RAGTIME LINER NOTES
Ragtime music is now just over one hundred years old and that alone qualifies it as classic. It is well-loved for its syncopated rhythms and catchy tunes that people find appealingly irresistible. Ragtime was born in the saloons and brothels of 1890s America, brought to life principally by African-American composer-pianists engaged to play in those venues. Needless to say, because of its commercial and ethnic parentage ragtime was decried by religious moralists of time as degenerate music that posed dire consequences for listeners. But, the infectiously happy nature of this purely American music easily won the hearts and ears of the entire nation and fears of devilish influences were quickly quashed. Jazz music eventually displaced ragtime by the 1920s and ragtime lay dormant for nearly fifty years until Hollywood revived it with the Oscar-winning movie, The Sting in 1973. Thirty years later, ragtime's resurgence has now pervaded all aspects of today's society. The ubiquitous popularity of Scott Joplin's The Entertainer is such that it has become a ringer option on mobile phones world-wide! Ragtime is here to stay forever. We now proudly recognize it as America's home-grown classical music.

The Cannon Ball, modestly subtitled "A Characteristic Two-Step" and published in 1905, was one of the most popular rags ever written. It was composed by Joseph C. Northup and arranged by Thomas R. Confare. Not much is known about these two musicians, but their collaboration on this particular work is remarkable for its combination of classical and rag piano techniques. Cascades of classical arpeggios and handfuls of repeated chords reminicent of Franz Liszt are mixed together with typical ragtime syncopation to produce an "explosive" virtuoso work that is as much fun to play as it is to hear.

Artie Matthews grew up studying piano in Springfield, Illinois in the 1890s and moved to St. Louis in 1908 to become a composer and arranger at the Booker T. Washington Theater and for Scott Joplin's well-known publisher, John Stark. Matthews has the distinction of being the first person ever to publish a blues, his Baby Seals Blues of 1912. His Weary Blues of 1915 was so popular that it was recorded by a number of famous musicians including Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra, and Lawrence Welk. The five Pastime Rags (all subtitled "A Slow Drag") that he wrote during his time in St. Louis are among the most inventive and brilliantly conceived "classic" rags ever composed. They are full of non-stop harmonic and rhythmic surprises as if Matthews were trying to document every ragtime trick in the book. Of particular note are the stop time passages (possibly an influence from the elder Joplin?) where the music suddenly comes to a halt and the pianist is supposed to fill in the beats with hand clapping or foot stomping. Also interesting are the comical tone clusters of the opening melody of Pastime Rag No. 4 and a short passage in Pastime Rag No. 3 that vividly evokes scenes of the proverbial damsel-in-distress tied to a railroad track taken straight from silent movie music. Despite all the slap-stick comedic devices, Matthews was evidently very serious about his compositions being played well. Beside the tempo markings is the direction, "Don't Fake!"

Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb have often been referred to as the "Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms" of the ragtime world since they were the three towering figures among scores of ragtime composers. Actually, they are closer in comparison to Beethoven, Liszt, and Chopin respectively. Scott Joplin is the acknowledged master of the genre who codified ragtime's compositional form and garnered artistic integrity and respect for it. His publishers frequently billed him on his sheet music covers as "The King of Ragtime Writers" not undeservedly. Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag was composed in 1899 and was his first big hit. (It also became the first piece of sheet music in history to sell over a million copies.) It made Joplin famous and the requisite financial success allowed him to become a full-time composer/teacher and move to New York to escape the undignified and anonymous honky-tonk and red-light circuits of St. Louis and Kansas City. Joplin is credited for creating a remarkable fusion of African-American rhythms, American folk song (both black and white), and European musical traditions. His seriousness as a composer is relected in the many inspired and diverse works he created:  rag two-steps, marches, cakewalks, waltzes, dances, pianistic exercises, and even an opera. Besides Maple Leaf, also included here are Bethena--A Concert Waltz (1905) and Solace--A Mexican Serenade (a tango from 1909), two contrasting works that show Joplin's mastery of style, form, melody and harmonic adventurousness.

James Scott is represented here by two of his most popular rags, Hilarity Rag (1910) and Ragtime Oriole (1911). Like Joplin, Scott was another product of Missouri, the state that proved to be fertile ground for many ragtime composers. Scott was a virtuoso pianist and his compositions reflect that ability. Hilarity Rag is obviously modeled on Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag but extends the already bravura technical demands of that work to Lisztian proportions. Scott frequently writes long passages of octaves and awkwardly-spaced chords that work musically but require large hands for ease of execution.

Joseph F. Lamb was one of only a handful of white ragtime composers. In 1907 at the age of 20 he met and became a protege of Scott Joplin in New York. (Joplin was nearly twenty years older.) Joplin immediately recognized Lamb's talent and helped him arrange and publish his music. Lamb's style is less physically extroverted and emphasizes the lyrical potential of ragtime. His majestic harmonies and delicate Chopinesque melodies evoke a more melancholy classicism than is normally found in ragtime. His seriousness would certainly have appealed to Joplin's compositional purity. Of all ragtime repertoire, Lamb's music best lends itself to interpretive possibilities and requires tasteful use of the rubato typically found in Romantic classical music. Not surprisingly, "Slow March Tempo" is Lamb's frequent tempo indication. American Beauty (1913) and Ragtime Nightingale (1915) are probably his two finest works. Lamb modeled the opening left-hand passage of Nightingale directly from the accompaniment in Chopin's Revolutionary Etude.

