(09/24/2020)

"The Smiler", Zonophone Concert Orchestra (by Scott Joplin) - Edison 10047 
(1907)

This week's theme: Ragtime Music

Ragtime music was originally popular from a little before 1900 into the 
early 1920s when it evolved into Jazz.

It was the Rock and Roll of it's day.

Strangely I have almost no examples of ragtime music from that original 
period in my collection, these are off the web.

UC Santa Barbara Cylinder Archive Library
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/index.php

"Rag time" or "ragged time" refers to the heavy use of syncopation in the 
music.

There is a good online book about the history of ragtime music:
Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History By David A. Jasen, Trebor Jay Tichenor
http://books.google.com/books?id=oAI8CrQhM2cC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

A style of music called the "cakewalk" from the 19th century actually gets 
credit as being the first popular syncopated style of American music.

Cakewalk
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cakewalk

Uncle Tom's Cabin - Group and Solo Cakewalk dance (1903)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCsptiarrzw

The "cakewalk" influenced the so called "coon" songs which then influenced 
ragtime (although not all "coon" songs used syncopation).

Ragtime broke free of it's "coon" song origin with songs such as Hughie 
Cannon's "Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home?" (1902), Irving Berlin"s 
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1911) and Sheldon Brookes "Darktown Strutters 
Ball" (1917).

Here is "Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home? - Medley"
Edison Concert Band (1902)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pny6QumRjtE


I always think of ragtime music as being played on a honky-tonk piano but 
actually most of the early examples I've seen are played by orchestras or 
bands.

A lot of ragtime came out of the Louisiana "Joys" ("Joy Houses" i.e. 
brothels) where a "Professor" would play a piano in the parlor to entertain 
the waiting male customers .

Then it dawned on me that since phonographs were pretty bad prior to 
"electrical process" in 1925 that a lot of people opted for player pianos 
for home entertainment during that period instead.

Nearly every popular tune came out on piano rolls which certainly included 
ragtime music.

I think that people around 1950 were nostalgic to hearing ragtime music on 
there old family's player piano and so expected it to be played on piano.

Just a theory - I could be wrong :-)

Anyway, here are some interesting sites about player pianos.

Many old piano rolls have been directly converted into computer midi files 
and you can play them yourself exactly as they were way back when.

http://www.perfessorbill.com/pbmidiall.shtml
http://www.trachtman.org/rollscans/RollListing.php
http://www.pianola.co.nz
http://www.pianorollscans.org/midis.html
http://www.iammp.org/rolldatabase.php
http://www.kunstderfuge.com/ragtime.htm#Joplin
http://primeshop.com/MIDILibrary/midilist.htm

Player Piano Rolls - "How its Made" TV show segment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL9NudhhSQE

Pump Player Piano - (I had a neighbor who had one of these when I was a kid 
and it was fun to play).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFISC5yNVQI

Player piano
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Stay Jazzed! ... or Ragged ... or something :-)
--Tom Swezey