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 Joplin,
James Scott and
Joseph Lamb. Ragtime pieces (often called "rags") are typically composed for and performed on
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
, though the genre has been adapted for a variety of instruments and styles. "
Maple Leaf Rag", "
The Entertainer", "Fig Leaf Rag", "
Frog Legs Rag
"Frog Legs Rag" is a classic rag composed by James Scott and published by John Stillwell Stark in December 1906. It was James Scott's first commercial success. Prior to this composition Scott had published marches. With "Frog Legs Rag", Scott e ...
", and "
Sensation Rag
"Sensation Rag" or "Sensation" is a 1918 jazz instrumental by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. It is one of the earliest jazz recordings. It is not related to Joseph Lamb (composer), Joseph Lamb's 1908 "Sensation Rag", which is a ragtime piano ...
" are among the most popular songs of the genre.
The genre emerged from
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
communities in the
Southern and
Midwestern United States
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...
, evolving from
folk
Folk or Folks may refer to:
Sociology
*Nation
*People
* Folklore
** Folk art
** Folk dance
** Folk hero
** Folk music
*** Folk metal
*** Folk punk
*** Folk rock
** Folk religion
* Folk taxonomy
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Folk Plus or Fo ...
and
minstrel
A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. It originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer who ...
styles and popular dances such as the
cakewalk
The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers on Black slave plantations before and after emancipation in the Southern Uni ...
and combining with elements of
classical and
march music
A march, as a musical genre, is a piece of music with a strong regular rhythm which in origin was expressly written for marching to and most frequently performed by a military band. In mood, marches range from the moving death march in Wagner's ...
. Ragtime significantly influenced the development of
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
. In the 1960's, the genre had began to be revived with the publication ''
The All Played Ragtime'' and artists recreating Joplin's work.
History
![Scott_Joplin_19072](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Scott_Joplin_19072.jpg)
Origins
Ragtime music was developed long before it was printed into sheet music. It has origins within
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
communities in cities such as
St. Louis
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
.
The first ragtime composition to be published was "
La Pas Ma La
"La Pas Ma La" is the first ragtime composition to be published by minstrel performer Ernest Hogan in 1895. With his troupe, the Georgia Graduates
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasi ...
" in 1895. It was written by minstrel comedian
Ernest Hogan
Ernest Hogan (born Ernest Reuben Crowdus; 1865 – May 20, 1909) was the first African-American entertainer to produce and star in a Broadway show (''The Oyster Man'' in 1907) and helped to popularize the musical genre of ragtime.
A native of ...
.
Kentucky
Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...
native
Ben Harney
Benjamin Robertson "Ben" Harney (March 6, 1872 – March 2, 1938) was an American songwriter, entertainer, and pioneer of ragtime music. His 1896 composition "You've Been a Good Old Wagon but You Done Broke Down" is the second ragtime compositi ...
composed the song "You've Been a Good Old Wagon But You Done Broke Down" the following year in 1896. The composition was a hit and helped popularize the genre to the mainstream.
Ragtime was also a modification of the
march
March is the third month of the year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. It is the second of seven months to have a length of 31 days. In the Northern Hemisphere, the meteorological beginning of spring occurs on the first day of Marc ...
style popularized by
John Philip Sousa
John Philip Sousa ( ; November 6, 1854 – March 6, 1932) was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era known primarily for American military marches. He is known as "The March King" or the "American March King", to dis ...
, with additional
polyrhythm
Polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of two or more rhythms that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter. The rhythmic layers may be the basis of an entire piece of music ( cross-rhyt ...
s coming from African music.
[''Scott Joplin: Black-American Classicist'', pp. xv–xvi.] Ragtime composer
Scott Joplin (''ca.'' 1868–1917) became famous through the publication of the "
Maple Leaf Rag" (1899) and a string of ragtime hits such as "
The Entertainer" (1902), although he was later forgotten by all but a small, dedicated community of ragtime aficionados until the major ragtime revival in the early 1970s.
[''Scott Joplin: Black-American Classicist'', p. xiii][''Scott Joplin: Black-American Classicist'', p. xviii] For at least 12 years after its publication, "Maple Leaf Rag" heavily influenced subsequent ragtime composers with its
melody
A melody (from Greek language, Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a Linearity#Music, linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most liter ...
lines,
chord progressions
In a musical composition, a chord progression or harmonic progression (informally chord changes, used as a plural) is a succession of chords. Chord progressions are the foundation of harmony in Western musical tradition from the common practice ...
or
metric patterns.
[''Scott Joplin: Black-American Classicist'', p. xxiii.]
In a 1913 interview published in the
black newspaper
African-American newspapers (also known as the Black press or Black newspapers) are newspaper, news publications in the United States serving African-American communities. Samuel Cornish and John Brown Russwurm started the first African-Americ ...
''
New York Age
''The New York Age'' was a weekly newspaper established in 1887. It was widely considered one of the most prominent African-American newspapers of its time. '', Scott Joplin asserted that there had been "ragtime music in America ever since the
Negro
In the English language, ''negro'' is a term historically used to denote persons considered to be of Black African heritage. The word ''negro'' means the color black in both Spanish and in Portuguese, where English took it from. The term can be ...
race has been here, but the white people took no notice of it until about twenty years ago
n the 1890s
N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''.
History
...
"
The heyday of ragtime
Ragtime quickly established itself as a distinctly American form of
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...