Like Joseph Northup, Jay Roberts and Robert Hampton are relatively obscure composers who are remembered for one or two remarkable stunt rags. Roberts' The Entertainer's Rag (1910) was another million-selling favorite like Joplin's Maple Leaf, and shows many compositional influences of Joplin. What makes this piece unique and memorable however is the ingenious marriage of North and South tucked away in a middle section. Roberts simultaneously combines the tunes of Yankee Doodle and Dixie in left and right hands respectively as an unexpected musical surprise. This entertainer was obviously calculated to appeal without prejudice to both Northern and Southern tastes. Robert Hampton was another of the many notable St. Louis ragtimers whose music was published by Joplin's publisher John Stark. Hampton's Cataract Rag (1914) is similar to Northup's Cannon Ball in its successful combination of ragtime musical language and classical piano technique. There are tension-building passages of chromatic octaves borrowed from Liszt and stormy arpeggios reminiscent of Beethoven interspersed with familiar ragtime idioms.

One contemporary rag has been included in this collection. Written in 1970 in memory of his father, William Bolcom's Graceful Ghost Rag is one of the most beautiful rags ever composed. Born in Seattle in 1938, Mr. Bolcom has been a vigorous leader of the ragtime revival in America and has composed nearly two dozen piano rags since the late 1960s. Graceful Ghost is an extraordinarily expressive work with touches of sophisticated jazz harmony composed within the traditional ragtime structural format.

George Gershwin was born in New York just as ragtime was in its nascence, thus by the time Gershwin was a teenager, ragtime's popularity was already beginning to wane. In the summer of 1916 at age 17 while employed as a staff accompanist at Jerome H. Remick & Co. music publishers in New York, Gershwin composed Rialto Ripples Rag in collaboration with fellow Remick staff member Will Donaldson. It was Gershwin's first published solo instrumental work and effectively bridges traditional ragtime and the newly-emerging novelty style that became popular in the 1920s and was the specialty of Gershwin's friend, composer-pianist Zez Confrey. Novelty piano works updated the basic ragtime format with jazzier harmonies, player piano roll breaks (idiomatic cascades of intricate passagework), and with tunes written in endless chains of triplets and/or dotted rhythms and based on harmonic intervals of thirds and especially, fourths (which provided a trendy, "Asian" flavor). Gershwin's Merry Andrew is a typical example. This piece was originally listed as "Melody No. 43," Comedy Dance in the Gershwin Tune Book and was used as an instrumental number called Setting-Up Exercises in the 1928 Broadway musical, Rosalie.

Edward Elzear "Zez" Confrey, a native of Illinois, is best known for his novelty rag, Kitten on the Keys, his smash instrumental hit of 1921. Generations of pianists have played or attempted to play this lively and entertaining work and it has remained in print ever since its composition. Kitten rivals Maple Leaf for most-popular rag status. According to the composer it was inspired by strange sounds emanating from his grandmother's old upright piano after bedtime one evening. When Confrey went downstairs to investigate he discovered her cat walking back and forth across the keyboard! Confrey and Gershwin had remarkably similar early pianistic careers (they were born only three years apart). As young men, both were engaged to make player piano rolls and early disc recordings, both composed popular songs, and both participated as soloists in jazz bandleader Paul Whiteman's historic February 12, 1924 Aeolian Hall concert in New York, called "An Experiment in Modern Music." Confrey played his Kitten on the Keys and other solos on the first half. Gershwin premiered his Rhapsody in Blue on the second half. Confrey later went on to form his own jazz bands and dance orchestras, making a living both as a performer and composer. Confrey studied classical piano at Chicago Musical College where his thorough pianistic training introduced him to the modern jazz harmonies of the French impressionists Debussy and Ravel and the technical keyboard wizardry of Liszt. Both of these influences are easily heard in Coaxing the Piano and Dizzy Fingers, two of Confrey's best-known virtuoso showpieces.

America's last great ragtime composer-pianist, James Hubert "Eubie" Blake, was born in Baltimore in 1883 and lived to age 100. Blake experienced ragtime's birth and rebirth and was not just a rag pianist and composer, but also a vaudeville performer, a Broadway show composer, a bandleader, and later in life, an author, lecturer, humanitarian, mentor to young pianists, and receipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1970). Like many ragtime pianists, Blake earned money as a teenager playing in Baltimore brothels, much to his parents consternation. His famous showpiece was The Charleston Rag composed in 1899, the same year as Joplin's Maple Leaf. Many of Blake's rags are named for colorful characters from his youth. The first strain of his ragtime blues, Poor Katie Redd, subtitled "Eubies Slow Drag," comes from an old, turn-of-the-century pop tune heard around St. Louis called "Katie Redd, Katie Redd, who's been sleeping in my bed?" Blake wrote Brittwood Rag around 1907 and soon afterward, completely forgot about it. Many years later he heard a pianist play a rag that he liked very much in a Harlem cabaret called The Brittwood. When he inquired about the name and composer of the rag, the pianist told him it was by Eubie Blake. Much to his surprise, he had rediscovered his own composition! In 1962 he finally began writing down many of the rags he had composed over a half-century before. Like many of Blake's rags, The Baltimore Todolo and Brittwood Rag are difficult to play because of high-speed syncopated polyrhythms, boogie-woogie left-hand figurations, long passages of right-hand melodies in octaves, and filled-out left-hand tenth chords. (His gigantic hands could reach twelve notes!) Blake created his own unique style of ragtime; he does not adhere to Joplin's established form, and his harmonic and rhythmic style naturally reflects the influence of the jazz music he grew up hearing. As a result, his rag music is frequently tinged with blues and a touch of swing.

This recording is respectfully dedicated to the memory of my father, Donald J. Dowling, who introduced me to the joy of ragtime as a boy and with whom I shared many wonderful occasions making music together at home.
WORLD'S GREATEST PIANO RAGS:
RICHARD DOWLING PLAYS RAGTIME

Klavier CD 77035

© 2004 RICHARD DOWLING