W.C. O'Hare's "Levee Revels", subtitled "An Afro-American Cane- Hop", was published in 1898, a year before Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" launched the ragtime boom. It's an early cakewalk two-step somewhat reminiscent in style of W.H. Krell's "Mississippi Rag" and "Shake Your Dusters". It's far more polished than Krell's work, though, and the blend of unusual harmonic coloration and traditional folk melody make it sound almost like Aaron Copeland writing in Americana folk mode. Trebor Tichnor calls "Levee Revels" "one of the most inspired and soulful cakewalk-style pieces ever written". I believe him. After a magnificent alternation between quiet e minor and grandiose G major in the first two strains, the piece modulates into C major and launches into a beautiful, simple folk melody in the trio that sounds a bit like Blind Boone's "Carrie's Gone to Kansas City" but is a lot more subtle, with little slips back into minor mode at the ends of phrases. When I first sight-read the piece and had no idea what was coming, that C major strain practically blew me away.256 responses total.
At the opposite pole chronologically is Willie Anderson's "Keystone Rag", published by the Stark Music Company in 1921, really past the end of the ragtime era. It's a classical slow rag, nostalgic in feel. "Keystone Rag" is a small-scale piece, not difficult technically, but it's a wonderfully expressive backward look at a genre whose popularity, once enormous, had faded away. Stark, which in its heyday had printed the work of the giants of the field like Scott Joplin and James Scott, was one of the last publishers still doing this type of music. As with any piece in this style, it's important not to rush it (that doesn't mean it has to be played funereally), and the sixteenth note runs should be played even, as written, rather than as jazzy dotted sixteenths as was the style with 20's tin pan alley music.
What are your published sources for these pieces, John? Is there a book of Ragtime rarities I should look for?
Two anthologies, published by Dover, of rags selected by Trebor Tichenor: _Ragtime Rarities_ and _Ragtime Rediscoveries_. The pieces mentioned above are from the latter volume.
Thanks for the information, John. Hmm, I haven't played much ragtime in awhile (used to specialize in Joplin). I stopped playing ragtime because I had some bad tendonitis in my hands and wrists, and all the leaping octaves in the left hand just gave me pain and aches. My tendonitis is a lot better now (with regular chiropractic adjustments), so I might look for those two books you mention.
has anyone ever heard of "rialto ripples" by George Gershwin? excellent ragtime piece.
Indeed it is. I recently acquired it on CD -- a collection of miscellaneous rags, played by John Arpin, an excellent ragtime pianist who's been performing since at least the 1970's. There's a recording of it by William Balcom also.
Just about everybody has heard of Scott Joplin, "the King of Ragtime", and those who know a bit about the classical ragtime era have probably heard about the other two composers of the ragtime Big Three, Joseph Lamb and James Scott. But the ragtime era produced many other composers of merit, now largely forgotten. How many have heard of Clyde Douglass, J. Reginald MacEachron, Julia Lee Niebergall, Sydney K. Russell. Clyde Douglass' "Old Virginia Rag" (1907) is a pure burst of creative invention in the key of E flat that practically plays itself. Never straying far from the two octaves around middle C, the piece just bounces through its five sections. MacEachron's "On Easy Street" (1902) is an delightful dance tune in the sunny key of G major. Play it at a bright but not frenetic pace. Beautiful contrast between the high-stepping opening theme and the sustained measure-long notes of the second strain. "Horseshoe Rag" (1911), composed by Julia Niebergall, is something of a technical challenge. The first two strains are harmonically quite rich, involving chords and octaves in both hands throughout, yet the piece needs to sound light and bouncy. If Niebergall played this herself, she must've had big hands. The more modest trio, with its continual duet-like alternation between low and high figures, is a delight. A harmonically ambitious exercise indeed is Sydney Russell's foxtrot, "Too Much Raspberry" (1906). Lots of sudden, daring key modulations, that all seem to work. Despite the "moderato" tempo marking, I think that this piece needs to be played at a brisk pace.
What period (year A to year B) would you identify as being "the ragtime era"? When did ragtime first win widespread public acclaim, and when did this stop happening?
I mostly know about Scott Joplin... His huge hit, "Maple Leaf Rag," was the first million seller in sheet music. That came out (I think) in 1899. Classic ragtime was winding down around 1914 or so. I need to check my facts, but I believe Joplin died in 1917. I think variations on classic ragtime continued into the '20s. Rudi Blesh wrote the definitive book on this musical style, "They All Played Ragtime." I have a copy of it somewhere. Sorry if this seems disjointed. I did a paper on Joplin and ragtime about 20 years ago, when I was a freshman in high school.
That's right -- the vogue of "classical" ragtime coincided pretty closely with the career of Scott Joplin. I think the first published "ragged time" pieces may have appeared in the mid-1890's. By the time of Joplin's death in 1917, popularity of the form was in decline. By the mid-1920's, it had virtually vanished, even its leading composers mostly forgotten. There were a couple of small revivals of interest in this music in the 1940's and late 1950's. In the late 1960's and early 1970's, the music was rediscovered by some serious musicians and musical scholars -- perhaps mostly notably Joshua Rifkin, William Albright, and William Balcom (the last two are University of Michigan School of Music Faculty -- Ann Arbor is something of a center for the study of the ragtime genre and other American popular music forms). New recordings of the work of Joplin and other ragtime composers began to appear. It was Rifkin's recordings of Joplin rags, on the Nonesuch label, that sparked my own interest in the ragtime genre. It may have been the same recordings that inspired director George Roy Hill to incorporate Joplin's music in the soundtrack of his immensely popular film, "The Sting" (1973). With the success of that movie, certain Joplin themes became a standard part of the public musical consciousness. (How many times have I heard "The Entertainer" on Musak systems?)
Not to be nitpicky or anything, but it's Bolcom, not Balcom. I care because Bolcom was one of my more fun professors at the U of M. I studied composition in his class about five years ago. Funny, you and I seem to have had our interest in ragtime sparked simultaneously, John! And to think, I wouldn't meet you for sixteen years after I started playing ragtime piano... I don't play ragtime much anymore because I have some persistent tendonitis in my hands/wrists that makes the constant jumping octaves rather painful. Bach is easier. ;)
(Thanks for the spelling correction, Leslie. By the way, there's an article on Bolcom in tonight's Ann Arbor News. Seems he's been named to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.)
Scott Joplin has been called the Mozart of classical ragtime. If this is so, then James Scott is surely the Beethoven. His music is more challenging technically than Joplin's, in a ratio that I find quite close to the difficulty of Beethoven's piano music over Mozart's. And Scott has a harmonic inventiveness and a way of making a theme soar and swoop and hang magically suspended and disappear and suddenly re-appear in a new guise that reminds me a lot of Beethoven. A great service to serious ragtime afficionados is the recent publication of _The Music of James Scott_, a handsome hardcover volume edited by Scott DeVeaux and William Howland Kenney (Simithsonian Institution Press, 1992). There's a long introduction on Scott's career, an essay on the music itself dealing with such issues as proper performance practice -- but the greatest contribution of this volume is that it contains all of Scott's known solo piano pieces and songs. To my knowledge, Scott's complete works have never before been published together in one volume, and his non-ragtime pieces -- waltzes and popular songs -- have long been out of print until now. The works have been reprinted with minimal editing -- mostly facsimile reproductions with corrections of obvious typographical errors and inconsistencies (not uncommon in the sheet music of that era), and including all of the original sheet music cover art (reproduced in black and white -- I assume the originals were colored).
Do you know who in the area would carry the Scott volume? I'd be interested in picking up a copy.
I found it at Borders.
I've been meaning to purchase William Albright's recently recorded collection of all 31 of Joplin's rags. (I think it's 31.) But for the longest time I couldn't locate it at either SKR or Tower. Has anyone heard these recordings?
No, but when you do John, let us know here? I've always wanted a collection of Joplin rags. It would be wonderful if all of them were contained in one little CD package, and it was good quality.
Seems to me I've seen the Albright collection, but I don't remember where.
Stopped in at King Keyboards the other day to see what they have in the ragtime line; picked up a couple of volumes that fill in some gaps in my collection: Scott Joplin, _Complete Piano Rags_, edited by David A. Jasen (Dover 1988) Similar in format and content to the Joplin _Collected Piano Rags_ published in the 1970's, this book contains some pieces not included in that earlier volume because of copyright problems: "Searchlight Rag", "Rose Leaf Rag", and "Fig Leaf Rag". I consider "Searchlight" to be one of Joplin's most beautiful compositions, and I've wanted to get my hands on it for some time now. _World's Greatest Ragtime Solos for Piano_, edited by Maurice Hinson (Alfred Publishing Co., 1993) Around forty compositions by various ragtime composers. Duplicates a lot of material that I already have, but with some interesting additions: W.C. Handy's magnificent "St. Louis Blues", Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band", Claude Debussy's "Golliwogg's Cakewalk" and "Le petit Negre", Erik Satie's "Le Piccadilly", Lucky Roberts' bouncy "Pork and Beans", Julia Lee Niebergall's "Hoosier Rag", Eubie Blake's "The Chevy Chase". Re the Debussy and Satie: The American ragtime craze of the late 19th and early 20th centuries attracted the attention of a number of European composers of the time. I've read that Brahms was planning a ragtime project, which death prevented him from completing.
I've got "Searchlight Rag" down pretty well now, and can play it from memory. Learning to play it has reinforced my impression that it is one of Joplin's loveliest pieces. "Fig Leaf Rag" is quite good too, although I suspect its billing on the cover (my book contains facsimile reproductions of the original sheet music covers) as a companion piece to "Maple Leaf Rag" was intended to boost sales rather than give a clue about the music. "Fig Leaf" is a much later composition than "Maple Leaf" and quite different, although the closing section does have some of the bounciness of the earlier work. To celebrate the arrival of our new kitten Sidney to the household, I am learning to play Zez Confrey's "Kitten on the Keys" (1921).
Recently started working on William Bolcom's delightful rag "Graceful Ghost", published in 1971 and recorded by Bolcom on an album of the same name around that time. It's one of his easier rags technically, but still quite a challenge compared to most of Joplin -- 5 flats in the key signature, modulating to 6 in the third strain. And lots and lots of octaves.
Are you planning to do a recital any time soon? Re-reading this item makes me want to buy some ragtime music on CD. Right now, all I have are two old LP's of Scott Joplin pieces played on piano by Joshua Rifkin (and a tape made from those two albums). Particularly looking toward the other ragtime composers, where would you recommend I start?
I've done informal recitals in the past (not for a number of years, though) and from time to time think about doing another one. Not sure where, though -- our music room won't hold many people and the accoustics are a bit too harsh. If you want to branch out to other ragtime composers, I'd recommend starting with a CD called "Kings of Ragtime" on the ProArte label. Pianist John Arpin plays works of the ragtime big three -- Joplin, James Scott, Joseph Lamb -- as well as pieces by Eubie Blake, Gershwin, Harry Guy, Joe Jordan, W.C. Handy, Jelly Roll Morton, William Bolcom, and himself. Arpin is a fine ragtime pianist, and this album is an excellent sampler of the genre. Bolcom's "Graceful Ghost" is included, as well as a brilliant rendition of Handy's "St. Louis Blues".
I didn't know there was a recording of "Graceful Ghost" on CD. Cool. Too bad neither of Bolcom's own recordings have been so issued; one of them was even recorded digitally.
It is quite strange how that particular piece, "Graceful Ghost", seems to linger in memory. I often find myself humming the tune or considering the interesting syncopation of the first few bars. I've even awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of John playing this though he's fast asleep at the time. Weird. I'd say this melody is haunting except that might sound trite.
It's a ghost's playing that you hear in the middle of the night.
"Graceful Ghost" was a favorite piece on the CBC late night program Brave New Waves, back in its glory days around 1984-1985 when they were much less formatted than they are today. (I wish I hadn't loaned out most of the tapes I made in that era...) That's where I first encountered it, in the middle of the night on static-filled broadcasts. (CBC-FM was just *barely* receivable in Lansing back in those days.)
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.
Interesting; I knew (1) but not (2). Thanks for entering this. Someday I'd like to visit some of the places of historical importance to ragtime, most especially Sedalia, MO. I'm hoping to be able to attend the annual Joplin festival there next spring.
"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.
I forgot to mention, above, that the Scott Joplin house museum has a player piano (treadle pump) for visitors to use, and a big collection of ragtime music player piano rolls. I played James Scott's "Kansas City Rag" and Scott Joplin's "Fig Leaf Rag."
Good choices!
I occasionally play through "Graceful Ghost," though I've never really worked at getting the B and C sections to be comfortable to play. All those accidentals take some getting used to. I've seen Bolcom play this piece live on several occasions, and he seems to play it faster nowadays that I feel it. I first became familiar with the piece on the album "Heliotrope Bouquet," which includes pieces by Joseph Lamb, James Scott, Bolcom and William Albright (another composer at the U of Mich.). Bolcom and Albright both play on this recording. I believe my scratchy copy of this record is about 20 years old...
John, would you care to expand on the comparison of Joplin-Mozart and Scott-Beethoven?
Re #28, polygon. Out of curiosity, what street or part of St. Loius was the museum in? I lived there 1974-1979.
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.
The ones of those I've heard, I love, and the ones I haven't, I'd love to hear...
Of all the rags I've heard my favorite is "The Graceful Ghost". Moody, slippery, and incredibly elegant.
Re #34: I don't think the Joplin/Scott - Mozart/Beethoven comparison runs all that deep. Scott's rags tend to be more virtuosic than Joplin's, with crashing chords and more of a tendency to use the high and low ranges of the keyboard than Joplin. Joplin has a simpler, sweeter, less dense composing style. To that extent, Scott is more like Beethoven and Joplin more like Mozart. Re #36: I believe that Zimmerman CD is culled from a 5-record vinyl recording of Joplin's complete piano solo works, done in the 1970's for the Murray Hill label. I've always thought Zimmerman's interpretations to be excellent and am pleased to hear that at least some of them are available now on CD. I hope the entire album is released on CD. I've been working on learning to play "Graceful Ghost" lately and think I have it pretty well down except for the difficult third strain, which still needs a lot of work on my part--those key modulations are something fierce! The composer, William Bolcom, recorded "Graceful Ghost" in the early 1970's on an album called "Heliotrope Bouquet" that is not available on CD to the best of my knowledge. On listening to his recording recently, I found to my surprise that he plays it in a "swing" style (uneven 8th notes) that is more reminiscent of 1920's jazz than classical ragtime. I think it works better his way and have taken to playing it that way myself. Since I haven't responded to this item in a couple of years, let me catch y'all up on some things. There's a Ragtime Home Page on the web (URL: http://www.ragtimers.org) maintained by Mary Healy, with announcements of upcoming festivals, publishers' lists of sheet music and recordings, and a *large* collection of ragtime MIDI recordings available for download (and with pointers to other MIDI sites). It's an excellent source of information on ragtime. For usenet newsers: a newsgroup devoted to ragtime started up about a year ago - rec.music.ragtime. It's pretty low-volume, but some interesting and informative threads develop now and then. Ed Berlin, a performer and ragtime historian, who published a recent biography of Scott Joplin, is a regular participant. On the performing front, I've gotten heavily into James Scott. It's hard stuff, but I think I have "Grace and Beauty", "Ever- green Rag", and "Honey Moon Rag" under my belt now, with "Pegasus Rag" coming along pretty well. I'd love to master the great "Efficiency Rag", but the last strain is a killer.
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.
I've had the Joseph Lamb "Ragtime Treasures" book for a week now, and it's *GREAT*. Wonderfully melodic, rich texture and harmony, some truly clever experimentation. "Cottontail Rag", "Arctic Sunset", "The Old Home Rag", "Ragtime Bobolink", "Thoroughbred Rag", "Toadstool Rag", "Firefly Rag" -- they're all masterpieces. I'm really glad I was able to acquire this.
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...
A couple of demographic notes: Although some of the performers at the Turpin Festival were young, few of the audience at the various concerts were. Very few attendees under 40, and I'd say that most were over 50, many well over. Ragtime does not appear to be popular among the young. Many if not most of the early ragtime composers and performers were black (Joplin, Scott, Turpin, etc. etc.), those active in ragtime today are almost exclusively white. The only black performer at the festival was J. Hamilton Douglas, director of the Scott Joplin House in St. Louis. At every concert there were only a handful of black people in the audience.
((( linked over from the first music conference to the second )))
(Also linked over from the first music conference to the classical music conference.)
<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.)
People have at least heard of Scott Joplin now. But most of the composers of the classical ragtime era (which dates roughly from the late 1890's to World War I), many of considerable talent, now wallow in obscurity. I think the music is perceived as quaint and old-fashioned, which is too bad, because so much of it is so wonderful. Kudos to the small band of contemporary performers, publicists, musical historians, and fans who are keeping it alive. During my Savannah trip I acquired a bunch of new sheet music and in the course of sight-reading and practicing it have become acquainted with some excellent composers, both bygone and contemporary, whom I hadn't know a whole lot about. Highlights: _First Ladies of Hoosier Ragtime_ - collection of the rags of Indianapolis-based composers May Aufderheide and Julia Lee Niebergall, compiled by Richard Zimmerman. Sunny, upbeat stuff, charmingly melodic. My favorites are Aufderheide's "Richmond Rag" (named for Richmond Indiana), "Buzzer Rag", "A Totally Different Rag", and Niebergall's "Hoosier Rag". _Gems of Texas Ragtime_ - large, outstanding anthology of composers from Texas, also compiled by Zimmerman. Includes the complete ragtime compositions of Euday Bowman (composer of "Twelfth Street Rag"), and several early blues pieces. I'm currently working on P.L. Eubanks' "Mutt and Jeff Rag", Laverne Hanshaw's "Niagara Rag", Clarence Woods' and John Caldwell's "Graveyard Blues". Lots of other gems to be mined in this collection. _A Garden of Ragtime_ by Glenn Jenks, a classically-trained contemporary ragtimer who makes his living as a piano teacher in Maine. He does ragtime festivals a lot and was a highlighted performer in Savannah. This is a collection of his ragtime compositions of the 1970's and 1980's. Mixture of lively up- tempo stuff and some rather soulful, exquisite slow-tempo pieces with complex harmonies and textures. Lushly romantic. Reminds me a bit of William Bolcom's work, especially Bolcom's "Graceful Ghost".
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?
Only prominent ragtime composer I can think of whose name starts with "B" is Eubie Blake. He wrote "Charleston Rag", "The Chevy Chase", "The Baltimore Todalo", numerous others. His career began in the 1890's and continued well into the 1970's, when he was rediscovered and did some new recordings as well as concert and TV appearances. He was somewhat over 100 when he died just a few years ago. Perhaps he was the "fourth B".
I stumbled on a long interview, interspersed with music, with Blake sometime in the 1970s. I remember that it was fascinating, but not much else; I had barely heard his name at that time, I admit.
Or maybe I'm totally wacko! :-) Perhaps I was confusing some other killer B of unknown gender/race with a separate thingie about William? Grant Stills...
Re #50: That was probably "The 86 Years of Eubie Blake", a multi-disk set released in 1969 (on vinyl, of course) when Blake was (no surprise) 86 years old. At 86, he was still a formidable performer, and hsi reminiscenses are fascinating. Unlike many ragtimers, he survived the transition to other forms of popular music that emerged in the 1920's and did some composing for the musical theater in collaboration with Noble Sissell. Some of their show tunes are still performed today. I don't know if "The 86 Years.." has been released on CD. If so, it's well worth getting.
It may have been that. The title that sticks in my mind was "Wild About Eubie", but it was a long time ago.
Ah -- I believe "Wild About Eubie" was another album from the 1970's featuring Eubie Blake. The title is a reference to the show tune "I'm Just Wild about Harry" that he co-wrote with, I believe, Noble Sissell.
I recognized (at least, somewhere along the line) the reference. The interview I heard (once, but a couple of times through) probably was that album.
Michigan ragtimer Bob Milne will be performing at the Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor this coming Saturday, March 22. I'll be there. Haven't heard him play before. Stay tuned for a review here. (Milne was scheduled to appear at the Savannah ragtime fest. that I reported on earlier, but unfortunately broke his leg.)
(The date I posted for the Milne concert is incorrect -- it's tonight, Friday, March 21 at 8 p.m. I shall be there.)
This was a *wonderful* concert. He spent a good deal of time talking about music and his experiences as a performer and I found his commentary fascinating. The music was some of the best Ragtime I've ever heard. (Thank you, John, for encouraging me to attend.)
