expressed curiosity about who I was,
inasmuch as I seemed to have come out of nowhere. (I'm told that
one tends to see a lot of the same faces from one festival to the
next.) So we exchanged introductions. Practically fell over when
one of the people in the group turned out to be Joe Lamb's
daughter Patricia. Seems she and her husband are frequent
attendees at ragtime festivals. In the same group I met Lillibeth
Wood, a white-haired retired music teacher from Ohio who earlier
in the evening had performed beautifully several Lamb
pieces. She's a close friend of Patricia, and offered to send me
copies of all the unpublished Lamb works that she has (there's
quite a bit of that, apparently). Of course I will want
everything that she has!

I shall be attending more festivals...

response 44 of 256:

Nov 21 23:43 UTC 1996

   ((( linked over from the first music conference to the second )))

response 46 of 256:

Dec 31 13:08 UTC 1996

<comes up for air after finishing on the umpteenth try>
Thanks for linking it ... & for all the posted material, John & others.
Personally, I think I'd heard a little ragtime earlier, but my first real
awareness of it came from a friend in college who really liked it.  This was
several years before _The_Sting_, which seems to have been the trigger for
giving ragtime the general exposure it's had since then.  Still all too minor,
but most people recognize *some* of it & many know what it's called.

(Just to add to John's demographic note: my friend, Lisa Lee, was
Chinese-American.  I've lost touch with her, years ago, I'm sorry to say.)

response 48 of 256:

Jan 7 17:09 UTC 1997

Seems like in my distant past I remember seeing something on TV about a
"fourth B", who might have been a black classical (ragtime?) composer whose
last name began with B.  Anyone know what/who the heck I'm thinking of?