. Ragtime became the first
African-American music
African-American music is an umbrella term covering a diverse range of music and musical genres largely developed by African Americans and their culture. Their origins are in musical forms that first came to be due to the condition of slave ...
to have an impact on mainstream popular culture. Piano "professors" such as
Jelly Roll Morton
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (later Morton; c. September 20, 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a gen ...
played ragtime in the "sporting houses" (
bordello
A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub pa ...
s) of New Orleans. Polite society embraced ragtime as disseminated by brass bands and "society" dance bands. Bands led by
W. C. Handy
William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was an American composer and musician who referred to himself as the Father of the Blues. Handy was one of the most influential songwriters in the United States. One of many musici ...
and
James R. Europe
James Reese Europe (February 22, 1881 – May 9, 1919) was an American ragtime and early jazz bandleader, arranger, and composer. He was the leading figure on the African Americans music scene of New York City in the 1910s. Eubie Blake calle ...
were among the first to crash the color bar in American music. The new rhythms of ragtime changed the world of dance bands and led to new dance steps, popularized by the show-dancers
Vernon and Irene Castle
Vernon and Irene Castle were a husband-and-wife team of ballroom dancers and dance teachers who appeared on Broadway and in silent films in the early 20th century. They are credited with reviving the popularity of modern dancing. Castle was a st ...
during the 1910s. The growth of dance orchestras in popular entertainment was an outgrowth of ragtime and continued into the 1920s.
Ragtime also made its way to Europe. Shipboard orchestras on transatlantic lines included ragtime music in their repertoire. In 1912 the first public concerts of ragtime were performed in the United Kingdom by the American Ragtime Octette (ARO) at the
Hippodrome, London
The Hippodrome is a building on the corner of Cranbourn Street and Charing Cross Road in the City of Westminster, London. The name was used for many different theatres and music halls, of which the London Hippodrome is one of only a few survi ...
; a group organized by ragtime composer and pianist
Lewis F. Muir
Lewis F. Muir, born Louis Meuer (May 30, 1883 – December 3, 1915) was an American composer and ragtime pianist.
Biography
Originally a Hatmaking, millinery peddler, Muir started as a pianist in St. Louis cafes and played in the St. Louis World' ...
who toured Europe. Immensely popular with British audiences, the ARO popularized several Muir's rags (such as "
Waiting for the Robert E. Lee" and "
Hitchy-Koo
''Hitchy-Koo'' is a 1912 American popular song and a series of musical revues, inspired by the song, staged on Broadway each year from 1917 through 1920 and on tour in 1922.
Described by ''Variety'' magazine as a "hit song of 1912", the song was c ...
") which were credited by historian
Ian Whitcomb
Ian Timothy Whitcomb (10 July 1941 – 19 April 2020) was an English entertainer, singer-songwriter, record producer, writer, broadcaster and actor. As part of the British Invasion, his hit song " You Turn Me On" reached number 8 on the ''B ...
as the first American popular songs to influence British culture and music.
The ARO recorded some of Muir's rags with the British record label
The Winner Records
The Winner Records was a United Kingdom-based record label from 1912 onwards. Its records were manufactured by the Edison Bell Record Works, London. This company, founded by James Hough, had originated in the early 1890s as an importer of Edison a ...
in 1912; the first ragtime recordings made in Europe. James R. Europe's 369th Regiment band generated great enthusiasm during its 1918 tour of France.
Ragtime was an influence on early
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
; the influence of Jelly Roll Morton continued in the Harlem
stride piano
Stride jazz piano, often shortened to stride, is a jazz piano style that arose from ragtime players. Prominent stride pianists include James P. Johnson, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Willie "the Lion" Smith, Fats Waller, Luckey Roberts, Mrs Mills a ...
style of players such as
James P. Johnson
James Price Johnson (February 1, 1894 – November 17, 1955) was an American pianist and composer. A pioneer of stride piano, he was one of the most important pianists in the early era of recording, and like Jelly Roll Morton, one of the key ...
and
Fats Waller
Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, violinist, singer, and comedic entertainer. His innovations in the Harlem stride style laid much of the basis for modern jazz pi ...
. Ragtime was also a major influence on
Piedmont blues. Dance orchestras started evolving away from ragtime towards the big band sounds that predominated in the 1920s and 1930s when they adopted smoother rhythmic styles.
Revivals
There have been numerous revivals since newer styles supplanted ragtime in the 1920s. First in the early 1940s, many jazz bands began to include ragtime in their repertoire and put out ragtime recordings on
78 rpm records
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts near ...
. A more significant revival occurred in the 1950s as a wider variety of ragtime genres of the past were made available on records, and new rags were composed, published, and recorded.
In the 1960s, two major factors brought about a greater public recognition of ragtime. The first was the publication of the book, ''
They All Played Ragtime
''They All Played Ragtime'' is a non-fiction book by journalist Rudi Blesh and author Harriet Janis, originally published by Grove Press in 1950. It was subsequently reissued in 1959, 1966, and 1971 by Oak Publications, and in 2007 by Nelson P ...