Zehnder's Ragtime Festival in Frankenmuth, Michigan is coming
up soon: April 24-27. Featured performers are Bob Milne
(mentioned in the previous couple of responses), Glenn Jenks
(who was also at the Savannah festival), Sue Keller, and Bo
Grumpus.
I've heard both Milne and Jenks perform, and they are excellent.
Keller and Grumpus are new to me. Milne, Jenks, and Keller are
pianists; Keller is also a vocalist. Bo Grumpus is actually a
group, not a person: trio of guitar, washboard, and string bass
out of San Francisco.
The cross-over from classical music to ragtime seems to be an
easy one to make. Jenks, Milne, and Keller are all classically
trained musicians (as am I) who switched at some point to
specializing in ragtime.
Festival events:
Thursday: The performers will give short, complimentary
concerts from 6:30 to 11:30 pm at these locations
in Frankenmuth: Blue Dolphin, Main Streets Tavern,
Tiffanys, and Zehnder's Tap Room.
Friday: Dinner Concert: Cocktails at 6 pm, buffet dinner
at 7 pm, concert at 8 pm. $35 per person, complete
Saturday: Silent movies with live accompaniment, 11am to 3 pm.
Meet the Artists, 3-5 pm.
Dinner Concert: Same schedule as Friday.
Sunday: Brunch and concert, 10 am. $20 per person.
We'll be attending the Saturday Meet the Artists and Dinner
Concert, and I may drop in on the Thursday night sessions as
well. Looks like a fine lineup of artists.
Tickets to the dinner and brunch concerts should still be
available. Call Zehnder's at 1-800-863-799 for reservations,
which are required.
By the way, I read today in the rec.arts.music.ragtime
newsgroup that Sue Keller is currently appearing on Jeopardy
(as a contestant, not a musician). I'll try to grab a look...
1-800-863-799(?) Shouldn't there be one more numeral in that phone number?
Oops, one more 9. Phone number is 1-800-863-7999.
I drove up to Frankenmuth last Thursday to attend the opening
night of the Ragtime Festival. The headliners were going to be
presenting informal concerts at various locations, the principal
ones being Zehnder's Tap Room and the Main Street Tavern.
As I drove into Zehnder's parking lot, I noticed large numbers
of folks dressed to the nines -- men in suits, women in fancy
dresses -- and wondered for a few moments if I hadn't under-
estimated the dress code, which would be odd because the attendees
at ragtime festivals are not ordinarily that dressy a crowd. It
turned out there was a private party elsewhere in the building
for the medical staff of some hospital, and that's where the
dress-ups were going. Nothing to do with the Festival.
My evening started out in Zehnder's tap room. Bob Milne, whom I'd
heard perform in Ann Arbor a few weeks earlier, did the first set.
Milne plays a wide range of music and tends to learn pieces by
listening rather than studying the printed notes -- somewhat sur-
prising for a classically trained musician (Milne has a degree
in music and played french horn in symphony orchestras). He did
his usual mixture of classical ragtime, novelty ragtime, stride,
and boogie-woogie, and was well-received by the audience. It being
the dinner hour and Zhender's being famous for chicken, I ordered
the chicken dinner and was overwhelmed by all the accompaniments:
appetizers, bread, veggies, salads, etc. Quite a feast, for a
surprisingly low price. Decently prepared, too.
After dinner and feeling stuffed, I went up the road to Main
Street Tavern, a rough-and-ready hangout for locals, to catch Glen
Jenks' act. The piano there was an old upright and unfortunately
something of a PSO ("piano-shaped object"), to use Milne's
terminology. Musicians who play piano in bars, country clubs,
and schools encounter lots of PSO's. This one wasn't in too bad
tune, and thankfully none of the keys appeared to stick. Jenks, a
hard-core ragtimer from Camden, Maine, who does lots of Joplin,
Lamb, and Scott, played an exciting set. He took requests, so I
requested Joplin's "Rose Leaf Rag" and his own lovely contemporary
rag "Sosua". He gave them delightful performances but seemed
surprised that anybody'd heard of them. During a break, I reminded
him that we'd met in Savannah, and he recalled the occasion.
I wandered back to Zehnder's to catch Sue Keller's set. I'd not
heard her perform before, and was curious. She turned out to be
really good. Plays a wide variety of music -- ragtime, jazz, pop,
blues -- and does vocals as well. Her recent appearance on
"Jeopardy" was alluded to and she did the "Jeopardy" theme song.
Did a nice rendition of Joe Lamb's unpublished "Brown Derby Rag"
and the pop tune "Alley Cat" (with vocal). During the break I
purchased one of her CD's, which she nicely autographed for me.
Requested that she play some May Aufderheide, a Hoosier ragtime
composer I'm fond of, but she declined, saying that she doesn't do
Aufderheide.
(Ragtimers make recordings, but usually not on major labels, and
you will not often find their work in retail record stores. You
have to mail-order them, or buy them at festivals such as this
one.)
After Keller was done, one of the festival organizers struck
up a conversation with me. Guess he noticed from my requests
that I knew something about the music and was curious who I
was. I mentioned that I performed the stuff too, and he said
I should feel free to sit down and play anytime the piano was
unoccupied; they like hearing new musicians. Being as I like
to perform in front of audiences, that was music to my ears, and
I decided that if an opportunity arose later, I'd take advantage.
Keller was followed by another Glen Jenks set. By that time it was
late in the evening; the crowd at Zehnder's had thinned out and was
pretty sparse. During Jenks' break, I remarked to him that the piano
at Zehnder's was a lot better than the PSO at the Main Street Tavern;
he agreed. I asked if it'd be okay with him if I tried it out. He
said sure, so I sat down. Since Keller didn't do Aufderheide, I
decided to do some myself and started with her "Richmond Rag".
Jenks and Keller (who was still in the room) said they liked it
and asked me to do more, so I played Annie Huston's "Motor Bus"
and Aufderheide's "Totally Different Rag". At that point I decided
it was time to turn the piano back to Jenks, who finished out his
set.
When Jenks was done, that was the end of the scheduled events for
the evening, so -- encouraged by the earlier reception -- I sat
down at the piano to do some more. Jenks and Keller hung around
to listen. Did a few more pieces -- some Joe Lamb, James Scott,
Laverne Henshaw, Julia Niebergall, Tom Shea. When I was done,
Jenks invited me to join him and a couple of Maine buddies for a
drink or two. So I sat with them for a while and then, it being
late and a drive back to Ann Arbor ahead of me, took my leave.
(Don't be concerned, I wasn't drinking alcohol.) They invited me to
come up early on Saturday and hang out before the official events
begin. Maybe do a little jamming. Hm, that's today. Mary and I are
going to head up there to attend the evening concert. I'll file a
report later.
So where's that report, John?
Oops, sorry. Forgot about it. It's been a few weeks, but I'll relate what I can from memory. Mary and I drove up to Frankenmuth early on Saturday afternoon. It was a delightfully sunny spring day and the main drag was well populated with tourists, not all of them there for the Ragtime Festival by any means. After walking about for an hour soaking up the ambience and browsing a few gifte shoppes, we headed for Zhender's Tap Room for the "Meet the Artists" session. The principal performers were there, chatting informally with people and selling their CD's, tapes, and sheet music. Once in a while one of them would go play a set on the piano. We chatted for a while with Glenn Jenks, whom we'd both met last fall at the Tom Turpin Ragtime Festival in Savannah, GA. Somehow the conversation turned to Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the 19th century American pianist and composer many of whose works for the piano -- "Bamboula", "The Banjo", "Souvenir de la Havane", etc. -- incorporate American folk themes and Carribean rhythms. His work presages ragtime in some ways, and many ragtime composers regularly perform Gottschalk as well. I recently acquired the Dover edition of Gottschalk's piano music and have been sight- reading some things. In response to my remark that I would love to learn "The Banjo" but found it hard as hell, Jenks said that it's actually one of Gottschalk's easier pieces (but he agreed that it's hard). I also chatted with Sue Keller, who in addition to performing runs the Ragtime Press with her husband. They specialize in publishing contemporary rags by little-known (mostly) composers. I parted with my hard-earned money in exchange for some of their sheet music. Did the same for some of Bob Milne's sheet music -- his wife was doing the selling, and she remembered me from Milne's Ann Arbor conert a few weeks earlier. Around 5:00 the Tap Room started to fill up with the cocktail hour crowd, and the headliners left to get ready for the evening's dinner concert ballroom. I stayed around for a little while to take advantage of the vacant piano. Sat down, played a few tunes, got some nice applause. After I was done, a young man whose name I can't recall -- he looked high school or college age -- sat down and belted out a few pieces, including "Maple Leaf Rag", in a rousing barrelhouse style. The evening concert was held in Zhender's big ballroom and began with a sumptuous buffet dinner as only Zhender's can do it. The ballroom was just about full; I estimate that the audience numbered several hundred. As in Savannah, it was mostly a middle-aged to elderly crowd. There were two fine Yamaha concert grands on the stage, Bob Milne emceed, the performers were all in good form. Jenks played Gottschalk's "The Banjo", first performing a bit of it on banjo (easy), then on the piano (hard as hell, as I said). It's really an exciting piece and Jenks did it well. In addition to emceeing, Milne did some performing. Although all the performers were excellent, I think he's the best of the bunch. Earlier in the day I'd been putting two and two together and thinking that I might actually have met Milne once before, a long time ago. I'd learned that in the 1970's he used to play at night clubs in the Detroit area. Back in 1972 or 1973, when I was first getting into ragtime music and had been practicing it quite intensively, I had wandered into the piano bar at a Chuck Muir restaurant in Dearborn called The Sun Dog (now defunct), and there had been a guy at the piano playing rags by Scott Joplin and other composers of that ilk. The bar wasn't crowded, I chatted with the pianist for a while and when it came out that I played ragtime myself, he invited me to sit down at the piano and play some stuff, which I did. So I'd gotten to thinking that the piano player I'd encountered in the bar might have been Milne. He looks older than the person I remember from the Sun Dog, but it was 25 years ago and goodness knows I look older too. So I determined to find out if my recollection was correct. During the concert intermission, I asked Milne's wife, who was out in the lobby selling CD's and sheet music, if her husband had played at a Chuck Muir restaurant in Dearborn in the early 70's. She said that indeed he had. After the concert I introduced myself to Milne, told him the story, and he confirmed that it had been him. It's a small world, but then the ragtime world is not a terribly large one these days. After the concert we headed back to Ann Arbor. The whole thing had been a very enjoyable experience for me.
Me too!
Thanks for the review. Sounds like fun. Interesting that you got into ragtime in 1972 or thereabouts. That's when I started learning ragtime too. I believe the first rag I ever learned was by Tom Turpin, but I can't recall the name of it. "Maple Leaf Rag" and "Gladiolus Rag" became my staples for years... I got paid to play ragtime twice, in 1974 and 1975, at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. I even got mentioned in the New York Times... Those were heady times.
Neat. I didn't realize that you were that much into ragtime.
Zow.. mine eyes have surely been opened. I often cringe at the raw power and depth of knowledge the people possess on this conference. Sadly to say, I know precious little about ragtime. (I did understand the reference to stride piano, however.) So of course, you can rightly assume most of my studies are with Joplin. I started young with simplified arrangements; the time when I got full scores was when I got a small compliation book for my birthday. I haven't built up enough technique for Joplin; I usually got really tired and sore on some of his more popular pieces. Oh, I had played edits from _Sheet Music_ magazine, but some of his Codas and Codettas were exhausting, not to mention I still can't play "Maple Leaf Rag" at all, or at least when I last tried 5-6 years ago. Anyone know about the ragtime-military music exchange? I did do some research on Joplin's biography, and learn that he met Sousa and was very impressed with his music. My h.s. band teacher said the two genres influenced each other, and pointed it out in the Sousa and Carl King pieces we studied. (We did a very low-profile and under-promoted premiere of an undiscovered version of one of King's marches that had been loaned to our teacher while he was starting doctorate work at Northwestern). I can think of "Original Rags" on Joplin's end, for one example, but can't really think of any King or Sousa pieces. Help!
Hm, don't know how much I can help out here. Joplin wrote some non-ragtime marches, and several of his rags have a march basis to them. Early ragtime consisted largely, in fact, of taking standard popular styles of the day -- marches, songs, folk tunes -- and doing them in "ragged" rhythm. But on the other side of the coin, I don't know the extent to which ragtime style influenced composers like Sousa. Offhand I can't think of any Sousa pieces that display a ragtime influence. Some European composers of the day did pieces in a ragtime style, e.g. Debussy's "Golliwogg's Cakewalk" and "Le petit Negre", Satie's "Le Piccadilly". I've read that Brahms was planning some sort of ragtime project at the time of his death. I don't know how much credence to give that, since he died in 1897, the same year that published ragtime first appeared. (Hey, this is the 100th anniversary of ragtime, in that sense.) What seems more likely is that he had in mind to compose something that incorporated the same "Carribean" rhythms that became ragtime's syncopated, "ragged" beat. (And which Gottschalk had used two or three decades earlier in his series of "West Indian Souvenirs" pieces. Gottschalk's Puerto Rican "Danza" and Cuban "La Gallina" sound almost like classical ragtime compositions.)
They do indeed. I didn't know Gottschalk's dates & was assuming they were late enough to have ragtime influence, but very likely it's common influence with ragtime instead. I suspect anyone who really likes classic ragtime will like quite a bit of Gottschalk's music.
Gottschalk's dates are 1829-1869, so he died almost 30 years before ragtime emerged as a popular form of music. I think that Scott Joplin -- who was college-educated -- may well have been directly influenced by Gottschalk. Some of his music (e.g. "Solace") is quite reminiscent of Gottschalk. I would *love* to play Gottschalk, but it's going to take work. His stuff is significantly more challenging technically than most ragtime.
Just out of curiosity, what is "stride piano"?
Hrm-- let's see if I can remember exactly what it is. I think it's related to boogie-woogie, if I'm not mistaken. The bass lines walk, but in strides-- in alternating intervals up to an octave. You do know what a walking bass line is, right? The notes are in stepwise intervals, 'walking' to and from chord changes. The walk usually is on scale tones. In stride piano, the same intervals are there, but there is an alternating octave or other interval (not really sure if it is anything other than an octave) for every scale step. It would be easier if I could have given you a demonstration somehow. Like ragtime, stride is generally considered as old-fashioned and passe, especially by contemporary jazz musicians. Yet I heard stride piano once in a very out-of-context genre. Perhaps it is because the genre is usually pretty experimental-- it's synthpop. Martin Gore used stride in Depeche Mode's "Get The Balance Right," (1983), especially in the Combination mix of the song (although it was really a rock application, and so the style is somewhat different). Incidentally, the band hates the song.
I'd never sat down and figured out what my playing repertoire
actually is. So I went through the various ragtime books and
sheet music that I have, listing the pieces that I would
feel comfortable playing from memory today in front of an
audience. Here's the list I came up with, grouped by composer.
(There's numerous others that I can do if I have the music in
front of me.)
Scott Joplin
Maple Leaf Rag
The Entertainer
Elite Syncopations
Bethena
Gladiolus Rag
Swipesy Cakewalk (with Arthur Marshall)
James Scott
Frog Legs Rag
Ophelia Rag
Evergreen Rag
Honey Moon Rag
Joseph Lamb
Sensation
Ragtime Nightingale
Old Home Rag
Cottontail Rag
Ragtime Bobolink
Arctic Sunset
May Aufderheide
Richmond Rag
A Totally Different Rag
Julia Lee Niebergall
Hoosier Rag
Horseshoe Rag
Billy Talbot
Imperial Rag
Annie Huston
Motor Bus
Laverne Hanshaw
Niagara Rag
Thomas Shea
Brun Campbell Express
Egads! You have maintained that many songs by memory? (Since I'm not a performer by any means, I'm sure I forget what one is capable of.) I think the only song I can remember is Elite Syncopations, and only a handful of bars at that.
I took piano lessons throughout elementary and secondary school and was trained to memorize things. Ragtime music is actually easier for me to memorize than other forms because of its regular structure. Actually, I find that I almost *have* to memorize a ragtime piece in order to play it accurately, because in order to to those big leaps in the left had without missing, I have to look at the keyboard. Can't be looking at the music at the same time.
Same here. I see your point, and I definitely agree.
Short performance note: At the Summerkeys music camp in Lubec, Maine last month, I played James Scott's up-tempo "Frog Legs Rag" at one of the student recitals. (On the same program, in fact immediately before, I also performed the first movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata #4 in E flat, a lovely adagio piece. A rather blunt contrast to the rag.) (When I get the time and energy, I plan to enter a report on Mary's and my music camp experience, in a separate item.)
Recently I've been looking at taking up the piano again, and am looking for interesting pieces - could you reccomend a good introduction to ragtime from a playing, not listening, point of view?
The way I learned to play ragtime was to listen to lots of recordings and then acquire books of ragtime music for practice. Listening to the recordings gave me a feel for appropriate style and interpretation when I started working on playing the pieces myself. Look for ragtime recordings by Joshua Rifkin, Richard Zimmerman, John Arpin, William Bolcom, William Albright. They are excellent interpreters of the genre and stick pretty close to the music "as written". Rifkin's recordings of Scott Joplin, from the early 1970's, are classics that inspired many musicians to get into ragtime, myself included. There's a tremendous range of difficulty in ragtime music. I don't know what level of piano playing you're at, but even relatively accomplished performers of classical music tend to find ragtime playing difficult at first exposure. For starters, I'd recommend getting a volume of Scott Joplin's works -- either "Collected Piano Works", published by Belwin-Mills, or "Scott Joplin's Complete Rags", published by Dover -- and an anthology of other composers, e.g. "World's Greatest Ragtime Solos", edited by Maurice Hinson and published by Alfred Pub. Co. Start with fairly easy stuff and work up. Scott Joplin's "Peacherine Rag" and "Country Club" are good for openers.
_Sheet Music_ magazine gave pointers when ragtime was in a revival in the 70's. If I remember correctly, to play ragtime, or to play a ragged rhythm, in other words, you had to picture a drunken man staggering down the stairs. See if you can find some of these back issues. Ragtime, in my opinion, isn't necessarily as difficult as some 'classical' music-- (I think John could be including Romantic and Impressionist [the work of Debussy] here). What *is* difficult are the left-hand passages, which roll along as frequently as the right-hand ones, and the stamina you will need to play some pieces. I still can't get all the way through "Easy Winners" by Joplin before I start slowing down. My left wrist gets tired..well, you get the idea. FOllow John's advice and start with the easy stuff, building up to harder pieces.
Given my weak left hand, that's probably wise advice
There are two aspects to ragtime's difficulty: First, the sheer physical demands, especially in the left hand (I agree with lumen here). Secondly, style and interpretation issues, especially if you come to ragtime already familiar with a different tradition -- there are a lot of adjustments to be made in one's approach to the music. I've found that practice practice practice is the solution to both these problems. It gets easier. Now that I'm "in" the style, I can learn a new piece much more easily than I used to. Lately I've been working on a couple of Eubie Blake pieces, "The Baltimore Todalo" (pronounced: too-da-loo') and "Poor Jimmy Green". These are significantly more demanding physically than most of Joplin, Lamb, or Scott -- lots of octaves and tenths (Blake must have had BIG hands) that require a lot of stretching and leave my hands quite tired after I've done it for a while. Plus the usual amount of jumping around in the left hand. But with practice, it's slowly getting more comfortable.
Blake had huge, "ET" looking hands.
Tenths? My, my, my...I don't know that I'll ever be quite up to that.
I had to stop playing ragtime when I developed tendonitis in my wrists some years ago, because the left-hand repeated octaves were just too painful to play. (My condition has improved considerably with the help of my chiropractor, so I occasionally play a few Scott Joplin pieces for fun, though I rarely practice the piano these days -- too busy practicing singing.)
I can handle the octaves, but the tenths that abound in Eubie
Blake's music are, literally, a "stretch" for me. But it's
coming.
The cover of "Sincerely Eubie Blake", a collection of his rags
edited by Terry Waldo, has a photo of Blake's hands, and they
are indeed ET-like. In the introduction, Waldo has this to say
about left hand technique:
It cannot be overemphasized how important it is to
"lay down" a solid beat with the left hand. Eubie
always taps his foot or "stomps" in order to
maintain this strong rhythmic foundation. Without
it there is nothing to build on. Ragtime players
must have a strong left hand and keep good time.
