"Twelfth Street Rag" is a

ragtime Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott ...

musical composition published by

Euday L. Bowman Euday Louis Bowman (November 9, 1886 – May 26, 1949) was an American pianist and composer of ragtime and blues who represented the style of ''Texas Ragtime''. He is chiefly remembered as the composer of the highly popular "Twelfth Street R ...

in 1914.

Background

A friend of Euday Bowman known as "Raggedy Ed" declared his intention to open a

pawn shop A pawnbroker is an individual or business (pawnshop or pawn shop) that offers secured loans to people, with items of personal property used as collateral. The items having been ''pawned'' to the broker are themselves called ''pledges'' or ...

on 12th Street in

Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...

while the two were walking along it. Bowman is rumored to have said "If you get rich on those three balls, I'll write a piece on three notes to make myself rich." It was more than 15 years after Bowman composed the song before he actually wrote the music down in manuscript form. He returned to Texas briefly and tried to sell the piece to a company in Dallas; but he only had an offer of ten dollars for it and was told it really was not worth publishing. Returning to Kansas City, he sold it to Jenkins Music Company in 1913. The Jenkins company felt Bowman's arrangement was far too difficult however, hiring C. E. Wheeler to simplify it. With a big advertising push "12th Street Rag" began to sell better. In 1919, James S. Sumner added lyrics. The song was popular with early Kansas City bands and became a hit after Bennie Moten recorded it for

RCA Victor RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also Aris ...

in 1927, the same year

Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven was a jazz studio group organized to make a series of recordings for Okeh Records in Chicago, Illinois, in May 1927. Some of the personnel also recorded with Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, including Johnny Dodds ...

recorded it.

Other recordings

Euday Bowman, the composer, recorded and published his own recording of the piece, on Bowman 11748.

recorded the song for

Okeh Records Okeh Records () is an American record label founded by the Otto Heinemann Phonograph Corporation, a phonograph supplier established in 1916, which branched out into phonograph records in 1918. The name was spelled "OkeH" from the initials of Ott ...

in Chicago in May 1927.

Krazy Kat ''Krazy Kat'' (also known as ''Krazy & Ignatz'' in some reprints and compilations) is an US, American newspaper comic strip, by cartoonist George Herriman, which ran from 1913 to 1944. It first appeared in the ''New York Journal-American, New Yor ...

and his orchestra perform the music in the 1930 cartoon '' The Bandmaster''. A recording by

Pee Wee Hunt Walter Gerhardt "Pee Wee" Hunt (May 10, 1907 – June 22, 1979) was an American jazz trombonist, vocalist, and bandleader. Hunt was born in Mount Healthy, Ohio. He developed a musical interest at an early age, as his mother, Sadie, played the ban ...

was the ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'' number-one single for 1948, selling more than three million copies. It was released as Capitol Records 15105 in May 1948.

Donald Peers Donald Rhys Hubert Peers (10 July 1908 – 9 August 1973) was a popular Welsh people, Welsh singer. His best remembered rendition and signature song was "In a Shady Nook by a Babbling Brook". Biography Early life Peers was born in the Welsh m ...

recorded the song in London on March 26, 1949. It was released by

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 201 ...

on the His Master's Voice label as catalogue number B 9763.

Popular culture

The song is perhaps best known in the US and UK as the theme to ''

The Joe Franklin Show Joe Franklin (March 9, 1926 – January 24, 2015), born Joseph Fortgang, was an American radio and television host personality, author and actor from New York City. Franklin is noted for having the first talk show and inventing the format. His te ...

''; the version most associated with the program was Big Tiny Little's 1959 recording from his album ''Honky Tonk Piano'' ( Brunswick BL (7)54049). A brief excerpt of the song can also be heard about 37 minutes into the 1996 film '' The English Patient''. Since 1999, a

steel guitar A steel guitar ( haw, kīkākila) is any guitar played while moving a steel bar or similar hard object against plucked strings. The bar itself is called a "steel" and is the source of the name "steel guitar". The instrument differs from a conve ...

version has been featured as background music on the U.S. TV cartoon series by

Nickelodeon Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television television channel, channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its List of assets owned by Param ...

, ''

SpongeBob SquarePants ''SpongeBob SquarePants'' (or simply ''SpongeBob'') is an American animated comedy television series created by marine science educator and animator Stephen Hillenburg for Nickelodeon. It chronicles the adventures of the title character a ...

.'' The Rastrelli Cello Quartet recorded a version for four cellos in 2006, on the album ''Vol. 1 - Concerto Grosso A LA Russe''.

Background

Other recordings

Popular culture

See also

References

Further reading