'', in 1960, by Harriet Janis and Rudi Blesh. Some historians refer to this book as "The Ragtime Bible." Regardless, it was the first comprehensive and serious attempt to document the first ragtime era, and its three most important composers, Joplin, Scott, and Lamb. The second major factor was the rise to prominence of
Max Morath
Max Morath (born October 1, 1926) is an American ragtime pianist, composer, actor, and author. He is best known for his piano playing and is referred to as "Mr. Ragtime". He has been a touring performer as well as being variously a composer, rec ...
. Morath created two television series for National Educational Television (now PBS) in 1960 and 1962: ''The Ragtime Era'', and ''The Turn of the Century''. Morath turned the latter into a one-man-show in 1969, and toured the U.S. with it for five years. Morath subsequently created different one-man-shows which also toured the U.S., that also educated and entertained audiences about ragtime. New ragtime composers soon followed, including Morath,
Donald Ashwander
Donald Ashwander (1929–1994) was an American composer in the contemporary ragtime movement. Much of his printed music was not available to the general public until 1996, two years after his death.
Ashwander was best known to the general public a ...
,
Trebor Jay Tichenor Trebor Jay Tichenor (January 28, 1940 - February 22, 2014) was a recognized authority on Scott Joplin and the ragtime era. He collected and published others' ragtime piano compositions and composed his own. He authored books about ragtime, and both ...
,
John Arpin
John Francis Oscar Arpin (3 December 1936 – 8 November 2007) was a Canadian composer, recording artist and entertainer, best known for his work as a virtuoso ragtime pianist.
Born in Port McNicoll, Ontario Arpin studied piano at The Royal ...
,
William Bolcom
William Elden Bolcom (born May 26, 1938) is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, a Grammy Award, the Detroit Music Award and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America. He ...
,
William Albright.
In 1971,
Joshua Rifkin
Joshua Rifkin (born April 22, 1944 in New York) is an American conductor, pianist, and musicologist; he is currently a professor of music at Boston University. As a performer he has recorded music by composers from Antoine Busnois to Silvestr ...
released a compilation of Joplin's work which was nominated for a
Grammy Award
The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pres ...
.
[Past Winner Database](_blank)
"1971 14th Grammy Awards." Accessed Feb. 19, 2007.
In 1973,
The New England Ragtime Ensemble The New England Ragtime Ensemble (originally The New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble) was a Boston chamber orchestra dedicated to the music of Scott Joplin and other ragtime composers.
History
Conservatory president Gunther Schuller created t ...
(then a student group called The New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble) recorded ''
The Red Back Book
''Scott Joplin: The Red Back Book'' is an album by the New England Ragtime Ensemble conducted by Gunther Schuller featuring the music of Scott Joplin arranged by E.J. Stark and D.S. De Lisle. The "Red Back Book" of the album title is taken from ...
'', a compilation of some of Joplin's rags in period orchestrations edited by conservatory president
Gunther Schuller
Gunther Alexander Schuller (November 22, 1925June 21, 2015) was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, educator, publisher, and jazz musician.
Biography and works
Early years
Schuller was born in Queens, New York City, ...
. It won a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance of the year and was named Top Classical Album of 1974 by ''
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 ...
'' magazine. The movie ''
The Sting
''The Sting'' is a 1973 American caper film set in September 1936, involving a complicated plot by two professional grifters (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) to con a mob boss ( Robert Shaw).'' Variety'' film review; December 12, 1973, pag ...
'' (1973) brought ragtime to a wide audience with its soundtrack of Joplin tunes. The film's rendering of "The Entertainer", adapted and orchestrated by
Marvin Hamlisch, was a Top 5 hit in 1975.
Ragtime – with Joplin's work at the forefront – has been cited as an American equivalent of the
minuet
A minuet (; also spelled menuet) is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in time. The English word was adapted from the Italian ''minuetto'' and the French ''menuet''.
The term also describes the musical form that accomp ...
s of
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...
, the
mazurka
The mazurka (Polish: ''mazur'' Polish ball dance, one of the five Polish national dances and ''mazurek'' Polish folk dance') is a Polish musical form based on stylised folk dances in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo, with character de ...
s of
Chopin, or the
waltz
The waltz ( ), meaning "to roll or revolve") is a ballroom and folk dance, normally in triple ( time), performed primarily in closed position.
History
There are many references to a sliding or gliding dance that would evolve into the wa ...
es of
Brahms
Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with ...
. Ragtime also influenced
classical composers including
Erik Satie,
Claude Debussy
(Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...
, and
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...
.
[''Scott Joplin: Black-American Classicist'', p. xiii.]
Historical context
![Maple Leaf Rag](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Maple_Leaf_Rag.PNG)
Ragtime originated in African American music in the late 19th century and descended from the jigs and march music played by African American bands, referred to as "jig piano" or "piano thumping".
By the start of the 20th century, it became widely popular throughout North America and was listened and danced to, performed, and written by people of many different subcultures. A distinctly American musical style, ragtime may be considered a synthesis of African syncopation and European classical music, especially the marches made popular by John Philip Sousa.
Some early piano rags were classified as "jig", "rag", and "coon songs" .These labels were sometimes used interchangeably in the mid-1890s, 1900s, and 1910s.
Ragtime was also preceded by its close relative the
cakewalk
The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers on Black slave plantations before and after emancipation in the Southern Uni ...
. In 1895, black entertainer
Ernest Hogan
Ernest Hogan (born Ernest Reuben Crowdus; 1865 – May 20, 1909) was the first African-American entertainer to produce and star in a Broadway show (''The Oyster Man'' in 1907) and helped to popularize the musical genre of ragtime.