While often the straight 2/4, boom-chick pattern
is abandoned in Eubie's rags, there is always a
strong rhythmic pulse. It should be played in a
way that it could be danced to.
Unfortunately, it helps to have large hands to
play these rags. Eubie has an enormous span which
has made it easy for him to stretch over a twelfth
on the piano (i.e. from C to G, 12 notes away).
Playing tenths is nothing for him. For some of us
with smaller hands, the task is a little more
difficult, but it can be mastered. All these rags
contain tenths in the left hand--most are rolled,
however, and those not so marked could be played
with a fast roll to give the illusion of all
notes being played simultaneously. In any case,
it will be necessary to practice the left hand
until these full spacings are comfortable. The
style of employing tenths in the left hand is
central to Eubie's music and to the whole
Eastern school of stride piano.
"Eastern school" of stride piano? How do the different schools work?
Well, "school" in the sense of "a class of people whose work and style demonstrates some common influence" rather than an actual educational institution. Different styles of ragtime performance and composition evolved in different parts of the country. Thus there was Missouri ragtime, New York ragtime, etc. Today I'm off to Savannah Georgia to attend the annual Tom Turpin Ragtime Festival -- 4 days of immersion in ragtime concerts, lectures, and the unique Savannah ambience. There's a stellar lineup of artists this year: John Arpin, Dick Zimmerman, Mimi Blais, Terry Waldo, Trebor Tichenor, Bob Darch, Bob Milne, David Jasen, and others. Should be quite fun. When it's over, I'll file a report here of course.
Right, but what would the difference be between, say, MIssouri and New York ragtime?
Accent. ;-) (Not to worry, John will be back in a few days and you'll get a much better answer.)
That, and the occasional y'all?
I'm not enough of a ragtime scholar to comment knowledgeably on regional differences. There's a book by David Jasen and Trebor Tichenor called _Rags and Ragtime_, recently reprinted by Dover, that might give you some insights. I found it in Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago. By the way, the Savannah festival was WONDERFUL. Superb lineup of performers, lots of great music, and some opportunities for me to play. I was less bashful about doing that than I was last year when I was brand new to the festival circuit. Full report will have to wait until I've more time.
Still trying to organize my thoughts on the Savannah festival. But in the meantime, one thing I did there was to renew my acquaintance with Patricia Lamb Conn, Joseph Lamb's daughter and a very nice lady. She likes the way I play her dad's music and offered to send me a bunch of his unpublished works. Yesterday a package arrived from her in the mail and I'm now the proud possesser of several of his rags and waltzes that I didn't have before. A particular delight are "Brown Derby Rag" and "Ragtime Reverie", recently reconstructed from tape recordings and Lamb's notes, and published privately by Patricia 3 or 4 years ago. They are both excellent pieces.
An announcement of interest to folks in the Ann Arbor area: This Sunday, Dec. 14th, is the 24 annual Ragtime-Jazz Holiday Bash ath the Unitarian-Universalist Church, 1917 Washtenaw Avenue, Ann Arbor, 8 p.m. Tickets $12 at the door (students & seniors $7). Featured artists are Bob Seeley, James Dapogny, Bob Milne, William Bolcom, Joan Morris, Bill Albright, and "special, surprise guests." If you go, get there early! Seating is first come first served, and the place tends to be packed by the half an hour or more before the concert. I plan on getting there at least an hour ahead of time.
Ragtime Bash was excellent. I got smart this year and arrived more than an hour ahead of time. A few people were already there, but by 7:20 -- 40 minutes before showtime -- the place was nearly full. Thanks to the early arrival, I got a seat in the 3rd row with a good view of the keyboard. Bill Albright emcee'd but only played a couple of pieces -- Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" and his own song "Old Tom Turpin". He remarked that he's playing less because of a chronic hand problem, due he thinks to some excessive stretching he did a few years ago when working on some James P. Johnson material. I'm sure he finds being incapacitated frustrating. All the performers were Ragtime Bash veterans with the exception of Bob Milne, who's been mentioned earlier in this item and who has rapidly become one of my favorite ragtime artists based on a few performances I've attended over the last year. This was his first appearance at a Bash, and although he lives in Lapeer, I imagine that he's largely unfamiliar to Ann Arbor audiences. Milne practically stole the show with his rich, highly personal, technically dazzling renditions of such things as James P. Johnson's "Eccentricity Waltz", Eudie Bowman's "Twelfth Street Rag", his own composition "Ragged Music Box" (in the style of Mozart), and his ragged-up version of the the Christmas carol "Oh Holy Night". The audience responded with great enthusiasm, and Albright promised that Milne would be back in future Bashes. In addition to Milne's two sets, other highlights for me were a rousing rendition of Kipling's "Road to Mandalay", sung by Joan Morris and played by William Bolcom; Walid Hurani's (sp?) rendition of Bolcom & Albright's "Brass Knuckles"; and Bob Seeley's expert stride/boogie arrangement of Handy's "St. Louis Blues". After the show I purchased a Milne CD and cassette out in the lobby. Milne's wife, who was selling them, recognized me from his Ann Arbor concert last winter, the Frankenmuth festival, and the Savannah festival. She must think I'm a stalker... :)
Mary's cello teacher held an informal family recital/party at the Unitarian Church in Ann Arbor, as part of which I got to play a ragtime piano solo: Harry Guy's "Pearl of the Harem" (1901). Like Guy's other rags, it exhibits a strong classical influence. There are interesting switches throughout between major and minor modes, and between the traditional oompah-oompah bass line of ragtime and other bass patterns -- rather unusual for ragtime. The piano at the church is a Baldwin grand with a light, responsive touch, and with its booming bass is voiced very well for ragtime. It was a pleasure to play on it. (The same piano is used at the annual "Ragtime Christmas Bash" held at the church, so it's understandable that it has been ragtime-optimized.)
(For the record, the recital was on March 18, 1998.) Repertoire update: I've been working on a few new pieces over the last several months. Highlights: Some rags by Bob Milne, contemporary "ragtimist" who lives in Lapeer, Michigan and is a mainstay of ragtime festivals (deservedly so, as he's a wonderful performer/lecturer/ entertainer). I've got his cheery "Summertime Rag" pretty well down and would be comfortable performing it in public. I've also been working on his "Seashore Rag" (a Japanese- style rag with a beautiful non-ragged middle section based on a Japanese folk song), the wistful "Mimi", and the Mozart- inspired "Ragtime Music Box". Harry Guy's "Pearl of the Harem", mentioned earlier. George Botsford's catchy two-step "Hyacinth" (1902). Botsford was an excellent early ragtime composer whose works are little- known today. Several of his compositions can be found in Dick Zimmerman's "100 Rare Piano Rags" collection. I could do "Hyacinth" publicly too at this point. Scott Joplin's "A Real Slow Drag", the finale of his opera "Treemonisha". This one seems hard to come by -- the only modern reprint I'm aware of is in volume 2 of the New York Public Library's edition of Joplin's collected work. Volume 2 has been out of print for years. I was able to find a copy in the EMU library recently, much to my delight. Although "Treemonisha" as a whole is sub-standard Joplin, "A Real Slow Drag" is one of his most beautiful works. I've been practicing it intensively over the last few days.
Is there a specific "Japanese style" of ragtime, or is the above listed as such because it has something based on a Japanese song?
I phrased that ambiguously. There's no "Japanese style" of ragtime that I know of. "Seashore Rag" employs parallel fourths in the first and final strains, giving an oriental flavor to the harmony. This in addition to the middle strain based on the Japanese folk song.
At the Tom Turpin conference in Savannah last October, I met someone who is quite a collector of old ragtime sheet music. She had a ton of Xeroxes of the stuff that she let me look through and take whatever I wanted, so I grabbed a bunch of things that looked interesting. Except for one piece -- Joe Jordan's "That Teasin' Rag" -- it's all been sitting in my piano bench for the last few months, unused. A few days ago I started looking through it again and came up with a couple of George Botsford gems: "Rag, Baby Mine" and "Boomerang Rag", from 1913 and 1916 respectively. They're happy, bouncy little numbers with the infectiousness that characterizes Botsford's compositions (e.g. the above-mentioned "Hyacinth Rag"). They're really quite similar in feel, although the 3rd strain of "Boomerang" has a Missouri "folk" feel that is unusual for Botsford and reminds me a good bit of Arthur Marshall. I plan to make both of these pieces part of my "from memory" repertoire.
This weekend there's a ragtime event close to home: the annual
Zehnder's Ragtime Festival in Frankenmuth, Michigan. Dates are
Thursday, April 23 through Sunday, April 26.
The featured entertainers are Bob Milne, Sue Keller, Kerry Price,
and Bo Grumpus.
Milne, Keller, and Bo Grumpus appeared at last year's festival
and are all splendid. Bo Grumpus is actually a three-person
ensemble of guitar, washboard, and string bass. The guitarist
also does vocals. Marty Eggers, their bassist, is also a pretty
fair ragtime piano player.
I've not encountered Kerry Price before. Her bio is interesting.
She has a masters in music from the University of Michigan and
teaches choral music and jazz history. In the past she's been an
accompanist, singer, and cellist. Currently she writes and performs
one-woman programs in the Detroit area and has recorded several
albums with area jazz bands. I look forward to hearing her.
Events:
o Vaudeville Night - Thursday, 7pm. $15/person
o Seminar: Ragtime and the Working Musician - Friday, 11-12 (free)
o Seminar: Ragtime and the Blues - Friday, 1:30-2:30 (free)
o Friday Dinner Concert - Friday, 6pm (cash bar), 7pm (buffet
dinner), 8pm (concert). $35/person.
o Silent Movies w/live accompaniment - Saturday, 11, 12, 1 ($3 each)
o Meet the Artists - Saturday 3-5pm
o Saturday Dinner Concert - same schedule & pricing as Friday
o Brunch and Concert - Sunday, 10am. $20/person
Plus there will likely be afterhours sessions and other impromptu
"open mike" sessions where non-scheduled performers can play. I did a
bit of that last year, and imagine that I (and others) will do it again.
I'll be attending the whole festival, unfortunately with the exception
of the seminars due to a commitment back home on Friday morning. When
it's over, I'll file a report here.
...and here's my report. [WARNING: 120 lines long] This year's Zehnder's Ragtime Festival in Frankenmuth Michigan was great fun with some fine musical highlights. The performers were Bob Milne, Sue Keller, Kerry Price, and Bo Grumpus. Most of the events took place in Zehnder's Restaurant, fabled for its chicken dinners. I'd not encountered Kerry Price before. She turned out to be a blues, ragtime, and jazz singer/pianist from Detroit who was active in the southeast Michigan musical scene in the 1960's and 1970's but who pretty much dropped out to become a full-time music teacher at Detroit Country Day School. Her appearance in Frankenmuth was something of a comeback, I gather. She's a fine blues singer with a strong voice that carries a lot of emotion, and I was happy to have the opportunity to hear her. She is also something of a scholar on the musical history of the period -- this was evident from her comments at one of the seminars held as part of the festival. I figure that those 8th graders at Country Day must be getting a wonderful musical education. The music scene's loss is education's gain, or something like that. Bo Grumpus is actually a three-person band: guitarist (and occasional vocalist) Craig Ventresco, string bass player Marty Eggers, and washboardist Pete Devine (in addition to washboard, he also plays cymbals and gourds for the group -- no drums though). They're based in San Francisco and travel around the country with their act. They're excellent musicians who specialize in old-time ragtime tunes that you probably never heard of, and they do them in an entertaining style that seems just right. Milne and Keller I've commented on earlier in this item. Milne is a splendid ragtime/boogie-woogie/stride/whatever player with a unique style and prodigious technique. He lives in Lapeer, Michigan and used to play restaurants, saloons, etc. all over the Southeast Michigan area in the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's.(and has written an amusing book on his experiences as a "journyeman piano player"). He's established enough of a reputation that he can restrict his appearance mostly to concert halls and festivals these days. Keller is an accomplished pianist/singer from New York City (recently moved to Chicago) who specializes in ragtime and other vintage popular styles. (Keller was also scheduled to get married the week following the festival. I assume that this event took place.) I attended the entire 4-day festival this year, from Thursday's "Vaudeville Night" through the Sunday morning brunch and concert. At Thursday's performance I met up with Audrey Van Dyke, a ragtime enthusiast and BIG TIME sheet music collector who lives in the Washington DC area and whom I'd met at last October's Savannah festival. Her parents live in Michigan and she'd brought them along. For about ten years she's been going to antique stores, estate sales, and the like, seeking out piano sheet music from the early ragtime era through the popular styles of the 1920's and 1930's. She's amassed quite a collection and likes to give out xerox copies to people whom she figures can make good use of it. Luckily I am on Audrey's list of such people. She handed me a package of music about an inch and a half thick and said there would be more coming on subsequent days. Since an inch and a half was more than I expected to get in toto, I found myself wondering just how much music she was going to bestow on me but didn't press the subject. In addition to being a collector, Audrey plays piano and is a decent interpreter of Scott Joplin's music. After the scheduled performers were done and most of the audience had cleared out (except for Audrey's parents and a few stragglers) Audrey and I decided to commandeer the piano and try out various pieces we'd been working on. Among other things, I played some George Botsford pieces I'd acquired from Audrey in Savannah, Joe Lamb's "Old Folks Rag" (which brings in the theme from Stephen Foster's "Old Folks at Home" at the end), and Lamb's unpublished "Ragged Rapids Rag". After I'd done "Old Folks", Bob Milne walked into the room (he'd been listening out in the lobby, unbeknownst to me), said he liked my playing, and encouraged me to play some more in the Tap Room, which was going to be set up on subsequent days for "after hours" activities. I thanked him for the kind words. After I was done, Audrey played a couple of Joplin pieces -- "Searchlight Rag" (one of my favorites) and "The Nonpareil", both of which she did in fine style, with some creative and highly appropriate embellishments on the repeats. On Friday, my stack of photocopied sheet music from Audrey had grown to about 9 inches in thickness, and on Saturday -- to my utter astonishment -- she handed me another 9 inch stack. I haven't counted but figure there must be hundreds of individual pieces in the lot. My plan is to work through them gradually, separating the wheat from the chaff and adding the ones I like to my playing repertoire. The process is going to take a while. Friday and Saturday nights were devoted to dinner concerts in Zehnder's main dining room. If you're not familiar with Zehnder's, they are into quantity as well as quality, and the buffet dinners featured a huge array of wonderfully prepared dishes to choose from. After stuffing themselves to the gills, the audience is treated to an evening of music from the headliners. On Saturday, Mary came up from Ann Arbor to join me, and we attended the Saturday evening and Sunday brunch concerts together. On Saturday we found ourselves seated across from Bob Milne's in-laws from Olivet, and I learned that Bob's wife Linda -- who accompanies him to all the festivals and helps sell his sheet music, CD's, and tapes -- is herself a ragtime player. All the concerts were good, but Saturday night's was especially so -- the performers were in top form and their energy level was high. I took advantage of the "open piano" opportunities in Zehnders' lounge to play some more pieces, include Sue Keller's "Cranberry Stomp" with Keller in the room. I've always been prone to nervousness performing in public and find that informal opportunities like after-hours sessions at ragtime festivals are a good opportunity for more experience, which seems to help get the anxiety level under control. "It gets easier", as they say. Audrey Van Dyke has also filed a report on the Frankenmuth festival, in the newsgroup news:rec.music.ragtime. It doesn't seem to have been indexed by Altavista yet, but when it does I'll post the URL here.
John, I'm working on composing a ragtime piece. It's simple and somewhat cliche, but let me know if you'd like to take a look at it.
A conspiracy of the Johns, eh? :) I'd be interested in seeing that piece when it's finished, lumen...
Sure, I'd like to take a look at it.
I have the first couple of phrases done. Not sure what I should do next-- I'll need an address.
"Ragtimist" Bob Milne was in good form before an appreciative audience last night at Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor. The first half of the program focused on Missouri ragtime of the "ragtime era" (roughly 1890's through 1910's). The selections after intermission were more wide-ranging and featured a couple of Milne's own compositions: "Ragged Music Box" (a rag in the manner of Mozart) and "Mimi". As usual, the music was interspersed with Milne's entertaining and insightful historical and biographical observations. One always comes away from a Milne concert with a better understanding of where this remarkable music came from -- the people who created it, the culture of the times. Most of what he did I'd heard him do before, but it's always a pleasure to hear such show-stoppers as his dazzling version of the "Missouri Waltz", "Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider" (played in imitation player-piano style), Euday Bowman's "Twelfth Street Rag", and Meade Lux Lewis' "Honky Tonk Train Blues". Milne is not a play-by-the-notes kind of musician. He always adds a generous helping of his own embellishments to such familiar pieces as Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" or James Scott's "Frog Legs Rag". Nothing wrong with that; piano performers of the ragtime era tended to have their own signature styles and perform popular pieces in their own unique way. So when he played a piece I hadn't heard him do before -- Harry Kelly's "Peaceful Henry" (1901) -- and I heard hints in one of the strains of the "Old Man River" tune from the much later musical "Show Boat" -- I thought that might have been something he added to the piece. So after the concert I asked him about it, and he said that it was part of the score, not something he'd added. I believe I have "Peaceful Henry" some- where in my sheet music collection -- I'll check this out when I get a chance.
In two days, I'll be leaving to attend a five-day immersion in ragtime music known as the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival. Held in Sedalia, Missouri -- home of the Maple Leaf Club, the 1890's saloon where Scott Joplin played piano and composed "The Maple Leaf Rag" -- it's one of the largest and reputedly one of the best of the annual ragtime events. Not having attended before, I'm really looking forward to it. Scheduled performers and lecturers are a mixture of folks I've seen before and folks I haven't. Familiar faces: John Arpin, Jeff Barnhart, Mimi Blais, Scott Kirby, Terry Waldo, Bob Darch, Trebor Tichenor, Dave Jasen, Nan Bostick, and the Bo Grumpus group. New faces (to me): Morten Gunnar Larsen, Jack Rummel, Max Schiltz, Tony Caramia, Neville Dickey, Jan Hamilton Douglas, Brian Holland, Marit Johnson, Molly Kaufmann, Ian Whitcomb, and Ed Berlin (among others). In addition to concerts and lectures, there are tents set up around town, equipped with pianos, where unscheduled folks like me can have at it. And there are after-hours sessions that go on far into the night. I'll file a full report here after I get home. Maybe even live reports if internet access is available from Sedalia.
There wasn't any internet access from Sedalia that I could find, not that I'd have had much time for it anyway. But I'm home now and will file a detailed report on the happenings when I have time. Suffice it to say for now that it was a great festival and I was in pig heaven.
I'm obviously way behind on writing up reports of my festival experiences. I've been to one festival since Sedalia -- the first annual Egbert Van Alstyne Ragtime Festival, in Woodstock, Illinois. Who was Egbert Van Alstyne, you ask? He was a very successful ragtime and popular song composer of the early 1900's through 1920's. His "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree" is a standard, but other than that, his music is largely forgotten. His ragtime compositions are almost *entirely* forgotten. But he was an important and influential composer of the ragtime era, whose work influenced other composers, including such big names as Joseph Lamb and James Scott. We know this now thanks to the diligent research done by Tracy Doyle, producer of the festival. She's planning on bringing out a folio of Van Alstyne's ragtime compositions, all but one of which have been out of print for decades. Why was the festival held in Woodstock Illinois? Well, Van Alstyne grew up near there, as did Tracy. Plus, Woodstock -- a far northwest suburb of Chicago, not far from Rockford -- has excellent facilities for something like this: a beautiful restored opera house, built in 1890, and a nearby pub with a piano for the "after hours" sessions that characterize ragtime festivals. Both are situated on a picturesque town square that you may have seen without realizing it -- Woodstock was the site of location work for the movie "Groundhog Day", and the town square was prominently featured. Another factoid about Woodstock is that Chester Gould, creator of the "Dick Tracy" comic strip, lived there for much of his life. There's actually a Dick Tracy Museum on the town square, and the Van Alstyne festival coincided with a local "Dick Tracy Days" celebration. More detail on the festival itself later. (Hopefully not too much later.)
Does anybody here know where I might find some recordings of Fred Van Eps?
A sad note -- University of Michigan music professor William Albright died several days ago at age 53. He was chair of the Composition Department at the music school and a highly respected composer, pianist, and organist. I knew Albright mainly for his connections with ragtime music, of which he has been a performer and promoter since the 1960's. He has released numerous recordings in the genre, including an edition of the complete piano rags of Scott Joplin a few years ago. He was a primary organizer and perpetual emcee of the annual Christmas Ragtime Bash at the Ann Arbor Unitarian Church, which has brought in top Michigan ragtime performers for well over 20 years. Although I knew Albright personally only slightly, he was kind enough to listen to and critique my playing back in the 1970's when I was first getting into ragtime music. His observations and suggestions were most helpful to me. He'll be missed.