A native of ...
released the earliest ragtime composition, called "
La Pas Ma La
"La Pas Ma La" is the first ragtime composition to be published by minstrel performer Ernest Hogan in 1895. With his troupe, the Georgia Graduates
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasi ...
". The following year he released another composition called "All Coons Look Alike to Me", which eventually sold a million copies.
The vaudeville entertainer and author of "100 Years of the Negro in Show Business"
Tom Fletcher
Thomas Michael Fletcher (born 17 July 1985) is an English singer, musician, songwriter, composer, author and vlogger. He is one of the lead vocalists and rhythm guitarist of English pop rock band McFly, in addition to being the group's founder ...
, has stated "Hogan was the first to put on paper the kind of rhythm that was being played by non-reading musicians."
[''Ragging It'', p.100.] While the success of "All Coons Look Alike to Me" helped popularize the country to ragtime rhythms, its use of racial slurs created a number of derogatory imitation tunes, known as "
coon songs
Coon songs were a genre of music that presented a stereotype of black people. They were popular in the United States and Australia from around 1880 to 1920, though the earliest such songs date from minstrel shows as far back as 1848, when they we ...
" because of their use of
racist
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...
and
stereotypical images of black people. In Hogan's later years, he admitted shame and a sense of "race betrayal" from the song, while also expressing pride in helping bring ragtime to a larger audience.
The emergence of mature ragtime is usually dated to 1897, the year in which several important early rags were published. In 1899, Scott Joplin's "
Maple Leaf Rag" was published and became a great hit and demonstrated more depth and sophistication than earlier ragtime. Ragtime was one of the main influences on the early development of jazz (along with the
blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
). Some artists, such as
Jelly Roll Morton
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (later Morton; c. September 20, 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a gen ...
, were present and performed both ragtime and jazz styles during the period the two styles overlapped. He also incorporated the
Spanish Tinge in his performances, which gave a
habanera or
tango
Tango is a partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. The tango was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries as the result of a combina ...
rhythm to his music. Jazz largely surpassed ragtime in mainstream popularity in the early 1920s, although ragtime compositions continue to be written up to the present, and periodic revivals of popular interest in ragtime occurred in the 1950s and the 1970s.
The heyday of ragtime occurred before sound recording was widely available. Like classical music, and unlike jazz, classical ragtime had and has primarily a written tradition, being distributed in sheet music rather than through recordings or by imitation of live performances. Ragtime music was also distributed via
piano rolls for
player piano
A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism, that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls, with more modern i ...
s. A
folk ragtime tradition also existed before and during the period of classical ragtime (a designation largely created by Scott Joplin's publisher
John Stillwell Stark
John Stillwell Stark (April 11, 1841October 21, 1927) was an American publisher of ragtime music, best known for publishing and promoting the music of Scott Joplin.
Early life and education
Stark was the eleventh of 12 children born to Adin S ...
), manifesting itself mostly through string bands, banjo and mandolin clubs (which experienced a burst of popularity during the early 20th century) and the like.
![The Top Liner Rag](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/The_Top_Liner_Rag.jpg)
A form known as
novelty piano
Novelty piano is a genre of piano and novelty music that was popular during the 1920s. A successor to ragtime and an outgrowth of the piano roll music of the 1910s, it can be considered a pianistic cousin of jazz, which appeared around the same ti ...
(or novelty ragtime) emerged as the traditional rag was fading in popularity. Where traditional ragtime depended on amateur pianists and sheet music sales, the novelty rag took advantage of new advances in piano-roll technology and the phonograph record to permit a more complex, pyrotechnic, performance-oriented style of rag to be heard. Chief among the novelty rag composers is
Zez Confrey
Edward Elzear "Zez" Confrey (3 April 1895 – 22 November 1971)
- accessed August 2011 was an American composer and perfo ...
, whose "
Kitten on the Keys
Edward Elzear "Zez" Confrey (3 April 1895 – 22 November 1971)
- accessed August 2011 was an American composer and perfo ...
" popularized the style in 1921.
Ragtime also served as the roots for
stride piano
Stride jazz piano, often shortened to stride, is a jazz piano style that arose from ragtime players. Prominent stride pianists include James P. Johnson, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Willie "the Lion" Smith, Fats Waller, Luckey Roberts, Mrs Mills a ...
, a more improvisational piano style popular in the 1920s and 1930s. Elements of ragtime found their way into much of the American popular music of the early 20th century. It also played a central role in the development of the musical style later referred to as
Piedmont blues; indeed, much of the music played by such artists of the style as
Reverend Gary Davis
Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis (born Gary D. Davis, April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972), was a blues and gospel singer who was also proficient on the banjo, guitar and harmonica. Born in Laurens, South Carolina and blind since infancy ...
,
Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller (born Fulton Allen, July 10, 1904February 13, 1941) was an American blues guitarist and singer. Fuller was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists, rural African Americans, along with Blind Blake, Josh Whi ...
,
Elizabeth Cotten
Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten ( Nevills; January 5, 1893 – June 29, 1987) was an American folk and blues musician. She was a self-taught left-handed guitarist who played a guitar strung for a right-handed player, but played it upside down. This po ...
, and
Etta Baker
Etta Baker (March 31, 1913 – September 23, 2006) was an American Piedmont blues guitarist and singer from North Carolina.
Early life and career
She was born Etta Lucille Reid in Caldwell County, North Carolina, of African-American, Native A ...
could be referred to as "ragtime guitar."
Although most ragtime was composed for piano, transcriptions for other instruments and ensembles are common, notably including
Gunther Schuller
Gunther Alexander Schuller (November 22, 1925June 21, 2015) was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, educator, publisher, and jazz musician.
Biography and works
Early years
Schuller was born in Queens, New York City, ...
's arrangements of Joplin's rags. Ragtime guitar continued to be popular into the 1930s, usually in the form of songs accompanied by skilled guitar work. Numerous records emanated from several labels, performed by
Blind Blake
Arthur Blake (1896 – December 1, 1934), known as Blind Blake, was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He is known for recordings he made for Paramount Records between 1926 and 1932.
Early life
Little is known of Blake's life. ...
,
Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller (born Fulton Allen, July 10, 1904February 13, 1941) was an American blues guitarist and singer. Fuller was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists, rural African Americans, along with Blind Blake, Josh Whi ...
,
Lemon Jefferson
Lemon Henry "Blind Lemon" Jefferson (September 24, 1893 – December 19, 1929)Some sources indicate Jefferson was born on October 26, 1894. was an American blues and gospel singer-songwriter and musician. He was one of the most popular blues sin ...
, and others. Occasionally ragtime was scored for ensembles (particularly dance bands and
brass bands) similar to those of
James Reese Europe
James Reese Europe (February 22, 1881 – May 9, 1919) was an American ragtime and early jazz bandleader, arranger, and composer. He was the leading figure on the African Americans music scene of New York City in the 1910s. Eubie Blake called hi ...
or as songs like those written by
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin (born Israel Beilin; yi, ישראל ביילין; May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was a Russian-American composer, songwriter and lyricist. His music forms a large part of the Great American Songbook.
Born in Imperial Russi ...
. Joplin had long-standing ambitions of synthesizing the worlds of ragtime and
opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...
, to which end the opera ''
Treemonisha
''Treemonisha'' (1911) is an opera by American ragtime composer Scott Joplin. It is sometimes referred to as a "ragtime opera", though Joplin did not refer to it as such and it encompasses a wide range of musical styles. The music of ''Treemonis ...
'' was written. However, its first performance, poorly staged with Joplin accompanying on the piano, was "disastrous" and was never performed again in Joplin's lifetime.
The score was lost for decades, then rediscovered in 1970, and a fully orchestrated and staged performance took place in 1972.
An earlier opera by Joplin, ''A Guest of Honor'', has been lost.
Musical form
![Easy Winners 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Easy_Winners_2.jpg)
The rag was a modification of the march made popular by
John Philip Sousa
John Philip Sousa ( ; November 6, 1854 – March 6, 1932) was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era known primarily for American military marches. He is known as "The March King" or the "American March King", to dis ...
, with additional
polyrhythm
Polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of two or more rhythms that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter. The rhythmic layers may be the basis of an entire piece of music ( cross-rhyt ...
s coming from African music.
It was usually written in 2/4 or 4/4
time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
with a predominant left-hand pattern of bass notes on strong beats (beats 1 and 3) and chords on weak beats (beat 2 and 4) accompanying a
syncopated melody in the right hand. According to some sources the name "ragtime" may come from the "ragged or syncopated rhythm" of the right hand.
A rag written in 3/4 time is a "ragtime waltz."
Ragtime is not a meter in the same way that marches are in duple meter and waltzes are in triple meter; it is rather a musical style that uses an effect that can be applied to any meter. The defining characteristic of ragtime music is a specific type of syncopation in which
melodic
A melody (from Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combinat ...
accents occur between metrical beats. This results in a melody that seems to be avoiding some metrical beats of the accompaniment by emphasizing notes that either anticipate or follow the beat ("a rhythmic base of metric affirmation, and a melody of metric denial"
[''Scott Joplin: Black-American Classicist'', p. xv.]). The ultimate (and intended) effect on the listener is actually to accentuate the beat, thereby inducing the listener to move to the music. Scott Joplin, the composer/pianist known as the "King of Ragtime", called the effect "weird and intoxicating." He also used the term "swing" in describing how to play ragtime music: "Play slowly until you catch the swing...".
The name
swing later came to be applied to an early style of jazz that developed from ragtime. Converting a non-ragtime piece of music into ragtime by changing the time values of melody notes is known as "ragging" the piece. Original ragtime pieces usually contain several distinct themes, four being the most common number. These themes were typically 16 bars, each theme divided into periods of four four-bar phrases and arranged in patterns of repeats and reprises. Typical patterns were AABBACCC′, AABBCCDD and AABBCCA, with the first two strains in the
tonic key and the following strains in the subdominant. Sometimes rags would include introductions of four bars or bridges, between themes, of anywhere between four and 24 bars.
In a note on the sheet music for the song "Leola" Joplin wrote, "Notice! Don't play this piece fast. It is never right to play 'ragtime' fast."
E. L. Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (January 6, 1931 – July 21, 2015) was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known for his works of historical fiction.
He wrote twelve novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama. They included ...
used the quotation as the epigraph to his novel ''
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 ...
''.