Not to interrupt, John, but you never sent a critique of that composition I wrote and sent to you. I know it needs work and I need help.
(I'll do it, lumen. Sorry for the delay.)
Next week I'm off to another festival - the Tom Turpin Ragtime Festival in Savannah, Georgia. Four days of ragtime immersion. Featured artists are Jeff Barnhart, "Ragtime Bob" Darch, Sue Keller, Terry Waldo, Terry Parrish, Richard Zimmerman, John Arpin, David Jasen, and Max Morath. A truly stellar lineup, plus the delightful Savannah ambiance. I'm disappointed, though, that Bob Milne and Glenn Jenks won't be there this time. This will be my third visit to the Turpin festival. Hopefully I'll get around to posting a report on this one. I've neglected to do that for the last few festivals. The problem is not that nothing worth reporting on occurred, but the opposite: There's been so much interesting stuff that I find the idea of writing reports on it a bit daunting. Speaking of John Arpin, it seems I have a physical resemblance to him. I was mistaken for the distinguished ragtimer from Toronto on several occasions at last year's Turpin festival, the Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia, Missouri, and the Van Alstyne festival -- and Arpin wasn't even *at* the Van Alstyne festival. I find this puzzling, since although we have a similar build and arrangement of facial hair, I don't think we look all that much alike. In any case, I'll know I've arrived as a ragtime performer when *he* starts getting mistaken for *me*. :)
I'm back from the Savannah festival, and t'was enormously enjoyable. More detail later, including how I got to be John Arpin's warmup act.
REPORT: Tom Turpin Ragtime Festival, Savannah GA, Oct 28-Nov 1, 1998 This was my third Turpin festival. Both the festival and Savannah are starting to feel like old friends. Besides the historic southern charm, one thing I like about Savannah is its compactness: If you stay in the historic district, everything - festival events, good restaurants, interesting shops, historic buildings and monuments, the riverfront - is walking distance. No need for a car. And for a northerner, Savannah in late October supplies a welcome last taste of summer. The weather this year was picture-perfect: Sunny every day, highs in the upper 70's to low 80's. These ragtime festivals tend to be small affairs as compared to, say, rock festivals. The ragtime circuit feels like a community. The performers are mostly a friendly, outgoing bunch, quite willing to talk to folks one-on-one. After attending a few festivals, besides having new friends among the other attendees, I'm comfortable calling some performers by their first names who formerly were just highly-admired icons on CD's and sheet music. The format of this year's Turpin festival was like the others - evening concerts at the Savannah Theater, followed by after-hours sessions at a nearby pub. During the day, "Pianos in the Parlors" (intimate concerts at various homes in the historic district), a riverboat concert, other miscellaneous events. I arrived late Wednesday afternoon (by myself; Mary followed two days later), checked into my B&B, then headed over to the Welcome Reception at the Six Pence Pub. I was a bit early and didn't see any ragtimers I recognized, so I got a table and ordered some dinner. Then Jeanie Wright, music director of the Sedalia festival, showed up. We'd become acquainted at last year's Turpin festival. She joined me and, after describing her bus trip from Sedalia through the beautiful Ozark Mountains, filled me in on plans for next June's Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia. It's going to be a biggy. Since 1999 is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag", the festival will be a full week long, bringing in soloists from all over the U.S., Europe as well, plus three ragtime orchestras. I, of course, wouldn't miss it for the world. Various performers straggled in. I spotted Sue Keller, Jeff Barnhart, Mike Schwimmer, Terry Parrish. Jeff is one of the best of the younger players, with a highly extroverted style, prodigious technique, enthusiasm bordering on the obsessive, and a range to his repertoire that impresses me more each time I hear him. After setting up the piano to his liking, he sat down and played a couple of numbers, including an energetic rendition of James Scott's "Great Scott Rag". Alas, because of a scheduling snafu he was bumped from the stage by a blues singer who had no connection with the festival. So after some grumbling, we all headed over to McDonough's, a pub with Irish pretensions that was this year's official after-hours site. McDonough's turned out to be a great choice - big room, lots of table space, a stage set up with two upright pianos back-to-back (can't have a proper ragtime after-hours without two pianos), and a manager willing to accomodate ragtime players at any hour of the day or night. Jeff played a few more tunes until it was time for him to leave to get ready for the evening concert. In the lull that followed, I decided to try out the piano myself, so I got up and did Brun Campbell's folk-style "Barrel House Rag". The piano proved to be quite playable. [To be continued. In the meantime, any questions?]
Hm, I never seem to get around to finishing my festival reports.
Oh well, maybe someday. In the meantime, if you have a MIDI plugin
set up for your web browser and you're in the mood for some diversion,
you might want to check out "Stormi's Touch Web Creations" at
http://www.stormi.com/
an eclectic personal site put together by a professional web
designer who also happens to be a ragtime fan. Open any page and
you're treated to a ragtime midi. Most of them are pretty good.
The main page is accompanied by a terrific arrangement of Ed
Claypoole's 1915 tune "Ragging the Scale", sequenced by George
Bogatko.
Thanks, John! I checked out the website and it's just lovely. I'm still waiting for some critique..haven't had time to compose a second part in B flat..
the composition I sent you, that is. I think my original and some of the copies are buried in storage. Had to happen when I got married :/
Last weekend (January 22-24) I was in Muscatine, Iowa for the
"Muscatine Ragtime Weekend," aka "Eagles and Ivories". Going was a
spur-of-the-moment decision. I'd just learned about it a few days
beforehand. It's been a few months since my last ragtime festival
and a few more months until my next one, so I've was feeling kind of
strung out with a real need for a Festival Fix. An additional
inducement was that one of the performers was to be Virginia
Tichenor, whose first and only CD (so far) is one of my current
favorites. She's the daughter of Trebor Tichenor, a ragtime scholar,
composer, and performer whose sheet music anthologies for Dover
Publications ("Ragtime Rarities", "Ragtime Rediscoveries", etc.)
are invaluable treasure troves of vintage music. So off I went into
the middle of nowhere (it seemed) in the dead of winter.
Featured performers were Bob Milne (from Lapeer, Michigan),
The Etcetera String Band (from Missouri), Virginia Tichenor
(from San Francisco), and Tichenor's husband Marty Eggers. The
"Eagles" part of "Eagles and Ivories" refers to the birds who
hang out by the Mississippi River near Muscatine at that time
of year. The weekend also featured birdwatching expeditions,
which I skipped due to the cold, and the intermittent snow. But
I heard that the weather was a picnic compared to most of the
previous four Muscatine festivals.
Bad weather and cancelled flights delayed me a few hours; I finally
made it to Muscatine too late for Friday night's concert but in time
for after hours in the ballroom of the Hotel Muscatine, a venerable
establishment on the riverfront. Arriving at the ballroom before
much of anyone else was there, I decided to warm up the piano, an
upright that had clearly been around for a while. But the touch was
okay and I played a few tunes: Brun Campbell's "Barrel House Rag",
May Auferheide's "Richmond Rag,", and James Scott's "Princess Rag".
By that time Marty Eggers and some more audience members had arrived.
I yielded the piano to Marty.
The rest of the featured musicians showed up shortly after, and the
evening consisted of pleasant music-listening and socializing.
Virginia Tichenor and husband Eggers did some nice duo-piano stuff,
including a rousing version of Brun Campbell's "Chestnut Street in
the 90's". I chatted with Tichenor for a bit and learned about the
trials and tribulations of being a musician with a full-time day job
in accountancy.
The piano was not the most stable of instruments -- by the time I
took a second turn at it, the B above middle C had bit the dust,
though I'm not sure any of the listeners noticed. Being an
early-to-bed (more or less) type, I left around midnight while the
Etcetera String Band -- whom I like more every time I hear them --
was holding forth with Eggers sitting in on piano.
Made it to Saturday's concert, at the local Methodist church. Pretty
good turnout. The sanctuary was nearly full; I'd guess about 300
people. Most of them were probably local, although there were a few
folks like me who'd traveled some distance. Tichenor's sets included a
couple of her father Trebor's compositions, Tom Shea's "Brun
Campbell Express", and some more duo-piano with Eggers, including
Jelly Roll Morton's "Naked Dance." Etcetera's segments included
some lovely Caribbean music in addition to folk ragtime. Milne was
in good form with several of his showpieces, including James P
Johnson's "Charleston" and Meade Lux Lewis's "Honky Tonk Train
Blues". A novel highlight was a piano-organ duet of George
Botsford's "Black and White Rag" with Milne on piano and Bob Ault
(of Etcetera) playing the church organ. Very enjoyable evening.
After hours at the hotel followed. By this time the piano had lost
more notes, and it proceded to lose a few more as the evening went
on. As a result, the piano-playing headliners didn't play much. Bob
Ault diagnosed it as a glue problem, which he couldn't fix due to
lack of glue. Some folks played anyway, including myself and a
couple of other audience members.
Return trip to Ann Arbor was uneventful. A very nice two days. I'm
glad I went and would like to go again, schedule and weather
permitting.
Karen Milligan teaches ballet in Dearborn. She heard me playing the piano (ragtime of course) at a party and asked if I'd like to come and do piano accompaniment for one of her classes sometime. She thought Scott Joplin & such would work well. I'd had no experience accompanying dancers but, feeling adventurous, said yes anyway. A few weeks ago we managed to synchronize on a date and I made the trek to Dearborn one evening. Was impressed to discover that she has her own building with "Milligan School of Ballet" in big letters over the door. The piano turned out to be an upright in decent shape, painted bright red. Following Karen's instructions, I played a succession of pieces -- all ragtime -- while half a dozen young ladies (mid-teens) went through various ballet exercises. Started out with Joplin's "Bethena - a Concert Waltz" played at a slow tempo for a warmup. Moved on to Brun Campbell's "Barrel House Rag", then more up-tempo stuff such as Charlie Johnson's "Crazy Bone Rag", James Scott's "Ragtime Oriole", Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag". Great fun, the kids seemed to enjoy it, and Karen said it was really good for them to work with live piano instead of the CD's that she usually plays. And I learned a little about how ballet classes work. I may do further guest appearances for Karen's classes in the future.
And the mid teen ladies might discover there is more than one or two ragtime tunes.
A couple of recent visits to music stores - King Keyboards in Ann Arbor,
Carl Fischer in Chicago - have netted some nice new sheet music:
(1) Three recently-published folios edited by David Jasen. He and Trebor
Tichenor, by collecting and reprinting music from the ragtime era, are
probably more responsible than anyone else for making this music
available to today's public. These are facsimile reproductions of the
original sheet music - including covers - with no editing or
modernization. Fans like me owe much to Jasen, Tichenor, and their
publishers, Dover Publications. The Jasen folios - not all ragtime, but
from that era:
"Cakewalks, Two-Steps, and Trots". Popular dance music dating from
1895 to 1915. Includes some wonderful pieces. My favorites thus far are
Duane Crabb's "Fluffy Ruffles" (a two-step), Charlie Johnson's "All the
Money" (another two-step, published under the pseudonym "Raymond
Birch"), William H. Tyers' "Panama", Harry Von Tilzer's "The Cubanola
Glide", Chris Smith and Jemes Reese Europe's "Ballin' the Jack" (a
fox-trot tune, still popular today), Will Vodery's "Carolina Fox Trot",
and James Reese Europe's "The Castle Doggy" (Europe was bandleader for
Vernon & Irene Castle, the legendary dance team of that era.)
"For Me and My Gal: and Other Famous Song Hits, 1915-1917".
Highlights for me in this one include W.C. Handy's "Beale Street Blues",
Shelton Brooks' "Darktown Strutters' Ball", Tony Jackson & Egbert Van
Alstyne's "Pretty Baby", P.G. Wodehouse & Jerome Kern's "Till the Clouds
Roll By" (Kern has become my favorite songwriter of that era; he
composed beautifully), and Euday Bowman's "12th Street Rag". Bowman's
piece is of course the most popular rag of all time, and is also a bear
to play. Maybe one of these years I'll master it. There's also lots of
Irving Berlin tunes in this volume.
"35 Song Hits by Great Black Songwriters." Haven't gotten into this
one too much yet. Contains old standards like Sissle & Blake's "I'm Just
Wild about Harry" and "Love Will Find a Way", McPherson & Lemonier's
"Miss Hannah from Savannah", Bert Williams' "Nobody", and Bob Cole's
"Under the Bamboo Tree."
(2) "The Saint Louis Blues and Other Song Hits of 1914." This is
another Dover collection, edited by Sandy Marrone. Haven't done a whole
lot with this yet, but I've had fun playing "The Missouri Waltz", a
wonderful traditional folk tune which became a big hit when published as
a song in 1914. W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" is published in its
original 1914 edition.
(3) "Cripple Creek: A Ragtime Suite for Piano". Published in 1993, this
is a collection of six contemporary rags by Max Morath, one of the
leading performers, composers, and promoters of ragtime in the 1960's
and 1970's. He's still around and still working.
(4) "The Golden Era of Ragtime". Another recent collection, edited by
Tony Esposito and published by Warner Brothers in 1995. This is mostly
duplication of stuff that I already had; the one reason I got it was for
George Botsford's "Black and White Rag" - one of my favorites - which I
hadn't been able to find elsewhere.
I attended my first ragtime festival two and a half years ago. In that short space of time I've become addicted to them. Why else would I have dragged myself to Muscatine, Iowa in the dead of January (see an earlier response)? This spring and summer, I have four festivals on my plate: (1) Zehnder's Ragtime Festival, Frankenmuth, Michigan. April 22-25. This will be my third time at this annual event. Lineup: Bob Milne, Jeff Barnhart, Molly Kaufmann, Tony Caramia, Kerry Price. I expect I'll be whipping off a couple of tunes myself at the after-hours in Zehnder's Tap Room. Got email from my friend Audrey the music collector, who's also attending and says she'll be bringing me another "big stack of sheet music, as usual." Eek! Where will I put it all? I still haven't sorted through the ton of stuff she gave me last year. (2) Scott Joplin Festival, Sedalia, Missouri. First week of June. This is the biggest and best of all the festivals. This year it's even bigger and longer in celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" -- a full week of concerts, afterglows, and other events. International in scope, this festival attracts performers and attendees from all over the world. (3) The 2nd Egbert Van Alstyne Festival, Woodstock, Illinois. Second week of June. Last year's festival was a pleasant little event, with concerts held in Woodstock's historic 1890's opera house. I expect this year's will be the same. Performers include Richard Zimmerman, Sue Keller, "Ragtime Bob" Darch. (4) Rocky Mountain Ragtime Festival, Boulder, Colorado. Mid-July. This will be my first visit to this annual festival. Like the Joplin festival, it's one of the "big" ragtime events. Featured performers include Scott Kirby, Frank French, Glenn Jenks, David Thomas Roberts, Virginia Tichenor, and a rare festival appearance by Joshua Rifkin, who started the ragtime revival in the early 1970's with his recordings of Scott Joplin's piano rags. I'm especially looking forward to the Ragtime Institute, three days of master classes, seminars, and private lessons, held on the University of Colorado campus just prior to the festival. Figuring that the opportunity to be coached and critiqued by the likes of Scott Kirby and Glenn Jenks was just too good to pass up, I've enrolled in the Institute as a performer. Wish me luck. I'll let you know how all of the above went, after they've happened.
We're finally studying Ragtime in my "History of Jazz" class. It's nice to know more or less what the terms are.
This response has been erased.
(Oops, botched that response. I'll try again...) Ragtime is certainly relevant to jazz history, although I'd expect it to be dealt with at the beginning of a jazz history course. The heyday of ragtime was the first two decades of the 20th century. Jazz, which had its beginnings towards the end of the ragtime era, evolved from ragtime. Recently, I've been working on various rags by James Scott, who along with Scott Joplin and Joseph Lamb is consider to be one of the "big three" ragtime composers. Of the big three, Scott tends to be the most technically difficult, so perhaps it's a measure of my progress that I've been able to learn several of his pieces in a fairly short time, pieces that I viewed as quite daunting a few years ago. In my repertoire are Scott's "Princess Rag", "Ophelia Rag", "Evergreen Rag", and "Dixie Dimples". I'm currently working on "Peace and Plenty Rag".
Curiously enough, ragtime was influenced quite heavily by military march music, i.e. Joplin was very influenced by Sousa.
Absolutely. In his lectures on ragtime, Bob Darch gives a nice example of the military march influence. He starts by playing a tune on the piano in standard 19th century march style -- very square rhythmically, no syncopation. Then he plays it again, adding the characteristic oom-pah bass of the cakewalk. Still no syncopation, but suddenly the march has been transformed into something you could dance to. Then he adds a syncopated "banjo- picking" effect in the right hand, and voila -- it's ragtime.
Tomorrow I'm heading off to Sedalia, Missouri for the annual Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival. Since 1999 is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag -- the piece that more than any other single thing started the ragtime craze -- the festival is extra big and extra long this year, running for a full week and with many many ragtime luminaries participating. I'm attending the whole thing. Can I take that extensive a ragtime immersion? We shall see. I attended the Joplin festival for the first time last year and was impressed by the free-wheeling, democratic, small-town-jubilee ambience. There are formal scheduled concerts (two or three a day), but there is also music going on all the time at various places around Sedalia's historic district. Opportunities abound for anyone to sit down and play the piano, and many do. In the main tent -- at the former site of the Maple Leaf Club, where Scott Joplin worked as a piano player at the turn of the century -- it's not at all unusual for one of the headliners, like John Arpin or Morton Gunnar Larsen to play a set, followed immediately by a couple of 7th graders playing "The Entertainer" arranged as a duet. Like I say, very democratic. Sedalia is the only festival I've been to where you can't possibly attend every event, because several things are happening at the same time. During a scheduled concert at Liberty Theater, there are folks playing in the Maple Leaf Tent, somebody else jamming away on a piano at the gazebo, and yet another person performing in a tent set up on the court house lawn. And then at night, after the last formal concert is over, there's "after hours" in the Best Western ballroom, where they've got two pianos set up and anybody who wants to can sit down and play. The after hours sessions typically go on until 3am or so. And if the ballroom isn't intimate enough for you, you can hang out in the hotel lounge and listen to (or play) the piano there, or go to the lobby where another piano is set up that's open to all comers, etc. etc. And this all goes on for six full days and part of a seventh. Sedalia is a festival that knows how to be *festive*. There's an incredibly stellar lineup of performers this year, including Max Morath, Bob Milne, Terry Waldo, Mimi Blais, Scott Kirby, Peter Lundberg, Galen Wilkes, Tony Caramia, John Arpin, Ian and Regina Whitcomb, Bob Darch, the Elite Syncopators, the Turpin Tyme Ragsters, Morton Larsen, Sue Keller, Glen Jenks, the Ophelia Ragtime Orchestra, Trebor Tichenor, Virginia Tichenor, and many more. The festival also has an explicitly educational component in the form of symposia on various aspects of ragtime music and history. There's about twice as many of them this year as in the past. Presenters include Bob Darch, Scott Kirby (speaking on "Band Concerts in Classic Ragtime", a subject in which I have an interest), Tony Caramia, ace washboard player Mike Schwimmer (giving a history of the washboard in ragtime), Ed Berlin, Max Morath, Dave Jasen, Galen Wilkes, and Patricia Lamb Conn (daughter of the great ragtime composer Joseph Lamb). Something else that's educational: Tony Caramia, one of the headliners (and also an Associate Professor of piano performance at the Eastman-Rochester School of Music) gives private lessons. I've signed up for an hour with him. Should be interesting. This is going to be a great festival. In addition to all the music, I'll get to see friends whom I never see other than at ragtime festivals. When I get back, I'll let y'all know how things went.
Wasn't The Maple Leaf Rag the first million selling peice of music in America? Could it also be the first million selling thing? (before McD's sold a million copies of the same burger).
It wouldn't surprise me. Maple Leaf Rag was very big during its time.
The Maple Leaf Rag is widely cited as being the first million-seller piece of sheet music. According to Scott Joplin biographer Ed Berlin, this is questionable. There is no doubt, however, that it did sell very well and was a major factor in sparking the ragtime craze. I've been to two ragtime festivals since I last posted here - the Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia, Missouri (a BIG one), and the Egbert Van Alstyne Festival in Woodstock, Illinois (smallish). I'll try to post reports on both soon.