Related forms and styles
![Spaghetti Rag](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Spaghetti_Rag.jpg)
Ragtime pieces came in a number of different styles during the years of its popularity and appeared under a number of different descriptive names. It is related to several earlier styles of music, has close ties with later styles of music, and was associated with a few musical fads of the period such as the
foxtrot
The foxtrot is a smooth, progressive dance characterized by long, continuous flowing movements across the dance floor. It is danced to big band (usually vocal) music. The dance is similar in its look to waltz, although the rhythm is in a tim ...
. Many of the terms associated with ragtime have inexact definitions and are defined differently by different experts; the definitions are muddled further by the fact that publishers often labelled pieces for the fad of the moment rather than the true style of the composition. There is even disagreement about the term "ragtime" itself; experts such as David Jasen and
Trebor Tichenor choose to exclude ragtime songs from the definition but include novelty piano and stride piano (a modern perspective), while
Edward A. Berlin
Edward A. Berlin is an American author and musicologist who is most known for his research and written works on the Ragtime artist, Scott Joplin. Berlin has written three books on this topic: ''King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era (1994)'', ' ...
includes ragtime songs and excludes the later styles (which is closer to how ragtime was viewed originally). The terms below should not be considered exact, but merely an attempt to pin down the general meaning of the concept.
![Shoe Tickler Rag](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Shoe_Tickler_Rag.jpg)
*
Cakewalk
The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers on Black slave plantations before and after emancipation in the Southern Uni ...
– a pre-ragtime dance form popular until about 1904. The music is intended to be representative of an African-American dance contest in which the prize is a cake. Many early rags are cakewalks.
*
Characteristic march
A characteristic is a distinguishing feature of a person or thing. It may refer to:
Computing
* Characteristic (biased exponent), an ambiguous term formerly used by some authors to specify some type of exponent of a floating point number
* Charact ...
– a march incorporating idiomatic touches (such as syncopation) supposedly characteristic of the race of their subject, which is usually African-Americans. Many early rags are characteristic marches.
*
Two-step – a pre-ragtime dance form popular until about 1911. A large number of rags are two-steps.
*
Slow drag – another dance form associated with early ragtime. A modest number of rags are slow drags.
*
Coon song
Coon songs were a genre of music that presented a stereotype of black people. They were popular in the United States and Australia from around 1880 to 1920, though the earliest such songs date from minstrel shows as far back as 1848, when they we ...
– a pre-ragtime vocal form popular until about 1901. A song with crude, racist lyrics often sung by white performers in
blackface
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by non-Black people to portray a caricature of a Black person.
In the United States, the practice became common during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of racial stereo ...
. Gradually died out in favor of the ragtime song. It was strongly associated with ragtime in its day.
*
Ragtime song – the vocal form of ragtime, more generic in theme than the coon song. Though this was the form of music most commonly considered "ragtime" in its day, many people today prefer to put it in the "popular music" category.
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin (born Israel Beilin; yi, ישראל ביילין; May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was a Russian-American composer, songwriter and lyricist. His music forms a large part of the Great American Songbook.
Born in Imperial Russi ...
was the most commercially successful composer of ragtime songs, and his "
Alexander's Ragtime Band
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" is a Tin Pan Alley song by American composer Irving Berlin released in 1911 and is often inaccurately cited as his first global hit. Despite its title, the song is a march as opposed to a rag and contains little sync ...
" (1911) was the single most widely performed and recorded piece of this sort, even though it contains virtually no ragtime syncopation.
Gene Greene
Eugene Delbert Greene (June 9, 1877 – April 5, 1930) was an American vaudeville and ragtime singer. He was one of the first to use scat singing techniques.
Career
Greene was born in Indiana. He worked with his wife, Blanche Werner, as Greene ...
was a famous singer in this style.
*
Folk ragtime – ragtime that originated from small towns or assembled from folk strains, or at least sounded as if they did.
Folk rag
Folk or Folks may refer to:
Sociology
*Nation
*People
* Folklore
** Folk art
** Folk dance
** Folk hero
** Folk music
*** Folk metal
*** Folk punk
*** Folk rock
** Folk religion
* Folk taxonomy
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Folk Plus or Fo ...
s often have unusual chromatic features typical of composers with non-standard training.
*
Classic rag
Classic rag (short for classical ragtime) is the style of ragtime composition pioneered by Scott Joplin and the Missouri school of ragtime composers. These compositions were first considered "classic" by Joplin's publisher, John Stark, as a way t ...
– the Missouri-style ragtime popularized by Scott Joplin, James Scott, and others.
*
Foxtrot
The foxtrot is a smooth, progressive dance characterized by long, continuous flowing movements across the dance floor. It is danced to big band (usually vocal) music. The dance is similar in its look to waltz, although the rhythm is in a tim ...
– a dance fad that began in 1913. Fox-trots contain a dotted-note rhythm different from that of ragtime, but which nonetheless was incorporated into many late rags.
*
Novelty piano
Novelty piano is a genre of piano and novelty music that was popular during the 1920s. A successor to ragtime and an outgrowth of the piano roll music of the 1910s, it can be considered a pianistic cousin of jazz, which appeared around the same ti ...
– a piano composition emphasizing speed and complexity, which emerged after World War I. It is almost exclusively the domain of white composers.
*
Stride piano
Stride jazz piano, often shortened to stride, is a jazz piano style that arose from ragtime players. Prominent stride pianists include James P. Johnson, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Willie "the Lion" Smith, Fats Waller, Luckey Roberts, Mrs Mills a ...
– a style of piano that emerged after World War I, developed by and dominated by black East-coast pianists (
James P. Johnson
James Price Johnson (February 1, 1894 – November 17, 1955) was an American pianist and composer. A pioneer of stride piano, he was one of the most important pianists in the early era of recording, and like Jelly Roll Morton, one of the key ...
,
Fats Waller
Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, violinist, singer, and comedic entertainer. His innovations in the Harlem stride style laid much of the basis for modern jazz pi ...
, and
Willie 'The Lion' Smith
Willy or Willie is a masculine, male given name, often a diminutive form of William or Wilhelm, and occasionally a nickname. It may refer to:
People Given name or nickname
* Willie Aames (born 1960), American actor, television director, and scree ...
). Together with novelty piano, it may be considered a successor to ragtime, but is not considered by all to be "genuine" ragtime. Johnson composed the song that is arguably most associated with the Roaring Twenties, "
Charleston." A recording of Johnson playing the song appears on the compact disc ''James P. Johnson: Harlem Stride Piano'' (Jazz Archives No. 111, EPM, Paris, 1997). Johnson's recorded version has a ragtime flavor.
American ragtime composers
Influence on European composers
![On the Pike 1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/On_the_Pike_1.jpg)
European
Classical composers were influenced by the form. The first contact with ragtime was probably at the Paris Exposition in 1900, one of the stages of the European tour of John Philip Sousa. The first notable classical composer to take a serious interest in ragtime was
Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák ( ; ; 8 September 1841 – 1 May 1904) was a Czechs, Czech composer. Dvořák frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravian traditional music, Moravia and his native Bohemia, following t ...
. French composer
Claude Debussy
(Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...
emulated ragtime in three pieces for piano. The best-known remains the ''Golliwog's Cake Walk'' (from the 1908 Piano Suite ''
Children's Corner
''Children's Corner'', L. 113, is a six-movement suite for solo piano by Claude Debussy. It was published by Durand in 1908, and was first performed by Harold Bauer in Paris on 18 December that year. In 1911, an orchestration by André Caple ...
''). He later returned to the style with two preludes for piano: ''Minstrels'', (1910) and ''General Lavine-excentric'' (from his 1913
Préludes),
which was inspired by a Médrano circus clown.
Erik Satie,
Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger (; 10 March 1892 – 27 November 1955) was a Swiss composer who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. A member of Les Six, his best known work is probably ''Antigone'', composed between 1924 and 1927 to ...
,
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud (; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions ...
, and the other members of
The Group of Six in Paris never made any secret of their sympathy for ragtime, which is sometimes evident in their works. Consider, in particular, the ballet of Satie, ''Parade (Ragtime du Paquebot),'' (1917) and ''La Mort de Monsieur Mouche'', an overture for piano for a drama in three acts, composed in the early 1900s in memory of his friend J.P. Contamine de Latour. In 1902 the American
cakewalk
The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers on Black slave plantations before and after emancipation in the Southern Uni ...
was very popular in Paris and Satie two years later wrote two rags, ''La Diva de l'empire'' and ''Piccadilly''. Despite the two Anglo-Saxon settings, the tracks appear American-inspired. ''La Diva de l'empire'', a march for piano soloist, was written for Paulette Darty and initially bore the title ''Stand-Walk Marche''; it was later subtitled ''Intermezzo Americain'' when Rouarts-Lerolle reprinted it in 1919. ''Piccadilly'', another march, was initially titled ''The Transatlantique''; it presented a stereotypical wealthy American heir sailing on an ocean liner on the New York–Europe route, going to trade his fortune for an aristocratic title in Europe. There is a similar influence in Milhaud's ballets ''Le boeuf sur le toite'' and ''Creation du Monde'', which he wrote after a visit to
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...
during his trip in 1922. Even the Swiss composer Honegger wrote works in which the influence of African American music is pretty obvious. Examples include ''Pacific 231'', ''Prélude et Blues'' and especially the ''Concertino'' for piano and orchestra.
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...
wrote a solo piano work called ''
Piano-Rag-Music
''Piano-Rag-Music'' is a composition for piano solo by Igor Stravinsky, written in 1919.
Stravinsky, who had, by that time, emigrated to France after his studies with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in Russia, was confronted with American jazz combos a ...
'' in 1919 and also included a rag in his theater piece ''
L'Histoire du soldat
' (''The Soldier's Tale'') is a theatrical work "to be read, played, and danced" () by three actors and one or several dancers, accompanied by a septet of instruments. Conceived by Igor Stravinsky and Swiss writer C. F. Ramuz, the piece was bas ...
'' (1918).
Revivals
In the early 1940s, many jazz bands began to include ragtime in their repertoire, and as early as 1936 78 rpm records of Joplin's compositions were produced. Old numbers written for piano were rescored for jazz instruments by jazz musicians, which gave the old style a new sound. The most famous recording of this period is
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 ...
's version of
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 ...
's "
Twelfth Street Rag
"Twelfth Street Rag" is a ragtime musical composition published by Euday L. Bowman in 1914.
Background
A friend of Euday Bowman known as "Raggedy Ed" declared his intention to open a pawn shop on 12th Street in Kansas City while the two were ...
."