I was at John's place the other day, working on a rag I sent him. It's a very rough draft, and I was working in 8-bar phrases instead of the standard 16. He played his interpretation of it, added some ideas for additional eight-bar material, and started developing the material for a B section. It was pretty easy-- I could see he was inverting the musical lines and motifs in general, and we dropped the key a major 3rd from G major to E flat major. John has a diskclavier built into the Yamaha piano he uses in his music room, so we got it programmed into memory and saved to disk. He graciously gave me the disk so I can take it to our small university piano lab and see if I can't have a computer MIDI program read it. It's much easier to then have a manuscripting program take care of the writing for you. The song is nothing terribly new-- I was almost certain that I'd heard the tune somewhere before when it popped into my head. When I first started playing it, before I wrote it down, I thought back to the few rags I've played, and realized I'd never played it. Many of the techniques I've used, however, are used in other ragtime pieces. I hope to get the song finished, and send John a demo tape of something MIDI-sequenced. I'd like to have him record it, and I also would like to hear it played sometime, even if it isn't terribly original.
I'd love to see a copy too, when you get it finished, Jon.
Next week I'll be attending the Ragtime Institute at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Three days of lectures, master classes, and private lessons with some of the top performers and composers in ragtime today: Scott Kirby, Glenn Jenks, Frank French, David Thomas Roberts, and others. It's being held in conjunction with the Rocky Mountain Ragtime Festival, which I'm also attending. I recently learned something about the age distribution of the students enrolled in the Institute. Five people (including myself) in their 50's and 60's, one 39-year-old, and everybody else under 20. This data tends to confirm my suspicion that ragtime appeals the most to kids and coots.
Overlooked by the Baby Boomers? Then again, a number of boomers I know are also into other pre-Rock and Roll music, including swing era jazz or early Blues.
Well, ragtime had its last big revival in the 1970's, as a spinoff of Joshua Rifkin's Joplin recordings and the soundtrack of "The Sting". I'd say it's about due for another one. I'm not sure if the current popularity of swing era music will help foster a new ragtime revival or not. I'm encouraged by the fact that some talented younger performers are doing ragtime. Reginald Robinson, for example. In Sedalia there were several featured performers who are still in high school and who are really excellent: Neil Blaze (17), Marit Johnson (16), Martin Spitznagel (16), Sara Roth (15). Spitznagel in particular is extremely talented and accomplished; he composes as well as plays. I expect he'll be putting out CD's soon.
Spitznagel has a web page at
http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/2422/
The site has a few MIDI files of his own renditions of rags by Joplin
and others, plus biographical information at
http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/2422/personal.htm
(Be forewarned that being a Geocities site, it inflicts annoying pop-up
ads on you.)
Martin's renditions of Joplin are somewhat idiosyncratic and I think
show the jazz influence of his teacher Tony Caramia. Check out in
particular his original but somewhat brash interpretation of "Maple Leaf
Rag". (It helps if your browser has a MIDI plug-in.)
Hmm... I've attended four ragtime festivals this past spring and summer, and haven't gotten around to writing my planned comprehensive reports on any of them. What stops me is the daunting task of trying to organize complex events into what would be rather long essays. So I think I'll give up on comprehensiveness and coherence and instead post short snippets about my experiences, in no particular order. That way, I'll at least get *something* written down.
I spent nine days earlier this month at the Rocky Mountain Ragtime Institute and Festival in Boulder, Colorado, where the mountains begin. It was the 8th annual RMRF and the first one that I attended. (In fact, I'd never been to Colorado before this trip.) The Institute, held on the University of Colorado campus, was a new feature this year - three days of lectures, master classes, and private lessons, intended for both young people and adults who wanted to improve their skills in performing ragtime music. The instructors were four of the leading performers and composers of ragtime today: Scott Kirby (my favorite Joplin interpreter), Frank French, Glenn Jenks, and David Thomas Roberts. There were about a dozen people enrolled in the Institute, with an almost even split between high school students and folks over 50, and one 30-something person representing the middle. Enrollees' skill levels were all over the map, ranging from near beginners to some rather accomplished musicians. For my private instructor, I drew Glenn Jenks, whom I already knew from previous festivals. In two private lessons, we worked on James Scott's "Peace and Plenty Rag" and "Ragtime Oriole," for which Glenn had some useful suggestions regarding interpretation and technique. In the master class, all the students had to perform a solo in front of the other students and the four instructors, who would then critique the student's performance.^OThis was the most nerve-racking part of the Institute for me as it was, I suspect, for most of the other students. I did "Peace and Plenty Rag", and it went decently except that I let the tempo run away with me a bit much (I tend to play faster when I'm nervous). Three days after the Institute was over, there was a Student Concert in which the Institute enrollees were all expected to perform (except for a handful who were at a distinctly lower skill level). Between the Wednesday when the Institute ended and the Saturday of the Student Concert, I put in about six hours of practicing to make sure I had all the technical and interpretive points nailed down. For the concert, I played Scott's "Ragtime Oriole," which went quite well. Despite the fact that I was playing in front of a couple hundred people in a large auditorium, I found this to be much less nerve-wracking than the master class had been, and so was able to be much more relaxed. I'm sure the practicing helped.
By the way, John, I haven't examined the diskclavier disk yet-- I still need a Mac program that will translate it as a file readable by a manuscripting program. (Um, even if it was for IBM PC instead, a Power Mac could still read it, right?) note to those who came in late: I'm hoping to one day have a new ragtime composition that John could showcase for me.. just for the experience.. don't know about getting it published for royalties..
Over the last couple of years I've collected a little original sheet music from the ragtime era. I haven't been systematic about it, and have no intention of getting into collecting in a big-time way - it's a pretty expensive habit - but if in my travels I spot an antique store or used bookstore with a sheet music collection, I'll look it over to see if there's anything interesting that's not too expensive. I spotted my most interesting recent acquisition last June at the Egbert Van Alstyne Festival in Woodstock, Illinois. Dick Zimmerman was at the festival as a performer. In addition to performing, Zimmerman is a considerable researcher and music collector - he was the person who unearthed a copy of Scott Joplin's long-lost "Silver Swan Rag" back in the 1970's. Zimmerman brought some of his old sheet music to the festival that he wanted to unload and had it on display for sale. In leafing through the collection I spotted a copy of George Botsford's classic "Black and White Rag" from 1908. It was one of the most popular pieces of the ragtime era; its popularity survived the ragtime era and it went on to become a big band staple in the 1920's and later. It's a piece I like a lot and learned to play recently from a reprint of a 1920's edition. In examine Zimmerman's 1908 copy, I immediately spotted a some differences from the version I know - completely different introduction, walking bass, and a few other things. So I decided I had to have this, since (1) it was the original version, and (2) it's significantly different from the version I knew and had heard other people play. Plus it was only $14, since it wasn't in particularly good shape, although all the music was there and perfectly legible. Over the last few weeks I've been re-learning the piece using the 1908 edition, and have it pretty well down now. The original works better at a slower tempo than the 1920's edition, suggesting that the composer (or someone else, perhaps) made changes to accommodate the faster tempos fashionable in the 1920's, which was the era of "novelty ragtime". In any case, I prefer the 1908 version musically. Since I've never heard anyone else play this version, it may be a unique feature of my repertoire.
By the way, I found an excellent MIDI file of Botsford's "Black and
White Rag" (1908 version) on Warren Trachtman's website:
http://www.trachtman.org/MIDI/Misc/blakwhit.mid
It's played a little bit faster than I do it, but I think the tempo is
just fine.
Trachtman's ragtime-oriented website is excellent, and I recommend
checking it out for MIDI files, sheet music, and other things:
http://www.trachtman.org/
In case you see this before you get your mail (Grex is down): I need a backup of the diskclavier disk; I've misplaced it. I'm beginning to think I need to work on this rag after I get to Michigan. I have no idea when I'll find the time to finish it. Did you find any translator programs that could convert the data to an IBM/Mac file that a manuscripting program could read?
Greetings, live from Sacramento, California! I'm here for the West Coast Ragtime Festival, which runs today through Sunday. Thought I'd be out of touch with Grex, but I found a Kinko's with internet access near my hotel, so here I am. Since I'm being charged by the minute, I'll make this brief. Arrived Wednesday evening. Before I left, I got email from a California ragtime friend of mine by the name of Nan Bostick. She was a headliner at last summer's Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival and recommended that I try the piano in the Ice Cream Emporium there. So yesterday I drove down to Sutter Creek to check things out. Turns out that Sutter Creek is a little tourist town near the site of Sutter's big gold discovery of 1849. It's even located on highway 49. The whole town if about four blocks long, with a heavy emphasis on gift shops, antique stores, and eateries. I found the Ice Cream Emporium. In the back sat an upright piano with various folios of ragtime music on the music desk. A good sign -- the place was ragtime-friendly. Nobody was playing the piano, so I asked the counter clerk if it was okay to try it out. She said sure, the boss usually plays it all day, but he's not here today. So I sat down and played a few tunes. They went over well with the assembled customers. They especially seemed to like the Charlie Johnson tunes I've learned recently: Barber Pole Rag, Fun on the Levee, Pigeon Wing. If there's time, I'll head back to Sutter Creek before I return to Michigan; I'm curious to meet "the boss". It's about 8:30 a.m. now; the festival gets underway at noon and goes more or less continuously until late Sunday afternoon. Terrific lineup of performers this year. I'm really looking forward to it and to seeing various ragtime friends again. Dunno if I'll have time to check into Grex before I get back home.
Hm, someday I'll post a followup report on the West Coast Ragtime Festival, maybe. It was a fine event. In a few minutes I'm off to the annual "Christmas Ragtime Bash" at the Unitarian Church, featuring Bolcom & Morris, Mike Montgomery, and others. Ta ta for now...
Waaaah, I wish I'd known this was coming up.
Guess I shoulda posted an announcement here. Sorry. It wasn't very well publicized; I found it by scanning the Observer events listings. Nonetheless, it was a full house by 20 minutes before start time. This despite the less accessible location of the new church, the larger seating capacity there (I think), and the absence of publicity. It was a fun and lively concert. The emcee for the evening was Mike Montgomery of Detroit, a performer, scholar, and piano roll collector who's been around for a long time. Some forty years ago he performed an invaluable service to the ragtime community by seeking out the great classical ragtime composer Joseph Lamb and recording Lamb playing his rags (including many unpublished ones) on tape. This was just a year or two before Lamb's death, so it's thanks to Mike that we know about a lot of Lamb's compositions. I've encountered Mike at a few ragtime festivals around the country over the last couple of years, and we've joked about the fact that despite the fact that we're both Michiganders, we'd never actually met in Michigan. Well, last night we finally did. Montgomery led off with a performance of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag", appropriate since 1999 is the hundredth anniversary of its publication. After pointing out that saloon players of the ragtime era mostly learned music by ear rather than from sheet music, (many couldn't read music), and tended to play in their own style rather than note-for-note, he played "Maple Leaf" in the key of F (it's written in A flat) with some departures from the written score. Sounded pretty good. Next William Bolcom performed, minus wife Joan Morris, who was down with a cold and "off voice". He zipped through a Venezuelan "Danza", Eubie Blake's "Charleston Rag", and his own composition "Graceful Ghost". Difficult music all. I don't believe I'd ever heard him perform "Ghost" live before, and he did it a little differently from his early-seventies recording. A bit brisker tempo, and he didn't "swing" the 16th notes like he did in the recording. James Dapogny did some stride pieces, his specialty: Jelly Roll Morton's "Stratford Hunch", James P. Johnson's "Snowy Morning Blues", Fats Waller's "Viper's Drag". Then he was joined by vocalist Susan Chastain for a couple of numbers: "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea", and a gospel tune. I'd not heard Chastain before; she has a powerful but very warm voice, and was a delight to listen to. The first half of the concert closed with an unscheduled appearance by Rick Grafton, who runs a club called "Rick's Ragtime Cafe" in Toledo. He gave a rousing rendition of an obscure but excellent rag called "The Vamp" from about 1916. Audience response was enthusiastic; hopefully he'll be back. Hopefully I'll get a chance to seek out his establishment in Toledo. After intermission, Montgomery opened with an amusing vocal number named "He's Just a Cousin of Mine" by Chris Smith of "Ballin' the Jack" fame. Then Terry Parrish, a newcomer to Ann Arbor, did a set. Parrish is a doctor (child psychiatrist, I believe) and runs a clinic in Indianapolis. Despite the fact that music isn't his full time job, in my opinion he's one of the best performers in ragtime today - this opinion formed from hearing him at various festivals. So I was glad to see him show up at the Bash; I believe Montgomery took the initiative in getting him here. His set showcased a variety of ragtime styles: Brun Campbell's "Frankie and Johnny Rag" (based on the folk song), Tom Turpin's "St. Louis Rag", Les C. Copeland's eccentric "Bees and Honey Rag" (unpublished, Parrish learned it from listening to a piano roll), and a couple of his own compositions. The evening closed with a set from boogie woogie pianist Bob Seely, who has been playing piano at Chuck Muir's Charlie's Crab Restaurant in Troy since the dawn of time, and whose appearance at the Bash is an annual event. As Montgomery put it, Seely has to be last on the program because nobody would want to follow him. The man is a wizard at the keyboard, a dynamo who brings his own battery-operated portable fan along and sets it on the piano to keep himself cool while playing. He performed pieces by boogie great Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammondo (sp?), as well as perennial favorites, his boogie versions of the inspirational tunes "A Closer Walk with Thee" and "Amazing Grace". I've heard him do it all before but never get tired of it. Neither does the rest of the audience apparently, who gave him a standing ovation. At one point, Montgomery proposed having several Ann Arbor ragtime concerts throughout the year instead of just the one, bringing in more performers. This was music to my ears. To judge by the popularity of the Christmas concert, I think the audience support would be there.
Ragtime's already respectable presence on the web recently received a boost: mp3.com had added added a ragtime section to its site, from which you can download high-quality recordings of piano and orchestral ragtime pieces in MP3 format. The page is labeled "traditional jazz", but most of the selections on it are in fact ragtime. The existence of this new ragtime site is due largely to the efforts of pianist Richard Zimmerman and ragtime researcher and historian Tracy Doyle. Zimmerman announced all this at the West Coast Ragtime Festival last month. Various performers are represented on the site. I especially recommend the selections by Zimmerman and by the Dawn of the Century Ragtime Orchestra. URL: http://genres.mp3.com/music/jazz/traditional_jazz/
An upcoming Ann Arbor ragtime-related event this coming Sunday, Jan. 30: Faculty Recital/Superbowl Alternative Concert at the Britton Recital Hall, U of M School of Music. Featured performers are pianist William Bolcom, violinist Stephen Shipps, cellist Erling Blondal Bengtsson, and pianist Gabriela Frank. Bolcom will be playing some of his own works, including I believe some ragtime material. Starting time is 7 p.m.
Further Adventures in Ragtime Ballet
------------------------------------
Yesterday evening I paid a return visit to the Milligan
School of Ballet in Dearborn Heights. I had agreed to
perform a rag at her students' recital in May, so Karen
Milligan asked me to stop by the school during a class
to play some rags for her and the students. She would
tape them, decide which one she'd like performed at the
recital, and then would use the tape for rehearsals.
So I made up a list of rags that I thought would be
suitable for dancing. Some up-tempo pieces from the
ragtime era: George Botsford's "Black and White Rag",
Harry von Tilzer's "Cubanola Glide", Charlie Johnson's
"Pigeon Wing" and "Fun on the Levee". Also Charles
Daniels' slower-paced intermezzo, "Louisiana". I threw
in a couple of mellow contemporary rags as well, Galen
Wilks' "Creeks of Missouri" and David Thomas Roberts'
"Roberto Clemente". I was also prepared to play Scott
Joplin's "The Entertainer", but Karen declared that they
wouldn't do that one since it's already been done to
death. Can't say I was too surprised.
Karen and the girls appeared to enjoy everything, but
the biggest hits were "Roberto Clemente", "Pigeon Wing",
"Fun on the Levee", and "Black and White". I got a
round of applause when I was done, and Karen said she'd
give me her decision via email. Not sure what she'll
choose, but I'm betting on "Roberto Clemente", or maybe
that plus "Fun on the Levee" if she decides to do two
rag numbers.
Ragtime social notes from all over:
One side effect of hanging around the ragtime circuit is that
from time to time one hears personal news about the major
personalities. This is probably of limited interest to
anyone reading this item, but Tracy Doyle - ragtime scholar,
occasional piano player, and producer of the Van Alstyne
Festival - just announced that she and Richard Zimmerman,
ragtime pianist extraordinaire (he made one of the best
recordings of Scott Joplin's complete works, back in the
1970's) - are engaged to be married. Congrats to Tracy
and Dick.
(I guess that was only one social note. Maybe I'll post
another one someday.)
As I mentioned earlier, Tracy and Dick have lately been
extremely busy putting MP3 ragtime material up on the
web. See http://www.mp3.com
I've a question for you, John--I should probably know this, having done a 'research project' on jazz last year, but I can't remember-- Was ragtime originally an improvisatory music, or one that strictly adhered to the composer's score? How is it played today in that respect?
Ragtime was always improvisatory to an extent, but not in
the same way as jazz. The ragtime syncopated style of
performance appears to predate by several years the
appearance in print of pieces that were labeled as "rags".
So at the beginning, the music wasn't written down, but
rather, musicians learned it by ear from hearing other
musicians perform it. Under those circumstances, it was
seldom the case that two musicians played the same piece
exactly alike. However, once a musician had learned a
tune, he or she tended to play it pretty much the same
way every time, perhaps occasionally incorporating some
new variation that they'd thought of; improvisation per se
wasn't part of the ragtime style. Pieces generally
consisted of three or four sixteen-bar strains, repeated
in some fixed pattern such as AABBCCDD or AABBCCB, and
musicians usually didn't depart from this architecture.
Around 1898 ragtime piano solos, songs, and band
arrangments started to be published. In short order
the ragtime craze took hold and ragtime publishing became
a huge business. Nonetheless, professional musicians
continued to play the music in their own styles, seldom
performing it note-for-note as written. For one thing,
a musician's image and reputation was founded in part on
his or her unique style of playing. For another, many
musicians of the time didn't even know how to read music
and learned pieces by ear. In the musical circles in
which he moved in his younger days, Scott Joplin was
known as the "King of the Ragtime WRITERS" because he
was one of the few who knew musical notation and
actually wrote his compositions down.
Those ragtime composers -- such as Joplin, Joseph Lamb,
and James Scott -- who wanted ragtime to be taken
seriously on a par with classical compositions, said that
they preferred that their music be played note-for-note,
as written. I don't think they had much success getting
their contemporaries to do that. Even Joplin didn't follow
his own advice, as we know from the testimony of people
who heard him play, and from the few piano rolls that he
cut. In repeats of strains, one hears significant departures
from the written scores in the bass line.
Nowadays, ragtime players seem to fall into two camps: the
note-for-note camp and the variations-are-desirable camp. To
the former group belong Joshua Rifkin, Scott Kirby, and
David Thomas Roberts, and Glenn Jenks, for example. In the
latter one has Bob Milne, Richard Zimmerman, Tony Caramia,
and Sue Keller.
This is a bit of an oversimplification, because I don't know
of any current ragtime musician who plays everything exactly
as written; limited variations on repeats are considered to
be okay, even by the note-for-noters. And there are musicians
whose adherence to the written score depends on what composer
they're playing. Jeff Barnhart or Sue Keller might stick
close to the score with a Joe Lamb rag but go wild with
variations on Jelly Roll Morton.
A musician who departs from the printed score doesn't
necessarily draw the variations out of the air. A couple
of years ago, I heard Richard Zimmerman perform a Charlie
Johnson piece that I'd also been working on. He threw in
an enormous number of variations: interior melodies, doubled
bass lines, etc. Later I asked him about that. He told me
that ragtime pieces were often published in band arrangments
as well as piano solos, and that he studies the band
arrangments and incorporates elements from them into his
solo performances, trying for a kind of orchestral effect.
Zimmerman has prodigious technique, so it works.
I'm not the ragtime scholar that Zimmerman is, but in my own
playing -- although I tend to play pretty close to the
written score -- I incorporate variations that are consistent
with common practice during the ragtime era. This includes
such things as playing the melody an octave higher on repeats,
doing the bass line in octaves, or playing the final strain of
a piece at slightly slower tempo for a "grand finale" effect.