![PineAppleRagCover08](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/PineAppleRagCover08.jpg)
A more significant revival occurred in the 1950s. A wider variety of ragtime styles of the past were made available on records, and new rags were composed, published, and recorded. Much of the ragtime recorded in this period is presented in a light-hearted novelty style, looked to with nostalgia as the product of a supposedly more innocent time. A number of popular recordings featured "
prepared piano
A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sounds temporarily altered by placing bolts, screws, mutes, rubber erasers, and/or other objects on or between the strings. Its invention is usually traced to John Cage's dance music for ''Works for p ...
s", playing rags on
pianos with tacks on the hammers and the instrument deliberately somewhat out of tune, supposedly to simulate the sound of a piano in an old
honky tonk
A honky-tonk (also called honkatonk, honkey-tonk, or tonk) is both a bar that provides country music for the entertainment of its patrons and the style of music played in such establishments. It can also refer to the type of piano ( tack piano) ...
.
Four events brought forward a different kind of ragtime revival in the 1970s. First, pianist
Joshua Rifkin
Joshua Rifkin (born April 22, 1944 in New York) is an American conductor, pianist, and musicologist; he is currently a professor of music at Boston University. As a performer he has recorded music by composers from Antoine Busnois to Silvestr ...
released a compilation of Scott Joplin's work, ''
Scott Joplin: Piano Rags'', on
Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records is an American record company and label owned by Warner Music Group, distributed by Warner Records (formerly called Warner Bros. Records), and based in New York City. Founded by Jac Holzman in 1964 as a budget classical label, No ...
, which was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Classical Performance – Instrumental Soloist(s) without Orchestra category
in 1971. This recording reintroduced Joplin's music to the public in the manner the composer had intended, not as a nostalgic stereotype but as serious, respectable music. Second, the
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress ...
released a two-volume set of ''The Collected Works of Scott Joplin'' which renewed interest in Joplin among musicians and prompted new stagings of Joplin's opera ''
Treemonisha
''Treemonisha'' (1911) is an opera by American ragtime composer Scott Joplin. It is sometimes referred to as a "ragtime opera", though Joplin did not refer to it as such and it encompasses a wide range of musical styles. The music of ''Treemonis ...
''.
Next came the release and Grammy Award for The New England Ragtime Ensemble The New England Ragtime Ensemble (originally The New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble) was a Boston chamber orchestra dedicated to the music of Scott Joplin and other ragtime composers.
History
Conservatory president Gunther Schuller created t ...
's recording of ''The Red Back Book,'' Joplin tunes edited by Gunther Schuller
Gunther Alexander Schuller (November 22, 1925June 21, 2015) was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, educator, publisher, and jazz musician.
Biography and works
Early years
Schuller was born in Queens, New York City, ...
. Finally, with the release of the motion picture ''The Sting
''The Sting'' is a 1973 American caper film set in September 1936, involving a complicated plot by two professional grifters (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) to con a mob boss ( Robert Shaw).'' Variety'' film review; December 12, 1973, pag ...
'' in 1973, which had a Marvin Hamlisch soundtrack of Joplin rags, ragtime was brought to a wide audience. Hamlisch's rendering of Joplin's 1902 rag "The Entertainer" won an Academy Award, and was an American Top 40 hit in 1974, reaching No. 3 on May 18. Ragtime news and reviews publications during this period included ''The Ragtime Review'' (1962–1966), ''The Rag Times'' (bimonthly/sporadic, 1962–2003), and ''The Mississippi Rag'' (monthly, 1973–2009).
Many modern musicians have once again begun to find ragtime and incorporate it into their music; such musicians include Jay Chou
Jay Chou ( zh, t=周杰倫, s=周杰伦, poj=Chiu Kia̍t-lûn, p=Zhōu Jiélún, first=t, w=Chou Chieh-lun; born January 18, 1979) is a Taiwanese singer, songwriter, record producer, rapper, actor, and television personality. Dubbed the " King ...
, Curtains for You, Baby Gramps
Baby Gramps is a guitar performer, who, though born in Miami, Florida, has been based in the Northwest U.S. for at least the last 40 years. He is famous for his palindromes. Baby Gramps started performing in 1964 and is still playing profession ...
, Bob Milne
Robert 'Bob' Milne is an American ragtime musician and concert pianist. Considered as a "very good specialist of ragtime boogie", he was referred to as a "national treasure" after he was interviewed and documented for future generations by the U.S. ...
and Tom Brier.
In 1980, an adaption of E. L. Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (January 6, 1931 – July 21, 2015) was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known for his works of historical fiction.
He wrote twelve novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama. They included ...
's historical novel ''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 ...
'' was released on screen. Randy Newman
Randall Stuart Newman (born November 28, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, composer, and pianist known for his Southern American English, Southern-accented singing style, early Americana (music), Americana-influenced songs (often ...
composed its music score, which was all original. In 1998, a stage version of ''Ragtime'' was produced on Broadway. With music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, the show featured several rags as well as songs in other musical styles.
See also
*Animal dance
The Animal Dance craze was directly related with the popularity of ragtime music (improvisational melodies with syncopated beats, from African-American traditions). There were an endless varieties of animal dance fads, such as: Horse Trot, Kanga ...
*''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 ...
'' (film)
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
*
RAGTIME HISTORY (Storia del Ragtime)
External links
Classic Ragtime Piano by Ted Tjaden
{{Authority control
African-American music
19th-century music genres