Thank you John -- that was far more information than I found in any of the books I read on jazz history. (Of course, if I'd concentrated on that early period I probably would have found out more...) I remember reading about Jelly Roll Morton, however, as many seem to consider him the "bridge" between ragtime and jazz. I also think I read somewhere that Scott Joplin studied formal classical composition at a music school (or possibly with another composer.) And he did seem to have some classically-minded ideas, publishing a book of ragtime studies and writing a full-length ragtime opera (which, sadly, won almost no popular acclaim...)
Joplin attended a small all-black college in Missouri, where he
studied music. He is one of the few ragtime musicians of that
era (certainly one of the few black musicians) to be college-
educated.
Morton was definitely a bridge between ragtime and jazz. He
liked to claim that he invented jazz, although that is no doubt
an exaggeration.
Joplin appears to have written two operas: "A Guest of Honor"
and "Tremoneesha". The former has been lost, although I
believe I've read that his composition "The Ragtime Dance",
published both as a piano solo and as a song, is taken from
it. We have the score to "Tremoneesha", and there have been
a few productions of it in the last 25 years or so. The
quality of "Tremoneesha" is rather uneven (especially the
lyrics -- Joplin was not the master of lyrics that he was
of instrumental music), although the finale, "A Real Slow
Drag", is one of his most splendid creations.
I was thinking of "Treemonesha," as I hadn't heard of "Guest of Honor". Isn't it also true that Treemoneesha was unsuccessful partially because it featured a solo piono accompanying the voices, rather than a band or orchestra?
I thought I might be spelling it wrong, so I looked it up, and
I was. It's "Treemonisha."
Hm, I'll have to look up the bit about piano accompaniment. I
know that a piano arrangement of the score was published, but
I had always assumed that it was scored for full orchestra
originally. Modern productions of the opera have featured
orchestral accompaniment.
One of my most moving and memorable experiences at last summer's
Scott Joplin Festival was hearing a performance of excerpts
from "Treemonisha", performed by the Ophelia Ragtime Orchestra,
a chorus, and soloists -- all from Oslo, Norway.
The Ophelia Ragtime Orchestra also performed at other festival
events. I don't know to what extent they tour in the United
States, but if you ever get a chance to hear them, don't misss
them. They are wonderful.
resp:156, resp:157 Perhaps it is partly because of that reason that I haven't finished the rag I started. When I visited Ann Arbor last summer, I met with remmers to discuss ideas on how to improve it. He played it with a few lovely embellishments, improving bass lines and just generally playing it much better than I could. He also improvised a small part to give me ideas on the next section, inverting the melody line and dropping the key down a major 3rd. Well, my music dictation stinks, so I've procrastinated writing anything more. remmers recorded it to disk using a Yamaha Disclavier, and so I could tape what he played, but I couldn't transcribe it using MIDI equipment. The lab proctor, who is one of the composition majors in the department, said the signal was probably too degraded coming from the Disclavier. So, until I work up the nerve to attempt further painstaking writing, "Ann Arbor Rag" probably won't be finished any time soon.
Spoke to Karen the ballet teacher today -- after listening to the tape I made multiple times, she's decided to do George Botsford's "Black and White Rag" for her ballet recital. It's a deligtful piece and fun to play, so I have to say I'm pleased with the decision. Another reason for the choice is that her students' ballet costumes are black and white. I'm anxious to see what kind of choreography she works out for it. She'd like me to wear black and white too. (Remmers in a tuxedo? Hmm, I'll have to give this some thought...)
But_as_an_established_entertainer,_you_already_own_a_tux,_right?__;)_________
Scott, why are all your responses these days filled with underscores instead of blanks?
See_item_188_in_Agora.__It's_on_purpose,_anyway,_but_item_188_explain_a_bit__ more.________________________________________________________________________
Dunno how "established" I am, but in any case I don't own a tux, so I'd have to rent one. Another possibility is some kind of ragtimey "saloon" get up with red armbands.
I think the latter sounds very appealing, but of course, I'm sure it would depend on the sensibilities of the audience.
Tomorrow I'm off for the Tom Turpin Ragtime Festival in Savannah, Georgia. This will be the fifth annual Turpin Festival and the fourth that I've attended. I've heard it will also be the last -- the person who runs it isn't planning to do it any more. One purpose of this year's festival is to honor "Ragtime" Bob Darch, whose 80th birthday is this year and who has been active in researching, performing, composing, and promoting ragtime music since the early 1950's, essentially before anyone else was doing it. His contributions to the genre have been immense.
Had a great time at the Tom Turpin Festival in Savannah. Headliners were Mimi Blais, John Arpin, Sue Keller, Dick Zimmerman, Dick Kroeckel, Terry Parrish, Terry Waldo, Steve Spracklin, and Bob Darch. The only one I'd never seen before was Spracklin, who turned out to be a Mississippi river boat cruise director who plays excellent ragtime in a strong rhythmic style. I learned a lot that I didn't know about "Ragtime Bob" Darch, whose 80th birthday the festival celebrated. Over the last 50 years, Darch has probably done more than anyone alive to promote and preserve ragtime. Back in the 1950's and 1960's, he traveled all over the country, seeking out rare sheet music and inteviewing all the oldtimers he could find from the ragtime era who were still alive, supporting himself by playing piano in saloons. In particular, he was instrumental in rescuing Joseph Lamb (composer of "Ragtime Nightingale") from obscurity and bringing Eubie Blake back into the public eye and to the concert stage. Darch is himself a composer, having written over 150 rag instrumentals and songs. He's still in pretty good shape and performed at several of the festival concerts. Another thing I didn't know about Darch was that he had eight children. (!) A sizeable number of them showed up with their families, which meant that a significant portion of the attendees at the special Darch dinner were, in fact, Darches. Regarding Lamb in particular -- he dropped out of the music business around 1920 but continued to compose. When Darch found him in the late 1950's, it turned out that he had dozens of unpublished manuscripts lying around the house, some of which were among the finest music he ever wrote. A few were subsequently published, in a now out-of-print folio called "Ragtime Treasures". Most have not been, however. Darch brought a stack of unpublished Lamb sheet music with him to the festival, and I had an opportunity to look through it. Lamb's daughter, Patricial Lamb Conn, was at the festival and will be sending me a few things that I requested -- "Spanish Fly", "Joe Lamb's Old Rag", and "Chasing the Chippies". My friend Nan Bostick from California was at the festival to present a seminar on Detroit ragtime. It turns out that Detroit was an important center of ragtime playing and publishing. She and I did a couple of two-piano numbers at after-hours: Charles Daniels' "Louisiana" and Harry P. Guy's "Pearl of the Harem." I also played Joplin's "Peacherine Rag" and "The Entertainer" with another amateur pianist, John Yates, from Toronto. I also did a few solo numbers at after-hours. I find that the more I perform in front of audiences, the more comfortable it gets for me. Another friend who showed up was music collector Audrey Van Dyke, who gifted me with yet another stack of Xeroxed rare sheet music. Audrey is also an excellent ragtime piano player, and a fine interpreter of Scott Joplin. She's not comfortable playing in front of people though. When the audience had cleared out after one of the concerts, she and I took over the piano and took turns playing some pieces. This is in all likelihood the last Savannah Festival. Ann Steele, the organizer and director, has moved to New York City and is now a full-time theatrical agent, leaving her no time for ragtime festival organizing in distant cities. I'll miss it. Top quality entertainment, yet relatively small, with plenty of opportunity for audience members to meet and talk with the performers.
I would like to meet Zimmerman one of these days. I have one of his CD's and it is fantastic. Remmers is no slouch either, I just wish he made a few CD's as well.
Spent last Friday and Saturday at the Zehnders Ragtime Festival, held at Zehnders Restaurant in Frankenmuth, Michigan. This is an annual event that I've attended for four years now. It expanded somewhat in length and scope this year, starting with a Wednesday evening concert and concluding with a Sunday brunch, but due to work obligations and the fact that I didn't try to get tickets until the Saturday and Sunday concerts were sold out, I attended only two days of the festival. Featured performers this year were Bob Milne, Jeff Barnhart, Martin Jaeger, and the Etcetera String Band. All were familiar to me except Jaeger, who comes to ragtime from a classical background and who heads the music department at an institute in Switzerland. I got in early Friday morning, a good hour before the first festival event of the day. I noticed that Zehnder's lounge was unoccupied and contained a piano, so I killed time by playing for about an hour, to an audience consisting of a few Zehnders staff who wandered in from time to time. At 10:30 there was a seminar on string bands in ragtime, featuring the Etcetera String Band, a three-man group out of Kansas city that features a banjo, a mandolin, and a guitar. They're superb musicians with an encyclopedaic knowledge of the history of their instruments. One interesting point brought out in the seminar was that although ragtime is today thought of primarily as piano solo music, during the ragtime era (roughly 1898 to 1918) it was commonly played by all sorts of ensembles, ranging from small mandolin groups to full sized concert bands and orchestras. Following lunch in a restaurant with overpoweringly Bavarian decor but highly American food, I attended the second seminar of the day, on ragtime piano playing styles. Milne, Barnhart, and Jaeger -- all of whom have very different approaches to ragtime music -- held forth and gave demonstrations. Friday evening's dinner concert was quite interesting and at times ranged outside the boundaries of what is normally considered ragtime. Jaeger did a selection of Gershwin pieces, including an impressive rendition of Rhapsody in Blue in Gershwin's original arrangement for piano solo. Before that, I had only heard the piece performed in the familiar "concerto" format with orchestral accompaniment. I learned something that I hadn't known -- the orchestral arrangement is not by Gershwin but rather Ferde Grofe' (of "Grand Canyon Suite" fame) who at the time was the arranger for Paul Whiteman's band, which premiered the piece. In any case, the solo piano version is much more difficult for the piano player, since it includes various orchestral effects that in the standard version are played by an actual orchestra. Also in the Friday night concert, the Etcetera String Band played a few delightful selections of Caribbean music -- a Haitian "marange" (sp?) and some other things. Since ragtime was greatly influenced by folk music of the Caribbean, I didn't feel that this was out of place at all. Following the concert there was the usual "afterglow" session in Zehnders Tap Room, in which any performers who aren't too tired, plus anybody else who feels like it, plays. Jeff Barnhart did a nice set with washboard player Mike Schwimmer, following which the Etcetera band and Bob Milne did a few tunes. When they were ready to pack it in, I and another person played a couple of numbers. We closed the bar around 1 a.m. Saturday started with three hours of silent movies to live piano accompaniment. I sat through the first hour -- a couple of Charlie Chaplin shorts from circa 1912 -- then took off to have a shopping moment at Birch Run, a mega-size outlet mall a few miles from Frankenmuth. Returned to Frankenmuth for a "meet the artists" session later in the afternoon, held at the food court in Zehnders basement. Each of the piano players played a set and chatted with anybody who felt like chatting with them. At the end of it there were a few minutes left over. Barnhart invited me to play, so I did a couple of Charlie Johnson tunes, "Barber Pole Rag" and "Snookums". These were well-received. Being sans tickets for any further events, I then headed back to Ann Arbor. Although I didn't attend the whole thing, I thought this was the best Frankenmuth festival I've been to so far. It was also the best attended -- in past years I wouldn't have had trouble getting tickets when I did. I'd say this bodes well for the health of ragtime.
By the way, Martin Jaeger also composes rags. At Frankenmuth I picked up a folio of three of them: "Welcome Rag", "Baroque Rag", and "China Rag". The first two are especially delightful and not too difficult technically, so maybe I'll learn to play them someday. Jaeger's classical background show -- "Baroque Rag" is based on the J.S. Bach chorale "Sanctify Us by Thy Goodness".
Last night I went to a run-through of the piece I'll be performing in the ballet recital, so that the girls could try it out with live piano and I could see how it had been choreographed. Pretty cute, especially the part at the end where the girls all run around the piano. The recital is Saturday, May 13 at Mercy High School in the northwest Detroit suburbs, Middlebelt Road at 11 Mile. Start time is 7:30pm. Tickets $7 at the door, $3.50 for children. (My spot is about 5 minutes out of a 90-minute program.)
I'll be in period costume, more or less, for the ballet recital: black vest, red bow tie, red garters on the sleeves, and a straw hat with black band.
you're gonna put parliament funkadelic on yore straw hat!?
Would that be authentic for the time period (circa 1910)?
Nahh....for an early 1900s black band, you'd need a banjo group or some dixieland musicians. Which is a pity, because George Clinton could have really stirred things up in 1910, I suspect.
john could just don *blackface*
It wouldn't work with his reddish hair and complexion.
Not to mention other problems with the blackface concept in this day and age. Dress rehearsal is tomorrow night. I'll let y'all know how the costume goes over.
tell 'em it's a period piece.
Actually, I heard a surprising story the other day about "Porgy and Bess". Apparently it was originally contemplated to have Jerome Kern write the score, rather than Gershwin, and cast Al Jolson -- in blackface -- as Porgy. Sheesh! Dress rehearsal went well, and in particular, my period costume was a hit. Mercy High School's auditorium is a huge, cavernous place, with an enormous stage. The piano is an excellent Yamaha grand with a crisp, light touch that I like a lot. On account of the auditorium's size and accoustics, however, they're amplifying the piano. Performance is tonight.
The performance Saturday night went well. My number opened the second half. House lights went down, I walked onto the stage in period costume, sat down at the piano - which was set up stage left - and commenced to play George Botsford's "Black and White Rag". The six ballerinas - appropriately in black and white costumes - emerged from the wings and proceeded to do the dance that Karen had choreographed, ending up with them running around the piano during the final section of the piece. When it was over I stood up and we formed a line, holding hands, and took a bow. Then the lights were blacked out and we all exited the stage. I watched the rest of the recital from the wings. It was really quite impressive. A number of dance pieces, strung together via the Cinderella story. Various music styles, ranging from classical to Disney showtunes to jazz. Dancers ranged in age from low single digits to adult. Impressive costumes. Mary saw it all from an audience perspective; so I'll let her comment on that.
This was a wonderful evening. Just charming. The sets, costumes, choreography, and range of expertise went far beyond what I expected for a dance recital. I can understand why she does this only every other year. The dancers ranged in age from 4 years old to EMU alumni. John's piece was especially well received. It was the only dance done to live music and that added a whole lot. Plus, he had more advanced dancers doing some pretty sophisticated moves. Anyhow, I'll look forward to attending the next one two years from now.
On Wednesday I'm off to the annual Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia, Missouri. It's the biggest of the ragtime festivals and arguably the best. Headliners this year include Scott Kirby, Morten Larsen, Butch Thompson (of Prairie Home Companion), Terry Waldo, Bob Milne, Trebor and Virginia Tichenor, Richard Zimmerman (back after a three-year absence), Jeff Barnhart, Reginald Robinson, and others. Most of whom you've probably never, or barely, heard of. But trust me, they're great. This year they're re-instating the "tent" -- an open-air facility where anybody can sign up and play, to an almost guaranteed large audience. They didn't have it last year, and lots of people missed it, including me. Unlike last year's double-length festival -- celebration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" -- this year's festival runs the normal four days. Still, they'll be packing in around eight formal concerts, plus other events in various open-air venues, plus the usual afterglow sessions in the Best Western ballroom, which tend to run to 3 or 4 am (a real test of my stamina, since I tend to be a morning person). I'll let you know if anything exciting happens. I'm sure it will.
Don't know when (if ever) I'll get around to writing a halfway complete summary of this year's Scott Joplin Festival. I got in a reasonable amount of playing -- sets on three consecutive days in "the tent", plus open piano at after hours. I personally felt that my playing was a lot more solid this year than last, and I got a number of favorable comments. Got in some two-piano playing -- with Nan Bostick from CA, and Gale Foehner from St. Louis. The latter is an old-timer who's a great improvisor; we did an impromptu rendition of Botsford's "Black and White Rag", with me playing mostly by the notes and Foehner providing embellishments. There were dozens of fine musicians at the festival; I'll just mention a few things that I thought were extra special: o Tony Caramia's master class. Caramia, besides being a ragtime player, is a professor of piano pedagogy at the Eastman School of Music. He conducted a master class (basically, a lesson that's open to the public) featuring half a dozen or so younger performers, ranging in age from 11 to 19. These kids' talent and interest in ragtime make me hopeful for the future of the genre. Highlight of the class was a *kickass* rendition of Joplin's "Magnetic Rag" by 11-year-old Emily Sprague, rendered with an assurance and a collection of embellish- ments that you'd expect only from much older and more experienced performers. o The "Ragtime Revelations" concert. This event features both new performing talent and new and newly-discovered music. Most of the kids from the master class played, as did John Petley, an excellent player from the Washington D.C. area whom I'd heard before; this was his first year in Sedalia as a "featured performer". The winning pieces in the original composition contest were also performed. Of the several concerts present each year at this festival, "Ragtime Revelations" is always one of my favorites -- it's guaranteed that I'll hear something new and different, and experience fresh talent. o Reginald Robinson. He is one of the most amazing new talents to appear on the ragtime scene in years. He's a young African-American from inner city Chicago, and as such does not fit the demographic profile of the typical contemporary ragtime player, almost all of whom are white and middle- class. In the past, Robinson has played music of Joplin, Lamb, and other composers of the ragtime era, but nowadays he is mostly into composing and performing his own music -- rags, marches, and other forms current in the ragtime era. He is a wonderful composer and an astounding performer. If ragtime music ever re-attains the popularity it deserves, you will hear of him. His piece "The 19th Galaxy" is not to be missed. o Elite Syncopation. A ragtime ensemble consisting of piano, clarinet, violin, cello, and string bass. Beautiful sound. Their rendition of Charles Johnson's folksy "Hen Cackle Rag" was a delight. I purchased their CD, and so can hear them again anytime I want. o The "Ragtime Music Hall" concert. This is the last formal concert of the festival and is always special. This year the emcee was Butch Thompson (of Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion" radio show) and feature the Butch Thompson Trio and a number of other performers. As the grand finale, all two dozen or so musicians in the concert came on-stage to do the Joplin/Marshall "Swipesy Cakewalk", which being exactly 100 years old was the "theme song" of this year's festival. Enough for now. More later, maybe.
The 28th annual Ragtime Bash is this Sunday, December 10, at the Unitarian Church in Ann Arbor, 4001 Ann Arbor-Saline Road. Start time is 7:30pm, but arrive early -- seating is first-come-first- served, and the event always sells out. (I try to get there an hour in advance.) This year's lineup: boogie pianists Mark "Mr. B" Braun and Bob Seely; ragtimers Bob Milne and Mike Montgomery; pianist/vocalist Kerry Price; jazz pianist James Dapogny with vocalist Susan Chastain. They're all great.
Addendum to the above: Tickets are $15 at the door, $10 for students and seniors.
While I'm here, I'll give a brief report on the 2000 West Coast Ragtime Festival, held in Sacramento CA the weekend before Thanksgiving. The festival takes over the meeting rooms at the Red Lion Inn for three days, with four concerts in progress at almost all times -- sort of like Missouri's Scott Joplin Festival, on a smaller scale. You buy a festival pass and can come and go as you please to any of the venues. This year's lineup included established performers I've seen at numerous other festivals -- Dick Zimmerman, Sue Keller, Mimi Blais, Trebor and Virginia Tichenor, Terry Waldo, Frank French, Ian Whitcomb, etc. -- plus various west coast folks I don't see elsewhere, such as Eric Marchese and Tom Brier -- plus talented newcomers like Marit Johnson, Elise Crane (both still in high school) and Neil Blaze (college freshman). My friend Nan Bostick appeared in a couple of scheduled sets and asked me to perform with her -- we had fun doing more-or-less improvised duo-piano versions of Harry Kelly's "Peaceful Henry", Charles Daniels' "Louisiana", and Harry P. Guy's "Pearl of the Harem". I did some solo performing at after-hours, which gave me a chance to try out for an audience a few of the pieces I've learned recently -- several Charles Johnson rags, Botsford's "Royal Flush", Irene Giblin's "Sleepy Lou", Joseph Lamb's unpublished "Bee Hive Rag", James Scott's "Don't Jazz Me". Alan Rea and Sylvia O'Neill gave an interesting seminar on the life of American composer Louis Gottschalk, who pre-dated the ragtime era by several decades, but whose incorporation of American folk music and syncopated Latin rhythms into his compositions makes him in some sense the "father of ragtime". At the festival I became aware of Texas composer David Guion. Anybody familiar with him? There's one piece of his that ragtime performers like to play, the misleading-titled "Texas Fox Trot", published in 1915 when Guion was about 20 years old. "Fox trot" suggest something upbeat and bouncy, but the piece is fairly slow and beautifully harmonic, alternating dark minor-mode strains with beautiful lush major-mode passages. I heard it performed twice at the festival, thought it was wonderful, and am currently working on learning to play it. It's fairly difficult. After the festival I did some web research on Guion. He's apparently best known for piano arrangments of various American folk tunes. I picked up sheet music of his "Turkey in the Straw" at the festival -- it's theme & variations, beautifully arranged, but very difficult. I'd like to learn to play it too, but it's going to take a while.
What I've heard of Gottschalk's music is **wonderful** stuff.
John, I think the point is that it's a *Texas* Fox Trot. 8-{)]
Haven't put anything in this item for a while, so a few updates: I performed David Guion's "Texas Fox Trot" for an audience for the first time a few weeks ago, at an informal "family night" concert organized by my wife's cello teacher. I have to say it was a hit. People asked me afterwards who the composer was, and if I knew anything more by him and about him. It really is an amazing piece, one of the best compositions to come out of the ragtime era. I'll be performing at the Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival this coming August, in Sutter Creek, California. It's a lovely tourist town south of Sacramento, in wine country, and the site of Mr. Sutter's gold discovery in 1849. Haven't attended the festival before, but I'm told it more or less takes over the town for three days. More info. is available on the festival web site, http://www.ragtimemusic.com/scrf/ , which sports photos of the performers, including yours truly. Closer temporally and geographically is Zehnder's Ragtime Festival, which takes place most of this week in Frankenmuth, Michigan, about 80 miles north of Ann Arbor. I'll be attending as much of it as my schedule permits. This year's headliners are Bob Milne (as always), Sue Keller, Reggie Robinson, Brian Holland, Tony Caramia, and the Et Cetera String Band, and probably one or two other folks I'm forgetting. I'll be in pig heaven as I listen to ragtime whilst pigging out on Zehnder's fine cuisine.
I've posted a "parlor ragtime recital" in this year's Grex auction. See item 51 in the Auction conference <item:auction,51> .
As of yesterday, my "parlor ragtime recital" auction item was "going once" for a bid of $30. If you want the recital and are willing to pay more than that, you should make a bid on it soon. See item 51 in the Auction conference <item:auction,51> . Tomorrow I leave for the biggest and best ragtime festival of them all, the annual Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia, Missouri. Headliners include many of the big names in ragtime, including Bob Darch, Sue Keller, Mimi Blais, Scott Kirby, Morton Larsen, David Thomas Roberts, Jan Douglas, Bob Ault, Reginald Robinson, Tony Caramia, John Arpin, Trebor and Virginia Tichenor, the Bo Grumpus group, the Ophelia Ragtime Orchestra, Terry Parish, and many others. The festival takes over the town's historic district and fairgrounds for five days of wonderful music. What a blast!
That parlor ragtime recital is a TREAT! If you haven't bid, check it out. I was wondering about something you said during the recital you gave for me and my friends. What is "slide" and how is it different from "ragtime"?
It's "stride", not "slide". "Stride ragtime" is a playing style
that originated in New York around the mid-1910's. Two of its
foremost practioners were Luckey Roberts and James P. Johnson.
I'll quote from Jasen & Tichenor, _Rags and Ragtime_ (Dover,
1978):
The word Stride means the syncopation alternating
between the right and left hands and the counter
melodies created by a moving bass line. This was
putting a new twist on the regular way to play
ragtime -- alternating the syncopation between
both hands made it twice as difficult to perform,
thereby enabling the performers to win contests.
It not only sounded harder to do, it was in fact
harder to do.
On another topic: I just got back from Sedalia. Great
festival! I'll post a report in a day or two.
I image "slide piano" would rather difficult to play. You'd have to reach into the piano with the slide while pressing the keys with the other, and the pedals would probably be out of reach. Still... if famed Delta bluesman Robert Johnson had grown up with a piano instead of a guitar...
ROTFL. What an image.
Eh?
Oops, sorry about the blank response. Next response will be my report on the Scott Joplin Festival.
The 2001 Scott Joplin Festival took place from Wednesday, June 6 to Sunday, June 10, in Sedalia, MO. I was there. Of the four Scott Joplin Festivals I've attended, I think this one was the most fun for me and the most rewarding musically. Too much going on to attempt to report on everything -- multiple free outdoor venues, plus formal reserved-seat concerts, plus open piano at after hours. So I'll just mention some highlights: The "Women in Ragtime" concert. It wasn't officially part of the festival but shared many of the same performers. All women. My friend Nan Bostick from California co-emceed, along with Mimi Blais of Montreal, who organized it. Highlight for me was Nan's and Nora Hulce's rendition, on two pianos, of Grace Bolen's exquisite 1901 rag "The Smokey Topaz" (composed when she was 16!). It's a fact that many of the ragtime composers during the ragtime era (1897-1917, roughly) were indeed women, so there's lots of material to be mined for concerts like this. (During the intermission, I spotted Marty Eggers, bass player with the Bo Grumpus trio. He was there selling copies of the excellent "Tichenor Family Album" CD. As husband of Virginia Tichenor and son-in-law of Trebor Tichenor, he's 1/3 of that group as well. We chatted about various things, including krj.) Private lesson with Tony Caramia, piano professor at the Eastman School of Music and frequent headliner at ragtime festivals. I played a few things for him that I've been working on lately and got a lot of useful feedback. Caramia also gave a "master class" featuring some half dozen players ranging in age from 12 to 19. After hearing folks play like college freshman Neil Blaze, high schoolers Marit Johnson and Elise Crane, and twelve-year-old Emily Sprague, I'm optimistic for the future of ragtime. It's in good hands. There were over thirty contracted performers at the festival, most of whom I heard play at least once. Plus a number of other folks, like me, who weren't on the official program but who played at various events. Heard a ton of great music, most of which I won't talk about in the interest of keeping this short. But I'll say that the concert to honor David Thomas Roberts -- one of the finest contemporary composers and performers of ragtime -- was wonderful. I was impressed enough by Brian Keenan's playing of folk ragtime to purchase his new "Traditions" CD. Bo Grumpus was in fine form at the various venues where they played. My favorite ragtime ensemble, the Ophelia Ragtime Orchestra from Scandanavia, was at the festival as part of its bi-annual U.S. tour, playing music for dancing in the "tea tent" as well as a terrific set at after-hours in the wee hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning. Their singer really rocks. Actually, they all do. Several opportunities to perform this year. I was asked to play at the informal opening and closing concerts of the festival, and I also did a twenty-minute set at the Stark Pavilion. Plus an impromptu session in the headquarters hotel lobby with guitarist Craig Ventresco & percussionist Pete Devine (2/3 of the Bo Grumpus group), and banjo player Bob Ault (1/3 of the Etcetera String Band). We jammed for about an hour and attracted a fair-sized audience, with Devine using a pair of drumsticks on the table, chairs, drinking glasses, and other surfaces in lieu of his usual equipment. And one evening when most people were at a concert that I'd decided not to attend, I ran into pianist Terry Parish from Indianapolis in the hotel ballroom and we did some duo-piano stuff. Fun festival. This year, I took my digital camera along and will be posting some photos on the web.
I've just acquired software to convert between Yamaha Disklavier format and MIDI. This enables me to post my own piano performances on the web. See http://jremmers.org/midi for a list. I've posted two pieces recorded earlier today: Charles L. Johnson's "The Alabama Slide" (1915) and James Scott's "Sunburst Rag" (1909). They're both first takes with no editing whatsoever, so don't be surprised at hearing a flub here and there. The tone quality of a MIDI depends strongly on the playback software. I've listened to my performances on both QuickTime and Yahoo Player. The latter is closer to actual piano sound, but I rather likely the faintly bell-like quality QuickTime produces, especially in the melodious trio of the Johnson piece.
I've not found a way to rewind, but I like what I've heard of "The Alabama Slide." I look forward to listening the other one.
Thanks Joe. I took a few pictures at the Sedalia Festival, mostly on the first and last day. The rest of the time I was busy with other things. You can find a sampling at http://jremmers.org/Sedalia2001 .
I like the last picture. :)
Thumbnails would be a nice touch. I'd offer code, but I can't get to
my own home page just now. (The file server is up, but it's not yet
serving files.) I *think* it would be something like:
<A HREF="http://jremmers.org/Sedalia2001/john_remmers.jpg">
John Remmers
</A IMG SRC="http://jremmers.org/Sedalia2001/john_remmers.jpg">
There are some size markers in there, too. Look at the source of
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gelinas/House.html
for an example of how I did it.
OK, the server is letting me look at my files now, if only slowly. Here
is one of the the pictures:
<A HREF="House-3dDraft/102Burton-FrontView.JPG">
<IMG SRC="House-3dDraft/102Burton-FrontView.JPG" border=0 height=72 width=96>
</A>
I included text by using a table, and putting the text on one row with
the pictures on the next row. It *should* be possible to put the text
before or after the IMG tag.
{Yes, I could re-write this response to eliminate the evidence of my
thinking, but I'll leave it. ;)
I dipped a little farther back in time and added a 1901 piece to my ragtime MIDI page: Detriot composer Harry P. Guy's "Pearl of the Harem", subtitled "Oriental Rag Two Step". The alternating 8th note bass line motif in the first half of the first strain establishes an Oriental mood, changing to traditional ragtime boom-chick bass in the second half of the strain. I've heard that the piece was originally intended for banjo duet and later arranged for piano solo. http://jremmers.org/midi/
Joe's #206 slipped in. Yes, I thought of doing thumbnails but was feeling lazy. I'll add them at some point.
Sorry for the drift, but regarding the thumbnails (#206), wouldn't it be better to make an actual smaller version of the image rather than using the width= and height= options in <img>? I always thought half the point of thumbnails was to avoid wasting time loading big images you don't want to see and concentrate only on the ones that interest you... NetPBM toolkit provides a nice way to do this (I don't know whether it's on grex...) djpeg pic.jpeg | pnmscale -xysize 100 100 | cjpeg > picthumb.jpeg or djpeg pic.jpeg | pnmscale -xysize 100 100 | ppmquant 256 | ppmtogif > picthumb.gif (gif file might or might not be smaller size, I don't know...) again, sorry for the drift
Well, yeah, the techie discussion might be better elsewhere, but on the other hand, it's nice to know that people are actually reading this item. Sometimes I feel like I'm talking to myself here. :) (And yes, I was planning to do the thumbnails as smaller images, to save bandwidth.)
I read it. It's interesting. I just don't have much of anything to add...
I've really enjoyed your MIDI files, John. I usually play them in WinAMP, and the three of them now are usually in random play while I work. It's just like having a professional pianist at the next desk! I'm very impressed that these are first takes. I know there is software available (I have it around here somewhere) that will let you play with the voices in the MIDI file --- change the piano voice to banjo, for example. I'm dying to see how "Pearls of the Harem" would sound. :)
(typos, sorry. Here's the cleaned up response...) Thanks, Mickey. For a change, I've recorded something that probably everyone reading this item has heard -- Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer", published in 1902. The piece didn't enjoy large sales at the time but became a hit 70 years later when it figured prominently in the soundtrack of the movie "The Sting". It's been speculated that Joplin originally wrote the tune for a mandolin or banjo ensemble (such groups were common at the time) and only later arranged and published it as a piano solo. There's no proof of this, but the general style of the piece and the fact that it is dedicated to "James Brown's Mandolin Club" lend credence to the theory. See http://jremmers.org/midi/entrtanr.mid for my performance.
Sorry about backtracking. Now that you have read John's report on the 2001 Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival, and have seen pictures from it, three concerts from the fest can be heard at: http://www.kcmw.cmsu.edu/ The concerts are the "2001 Kickoff Concert," "Cradle of Ragtime," and "Legacy of Scott Joplin." Although I haven't listened to them in their entirety, I believe they are the complete concerts. (KCMW has archived complete Joplin Fest concerts in the past.)
Thanks for the pointer, Anna. Of those three, I attended only the Kickoff Concert, so this will give me a chance to fill in some blanks. In past years, the Kickoff Concert has featured the music of various composers from the ragtime era such as Scott Joplin. This year's kickoff was a significant departure from tradition, devoted exclusively to the works of David Thomas Roberts, perhaps the finest contemporary composer of ragtime music and a major influence on other contemporary composers and performers of ragtime. I recommend this concert highly, especially if you're acquainted only with the ragtime of the past -- as emcee Scott Kirby pointed out, it will likely change your view of what ragtime music is about.
In honor of Mickey's home state, I've recorded David Guion's "Texas Fox Trot". This extraordinary rag was published in 1915 when the composer was still in his teens. The title misleads; it's a slow, moody piece that alternates between minor and major modes, quite unlike anything else from the ragtime era. It sounds like it could have been written last year. http://jremmers.org/midi/txfoxtrt.mid
A technical point: The software I'm using appears to lose pedaling information when it converts from Disklavier to MIDI format. I don't know if that's the fault of the software or a limitation of the MIDI format. At any rate, the result is that some passages come out sounding staccatto and disconnected that were not played that way. On much ragtime that's not too noticeable, but it is on "Texas Fox Trot", where I use the sustaining pedal extensively.
The sustain pedal would fall under the "continuous controller" MIDI messages, and probably varies enough from manufacturer to manufacturer to be difficult mapping to begin with... and then most consumer MIDI sound sources probably wouldn't know what to do with it if it was in the data stream.
Ah, so you're suggesting that it may be a limitation of playback software rather than the conversion or MIDI itself.
Maybe I should download one and see what my lil' Yamaha box does with it? I can actually edit MIDI events, so it would be possible to see any controller data.
...but it will have to wait until I can get my MIDI cable back. :(
OK, I checked out the Texas Fox Trot midi file. It does indeed have sustain pedal data. Sounds nice on my sound box, too.
That's good to hear. So the problem is likely the playback software I'm using (standard Windows products).
What's your sound source? I'd expect that sound-card MIDI voices wouldn't be smart enough to respond to controller events.
After more curiosity-inspired research I've demonstrated that my trusty Yamaha QY70 does indeed follow the sustain pedal. John is rather sparing of sustain, so I had to edit out the "sustain off" events to even hear much of a difference. Next I'm going to move it back into the PC domain to see how my sound card handles it.
On Tuesday, July 10 and Thursday, July 12, Nan Bostick will be presenting two ragtime-related lectures at the Detroit Opera House, as part of the Learning at the Opera House summer program. Tickets are $10 at the door. Tuesday, July 10, 7 to 9 p.m. - Seminar on Jerome H Remick (major music publisher during the ragtime era, based in Detroit), followed by a sing-along of Remick hits led by Mike Montgomery. Thursday, July 12, 7 to 9 p.m. - Seminar on Harry P. Guy and the Detroit ragtime scene with Arthur LaBrew. (Detroit composer and bandleader Harry Guy was a major figure during the ragtime era. He wrote "Pearl of the Harem", which you can hear at http://jremmers.org/midi/prlharem.mid ) Nan is from California and is one of today's leading researchers on ragtime. Detroit ragtime is one of her specialities. She's also a very entertaining speaker and a fine piano player. Her lectures are always illustrated with plenty of music, played by herself and/or friends. If you have any interest at all in ragtime music, you'll probably find these presentations entertaining and enlightening.
I've added another piece to my ragtime MIDI page, Charles Johnson's "Golden Spider Rag" (1910). Listen to it at http://jremmers.org/midi/gspider.mid Also, I've written brief "liner notes" for the selections on the http://jremmers.org/midi/ page.
And another: James Scott's "Prosperity Rag" (1916). Hardly anybody seems to play this piece, but I've loved it ever since I sight-read it for the first time a few years ago. Recently I decided to work it up for public performance. The first strain has much in common with the composer's better-known "Grace and Beauty".
The URL for "Prosperity Rag" is http://jremmers.org/midi/prsprity.mid
I received an updated flier in the mail today for the Sutter
Creek Ragtime Festival, in which I'll be performing in a
couple of weeks. It appears there's an event billed as
"The Piano Duel of the Century" in which I'm to be involved.
Quoting from the flier:
The Festival will end on Sunday afternoon with a
rip-roaring "piano cutting" contest at the Sutter
Creek Auditorium starting at 1:30 p.m. The
special "Granny Nanny" (Bostick) vs. "Hot Rod"
Tommy (Brier) Piano Dueling Concert is a new
addition to the festivities and promies to
include great ragtime and lots of shtick.
The incomparable Elliot Adams, pianist with the
Porcupine Ragtime Ensemble, has agreed to assist
"Granny Nanny" in Sunday's affair. "Hot Rod"
Tommy ramains undaunted by her call for
reinforcements. But John Remmers, guest
performer from Ann Arbor, Michigan, feels Brier
is being "put upon" and will be lining up on
Brier's side to equalize the odds. Carmichael's
Alan Ashby, Azalia, Oregon's Keith Taylor, and
other surprise guests are expected to join this
not-to-be-missed Festival finale.
Guess I'll find out when I get there just how the "script"
is supposed to go. But I must say I'm glad I'm on Tom
Brier's team rather than the opposing side. He is a
*fantastic* pianist.
The festival kicks off at 4 p.m. on Friday, August 10
and goes through Sunday. The performers will play at
various free venues around town; admission is charged
for the Saturday evening concert and Sunday's "duel".
If you're going to be in that part of the world on that
weekend and feel like dropping in, I'd be delighted to
see you. Details are on the festival's website:
http://www.ragtimemusic.com/scrf/
A schedule for the Sutter Creek festival is now online at
http://www.ragtimemusic.com/scrf/schedule.htm
It's all subject to last-minute change, but as of now I'm
scheduled to perform at the opening jam session at the
Ice Cream Emporium at 4pm on Friday August 10, at Susan's
Place Restaurant during the dinner hour on Friday, at
various times and places (as yet unknown to me) around
town on Saturday, and at the closing concert at 1:30 p.m.
on Sunday. Not the Saturday evening concert, which it's
been decided to reserve for the headliners.
I'm back from Sutter Creek. The festival was great fun, although I must say that the sheer amount I was performing plus the central California heat tested my endurance somewhat. More details when I have time to write them down. And there will be pictures on the web. Tomorrow I'm off to a closer venue, the first Lapeer Ragtime Festival in Lapeer, Michigan. As an attendee, not a scheduled performer. Appearing will be Bob Milne, Sue Keller, and the Bo Grumpus group.
A few notes on the Sutter Creek Festival. I arrived in California a few days early, in order to have time to visit with my sister in Stockton and travel to the San Francisco area to see my nephew, try to hook up with a couple of Grexers (scg and munkey), and shop for some vintage clothes to wear in the festival's finale concert. Visits with sister and nephew went fine, Grexer rendevous didn't happen (phone tag failure), and the clothes shopping was unnecessary as I was able to find just what I needed right in Sutter Creek. Somewhat surprising since Sutter Creek is a just a little tourist town tucked away in the hills of the Mother Lode region of California, forty miles or so southeast of Sacramento, with a downtown section that's only three blocks long. But thanks to a tip from a friend about a Sutter Creek store called Romancing the Range devoted to vintage western wear, I was able to find an 1800s style vest, shirt, and puff tie that gave me just the "ragtime professor" look that was wanted. The festival itself went from Friday to Sunday, at various venues around town. Festival headquarters was the Ice Cream Emporium, an combination ice cream/sandwich/gift shop with a vintage look. It's owned by Stevens Price, festival organizer and himself a ragtime piano player. From around 4pm on Friday - when the festival got underway - to about 3:30pm on Sunday, I was a pretty busy guy. On Friday I played a half hour gig at the Ice Cream Emporium, then an hour-long set at Susan's Place, a restaurant across the street. Then back to the Ice Cream Emporium for an more jamming. I think I worked dinner for myself in there somewhere, but I don't remember for sure. Saturday was the killer: I ended up doing FIVE gigs: half an hour at the local hotel, then another half hour at the theater, then 45 minutes in an open courtyard, then another 45 minutes at the theater, then finally another half hour at Susan's Place. Breaks between most (not all) of the sets. The other performers were similarly put through their paces. Oh, did I mention that all this running around town getting from one place to another took place in 90+ degree heat? I think I drank as much water on Saturday as a usually consume in three days. The festival headliners (Virginia Tichenor, Bo Grumpus, Keith Taylor, Tom Brier) had it even worse, since they also had to perform in the Saturday evening concert. By the time my Susan's Place stint was over, I felt quite wiped out and grateful that I could simply relax and enjoy listening to the concert. Which was excellent; a special highlight for me was a to-die-for performance by Virginia Tichenor of David Guion's "Texas Fox Trot", accompanied on string bass by her husband Marty Eggers. I play the piece myself and have mentioned it elsewhere in this item; it's one of my favorites in all of ragtime literature. On Sunday morning I did some more playing during open piano at the Emporium, but my only scheduled gig was the Sunday afternoon "Piano Duel of the Century" concert, billed as a contest between twenty-nine-year-old keyboard whiz Tom Brier and Nan "Granny Nanny" Bostick. The "duel" turned out to be a friendly two- and three-piano play-along involving Tom (who can play anything, usually at sight) playing with various other performers, interspersed by various humorous sketches having to do with the "duel" aspect. In my bit, I played a "ragtime professor from out east" who had come to Tom's aid out of outrage at his shabby treatment by Granny Nanny. Following my improvised dialog on this point, the three of us played Harry Guy's "Pearl of the Harem" and Charles Daniels' "Louisiana" on three pianos. (Unrehearsed, I might add. Who needs rehearsals?) The concert ended with ALL the performers banging away on Charles Johnson's "Dill Pickles". Doing this festival was great experience, and I got to meet and hear some fine performers I hadn't encountered before. Such as Keith Taylor and Elliott Adams. A couple of composers showed up too, both to listen and do a little unbilled performing -- Gil Lieby from Nebraska, whom I hadn't heard of before but who's written some very nice stuff, and Galen Wilkes, who's written a couple of my favorite contemporary rags: "Creeks of Missouri" and "Last of the Ragtime Pioneers." And I got a lot of favorable feedback on my playing (and Sunday afternoon play-acting), which was nice of course. I took a bunch of pictures and plan to make some sort of organized website of them, like I did for the Sedalia festival. In the meantime, here's a sampler: View of Main Street: http://www.jremmers.org/SutterCreek2001/P8020025.JPG Interior of Ice Cream Emporium: http://www.jremmers.org/SutterCreek2001/P8020023.JPG Stevens Price: http://www.jremmers.org/SutterCreek2001/P8020024.JPG Tom Brier playing one of his (many) compositions: http://www.jremmers.org/SutterCreek2001/P8020021.JPG Bo Grumpus playing for dancers: http://www.jremmers.org/SutterCreek2001/P8030032.JPG Bo Grumpus at the Saturday concert: http://www.jremmers.org/SutterCreek2001/P8040041.JPG Virginia Tichenor and Marty Eggers, Saturday concert: http://www.jremmers.org/SutterCreek2001/P8040043.JPG Nan Bostick at Susan's Place: http://www.jremmers.org/SutterCreek2001/P8030037.JPG "Ragtime Professor" Remmers, Sunday concert: http://www.jremmers.org/SutterCreek2001/P8040060.JPG Professor Remmers and Granny Nanny, Sunday concert: http://www.jremmers.org/SutterCreek2001/P8040061.JPG Three-piano "Pearl of the Harem", Sunday concert: http://www.jremmers.org/SutterCreek2001/P8040063.JPG Tom Brier and Keith Taylor, Sunday concert: http://www.jremmers.org/SutterCreek2001/P8040068.JPG "Dill Pickles" finale, Sunday concert: http://www.jremmers.org/SutterCreek2001/P8040072.JPG
Oops. The URL for Main Street actually points to a picture
of Nan Bostick on piano and Kittie Wilson on washboard. The
correct Main Street URL is
http://www.jremmers.org/SutterCreek2001/P8020014.JPG
Very handsome professor there, remmers. Thanks for sharing such a cool story and the pictures.
Just a brief note or two on the Lapeer Ragtime Festival, which took place a couple of weekends ago. In case you're not familiar with it, Lapeer, Michigan is a smallish town east of Flint a ways, in the midst of farm country. It's only a 1.5 hour drive from Ann Arbor, hence very easy for me to get to compared to a lot of the festivals I attend. It was also the first ragtime festival held in Lapeer. My impression is that the city fathers finally realized that they had a ragtime superstar in their midst -- Lapeer is Bob Milne's home town -- and decided to capitalize on that by asking Bob to organize a festival to coincide with "Lapeer Days", a big annual celebration with tents on the main drag, a carnival, a parade, and other such small-town-USA carryings-on. In retrospect the timing probably wasn't the greatest -- the festival had to compete with othe Lapeer Days events, and that probably reduced attendance by locals. The small downtown theater where the festival was held was only about half full for the concerts. That said, the festival was excellent musically, and the audience, although smallish, was enthusiastic. The performers were Bob Milne, Sue Keller, and the Bo Grumpus trio. I've seen and heard them all many times before, but they were all in fine form. I think that Bo Grumpus in particular benefits from a smaller, more intimate setting like the vintage little theater where the concerts were held. They were certainly well received by the audience. A festival highlight for me was their rendition of a number called "Bogalusa Strut" from the 1920s, in which they pulled out all the stops. (It's also on their latest album, "Blues & Rags", which I was inspired to acquire.) I also found the small scale of the festival -- a Friday night concert, and a Saturday afternoon combination seminar/concert -- to be a nice change of pace from the more mammoth festivals held in Frankenmuth, Sedalia, and Sacramento. Next year, they're not going to try to put on a ragtime festival during Lapeer Days. What they're doing instead looks quite interesting and innovative -- a mid-September "Ragtime Retreat" with an educational as well as entertainment component: a number of seminars and private piano lessons, in addition to the usual concerts. I'll put festival pics up on the web when I've had time to organize them.
You're absolutely right, John. Bo Grumpus, the 30-something string-percussion trio from San Francisco, did an excellent rendition of "Bogalusa Strut," during Saturday's concert at the Lapeer Ragtime Festival. I'm glad I was there to hear it. I think the trio really responded to the audience's enthusiasm. As a collector of early, pioneer popular recordings, I think the neat thing about Bo Grumpus is that a good deal of the music it plays is borrowed from vintage recordings--pre-1930 78s and cylinders. The musicians in Bo Grumpus are record collectors. Craig Ventresco, the guitarist and leader, specializes in the early and forgotten popular artists of the late 1890s/early 1900s, like Will F. Denny, Harry Tally, Silas Leachman and a handful of studio bands. These recordings inspire the renditions of Bo Grumpus. Hence, old, obscure popular tunes get revived, such as "Shame on You" (1904), "Gayest Manhattan (March)" (1898), and "Too Much Ginger" (c. 1916). It's rare to hear such selections played and recorded today. They're excellent tunes that have been lost for too long in graying record grooves; they are worthy of revival. Bo Grumpus has a style and spirit that can successfully put over the old tunes to today's audiences. There's nothing corny or old-fashioned about its interpretations. Then again, it's not three guys jamming in different directions and making the tune unrecognizable. The composer's original intent is preserved. Renditions of rags, marches, one-steps, etc. are lively and energetic--they grab the attention of the audience. At concerts, the trio's sense of humor helps to keep things zipping along. Bo Grumpus' instrumentation is different than other small ragtime groups I've heard. I think this contributes to the trio's uniqueness and popularity at fests. Craig's playing has been described as, at times, sounding like two guitars at one time. He seems to effortlessly play almost any popular tune off old recordings. Pete Devine plays vintage traps, and oversees crash cymbals, skulls, wood block, Chinese tom-tom, hand cymbals, washboard (played with brushes), tap shoes, and other noisemakers. According to pianist Bob Milne, the host of the Lapeer festival, Pete was voted the number one US percussionist in jazz and ragtime, by his fellow musicians. Marty Eggers, on string bass, brilliantly keeps up with whatever Craig and Pete dish out. As always, it was a treat to hear and see Bo Grumpus. Plus, I even got to help Craig put together part of the playlist for Saturday's (Aug. 18) gig. Craig and I are record-collecting and rag-fest pals. We speak the same language. Therefore, it was a highly productive brainstorming session . . . in the theater's back alley, with the garbage can serving as the desk! I came up with two of the last three selections of the concert--"Too Much Ginger" and the often-recorded (before 1920) "Ben Hur Chariot Race March." I also reminded Craig that Billy Murray, the prolific and versatile pioneer recording artist, died Aug. 17, 1954. Craig agreed that it would be good to do a "tribute," even if one day late. It was a bit difficult trying to think of a Murray song that Craig could play AND sing. We finally agreed on the c. 1906 comic song "He Goes to Church on Sunday."
Thanks for the post, Anna. It's nice to have some insight into
the way a group like Bo Grumpus operates. And nice work on the
playlist for the Saturday concert -- all good tunes.
I've put together a small picture gallery on the Lapeer festival:
http://www.jremmers.org/Lapeer2001/
See http://www.ragtimemusic.com/scrf/festival_prior_year.htm for a report on August's Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival. Included are a writeup of the festival and a picture gallery, featuring photos taken by yours truly and others.
Just learned about an interview with David Thomas Roberts that was broadcast on National Public Radio a few weeks ago. Roberts is a leading composer of New Ragtime and the related genre Terra Verde. He's the composer of one of my favorite pieces of contemporary ragtime, the piano solo "Roberto Clemente" (which he performs during the interview). He's also an able lecturer and teacher; I took master classes and private lessons from him at the two Ragtime Institutes held in Boulder, Colorado in 1999 and 2000. The interview was broadcast on August 29, 2001 on "All Things Considered." You can listen to it on the web by going to the NPR archives at http://www.npr.org/archives/ and entering "David Thomas Roberts" and the above date and program information in the form.
Slightly off-topic, but I'd like to put in a plug for the "Ghost World", the film version of Daniel Clowes' wonderfully funny and poignant novel-in-comic-book-form of the same name. It's about Enid and Rebecca, a couple of young women freshly graduated from high school who aren't sure what they're going to do next with their lives. Enid in particular has a lot of trouble figuring out how she fits into the modern world. The movie is basicially faithful to the tone of the book but with some major new plot twists. Most significantly, there's a new character played by Steve Buscemi -- a middle-aged record collector befriended by Enid. The guy is a fan of vintage jazz, ragtime, and blues, and like Enid is something a misfit. The two form a bond, and complications ensue that are both comical and disastrous. The screenplay is by Clowes and director Terry Zwigoff. Zwigoff is himself a musician and vintage music afficianado -- he played cello with Robert Crumb's "Cheap Suit Serenaders" ensemble -- so I'm sure the musical elements of the plot are due to him. This kind of music is so neglected nowadays that I was glad to see it acknowledged in a movie that is at least marginally mainstream. I was amused to hear the names of classical ragtime composers Scott Joplin and Joseph Lamb mentioned. The playing of Bo Grumpus guitarist Craig Ventresco can be heard on the soundtrack. I liked the movie a lot. Thora Birch is perfectly cast as Enid. Several other characters from the book are beautifully captured as well, such as Enid's father and his girlfriend (played unbilled by Teri Garr). Catch it on video if you miss in in the theater.
I read the first couple pages of the "Ghost World" graphic novel. I'd have read more, but I was short of time. It looked better than, but disturbingly similar to, the same author's "David Boring", which I read about half of until my mind revolted.
Did it live up to the title?
"Ghost World" is the the only Clowes that I've read, so I have no idea how it compares to his other work. But I liked "Ghost World" so much that I do want to check out his other stuff. On the ragtime front, my activity level has declined in intensity since I resumed teaching full-time in September. I've been working on learning a couple of rags by the contemporary composer David Thomas Roberts: "Roberto Clemente" and "Through the Bottomlands". And I'll be heading out to the West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento, CA later this month.
resp:244 - Yes. (I thought that rather too obvious a comment to make, but yes.)
Tomorrow I'm leaving to attend the West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento, CA. I'll let you know how it went.
I'm back from the West Coast Ragtime Festival and will post some details later. In the meantime, a couple of short announcements: Pianist Bob Milne will be giving a "Holiday Ragtime Piano Concert" on Saturday, December 15 at Pease Auditorium on the Eastern Michigan University campus in Ypsilanti. Tickets are available by phone at (734)487-2282 or on the web at http://www.emich.edu/convocation . In addition to ragtime, Milne plays boogie woogie and blues. He's one of my favorite performers, and I think any of his appearances is well worth attending, almost as much for his entertaining and informative comments on the music as for the music itself. (I'll certainly be there.) Archive Impact has just released an interactive CD-ROM called "American Scrapbook: Detroit Memories, Volume 1". It's a retrospective of Detroit from the turn of the century to World War II, told in words, photographs, and music. My piano playing can be heard on the soundtrack in a couple of places -- "Princess Rag" and "Ragtime Oriole", both by James Scott. Ragtime pianist and historian Nan Bostick also performs on the CD.
As I've announced elsewhere, I'll be performing at this Sunday's Holiday Ragtime Bash at the Unitarian Church in Ann Arbor. For those who might want to go, details are in Music item 51, response #36 (resp:music,51,36). This concert is an annual event that dates back to the 1970s ragtime revival. It started out as a series of fundraisers, organized by William Albright and William Bolcom, for a new church organ, and then took on a life of its own, continuing long past the point when the organ was purchased. William Albright usually hosted it; following his death a few years ago, Mike Montgomery took over the program director and emcee chores. As time went on, the focus drifted away from ragtime and towards related forms -- blues, boogie-woogie, pop tunes. This year there's a conscious effort to emphasize ragtime once again, a decision of which I heartily approve of course. The first half of the concert will showcase major composers of the ragtime era -- Scott Joplin, Joseph Lamb, James Scott, Tom Turpin, Jelly Roll Morton, and others. The second half will be more free-wheeling, but still with the emphasis on ragtime I think. Performs include William Bolcom, Joan Morris, James Dapogny, Terry Parish, Kerry Price, Bob Seely, and yours truly, among others.
Found while cruising Amazon.com: Bo Grumpus guitarist Craig Ventresco has a ragtime guitar album called THE PAST IS YET TO COME. This is listed as #83 of Amazon.com's best CDs of 2001.
Thanks for the reference, Ken. I didn't know about that one.
Looking it up on the web, I found this review:
Guitarist Craig Ventresco may be one of the best ragtime
pickers alive today. He was heard fingerpicking on the
Crumb soundtrack, but with "The Past Is Yet to Come,"
we get an entire disc of his dizzying guitar solos. The
results are stunning. Ventresco's ability to perform rags
by Big Bill Broonzy, Eubie Blake, and Scott Joplin is
awe-inspiring; his dense arrangements sound impossibly
difficult to play, but they are a sheer pleasure to
hear...his energized playing breathes new life into
the works. Ventresco's a real talent and ragtime lovers
couldn't ask for a finer disc of guitar music. It may
be sacrilegious to admit, but Ventresco's technical
ability is right up there with Blind Lemon Jefferson and
Blind Blake -- the only things missing are the pops and
hisses of the 78s. An incredible disc. --Jason Verlinde,
Amazon.com
Clearly I shall have to acquire this CD.
I've been a little slow posting reports on my recent activities --
West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento, CA and the Holiday
Ragtime Bash in Ann Arbor. Hopefully this weekend...
i really enjoy his stuff on the crumb soundtrack.
Ragtime pianist and composer Scott Kirby will be appearing in Ann Arbor this Saturday, February 23, 8pm at the Kerrytown Concert House. In addition to being one of the best ragtime pianists around, Kirby is a prolific composer and arguably the finest interpreter of Scott Joplin's music today. Having been one of his master class pupils at the Ragtime Institute in Boulder, Colorado, I can attest that he is also a superb teacher. In addition to performing, Kirby is one of the organizers of the annual Rocky Mountain Ragtime Festival and for the past two years has been music director of the Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia, Missouri. The concert is billed as "a look at the evolution of ragtime." I imagine that he will be performing and commenting on early ragtime as well as contemporary works by such composers as David Thomas Roberts, Frank French, and himself. This is a rare opportunity for people in the Ann Arbor area to hear and hear about ragtime by one of the contemporary masters of the genre. If you think of ragtime as simply non-serious, honky-tonk style music, Kirby's persentation may well change your point of view. Tickets are $10, $15, and $25. Call the Kerrytown Concert House at (734)769-2999 for reservations. (I would have posted an announcement earlier but only found out about the concert yesterday.)
Hm, I've been neglecting this item lately. Not for lack of activity. I'll summarize the year's activities so far: Scott Kirby's KCH concert was nearly sold out and a great success. Selections were his typical eclectic blend of classical ragtime, contemporary ragtime, Latin American syncopated music, with a generous helping of his own compositions. A lot of stuff that isn't often performed in Ann Arbor. Audience response was enthusiastic. This was his first Ann Arbor appearance. I know Scott from various ragtime festivals. He'd forgotten that I live in Ann Arbor and was surprised to see me there. He told me afterwards that this was one of his more gratifying performance experiences, and that he'd like to make Ann Arbor appearances a regular part of his concertizing. Hopefully that will happen. This past spring I attended Zhender's Ragtime Festival in Frankenmuth, MI, the Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia, MO, and the Blind Boone Festival in Columbia, MO. I go to the first two every year, but the last was a new experience. The Blind Boone Festival is held right after the Joplin Festival, and Columbia is not far from Sedalia, so I decided to stop off and take in one day of it on my way home. I'm glad I did. Heard a couple of excellent performers I'd not encountered before. Bob Milne gave a fascinating lecture on connections between pool playing and piano playing, how he's applied things he learned from the former to the latter. (I hadn't known that in addition to being a professional musician, Bob was a pool hall hustler back in the 1960s, a sideline he got into while he was a french horn student at the Eastman School of Music.) His props were a pool table and an upright piano. He showed us that he's still in good pool-playing form by demonstrating a number of tricky shots. That evening, the incomparable Morton Gunnar Larsen of Norway gave a solo concert, playing classical and contemporary ragtime, some Gottschalk, and a smattering of other things. The man has dazzling piano technique, especially evident in his performances of Jelly Roll Morton and Zez Confrey pieces. Larsen is another performer whom I'd really like to see make it to Ann Arbor someday, hopefully with his incomparable Ophelia Ragtime Orchestra in tow. This past spring I decided to try my hand at competition and entered the World Championship Old Time Piano Playing Contest, held in Peoria, Illinois over the Memorial Day weekend. It's an annual event that started in 1975. To compete, I had to prepare six pieces, with two being played in each of three rounds -- elimination, semifinals (top 10 contestants), and finals (top 5 contestants). Period costume required (see mine at http://jremmers.org/oldtime.jpg). I was really nervous, first of all because I was a freshman contestant and most of the contestants were contest veterans, secondly because I was being judged, thirdly because the venue was a cavernous hotel ballroom with an audience of several hundred people (and seating capacity of probably a thousand). As it turned out, things went well. I was the only freshman contestant to make the semifinals, and I finished in 7th place. And now I have a much better idea what to expect and how to prepare when I try the contest again. (For information on the contest and to see the final rankings, visit http://www.oldtimepiano.com) Next week I'm off to the Rocky Mountain Ragtime Festival in Boulder, CO. I expect the music will be good; not so sure about the air quality.
One other note: I've posted a few more of my performances on my MIDI site at http://jremmers.org/midi/ . These are live recordings with no editing, so please excuse the occasional flub or missed note. "Sensation Rag" and "Ragtime Oriole" are two of the pieces I performed at the Old Time Piano Playing Contest. W. C. O'Hare's "Cottonfield Capers" from 1901 is a cakewalk; not strictly ragtime I suppose. It's a deligtful tune rescued from obscurity by republication in the current issue of Chris Ware's occasional periodical "The Ragtime Ephemeralist", which I picked up at the Sedalia festival. My performance might be the only existing solo piano recording of "Cottonfield Capers" in existence, although one can find a (very intriguing) 1902 band recording on the Ephemeralist website: http://home.earthlink.net/~ephemeralist/soundfiles.html
For folks in or near Ann Arbor: The annual Holiday Ragtime Bash at the Unitarian Church is this Sunday, December 8, at 7:30 PM. Although I hadn't originally expected to, last-minute developments make it appear that I *will* be performing again this year. I don't know what or how much I'll be playing yet -- stil have to confer with the concert dirctor about that. Other performers are Bob Milne, Terry Parrish and the Elite Syncopaters, and Kent Eschelman. The Unitarian Church is located south of Ann Arbor at 4001 Ann Arbor-Saline Road (corner of Ellsworth Road). Admission is $15, $12 for students and seniors. Tickets available at the door, or in advance at Nicolas' Books. Seating is first-come- first-served, and for a good seat it's advisable to get there early, like around 7:00. This year's concert is the 30th in this long-time Ann Arbor annual tradition.
You have several choices: