Ragtime is a musical idiom which flourished between the 1890s and 1910s. It is the only stylistic precursor of jazz for which any tangible evidence survives. The genre was named for the expression ‘ragged time’ which refers to the syncopated rhythms that the genre later gave to jazz.
In ragtime, highly syncopated melodies are supported by solid musical structures borrowed from the March; Ragtime was pre-composed, and circulated in the form of songs, piano pieces and orchestral dance music.
An Early History of Ragtime
Ragtime developed gradually from 19th century American music written by such composers as Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1862), whose Pasquinade looked ahead to the ragtime style. John Philip Sousa (1854-1932), often referred to as the ‘March King’, composed a number of marches which formed the other precursor of ragtime. Many published rags were subtitled ‘march’ or carried the tempo marking ‘in slow march time.’
Ragtime appears to have evolved when brothel pianists adapted popular marches for performances. Almost all ragtime and early jazz pianists gained their performing experience in this context. The music was improvised but in 1895, songs in the ragtime style appeared in print music for the first time. Mississippi Rag, the first instrumental rag, was written by William H. Krell and was published in 1897.
The first piano rag to be published by a black composer was Tom Turpin’s Harlem Rag circa 1898. Around 1900 Turpin established the infamous Rosebud Café in St. Louis, Missouri which was a meeting place for such pianists as Scott Joplin (1868-1917). In 1903, Turpin published his St. Louis Rag and became the first black composer to publish an instrumental rag.
In the Ragtime Era, musicians played into a large horn through which the vibrations were transmitted directly to a cutting needle in contact with a rotating master disc. However most musicians preferred to record their compositions by cutting rolls for the player-pianos or pianolas.
Scott Joplin – The King of Ragtime
Scott Joplin who was the pianist at the Maple Leaf Club in Sedalia, Missouri, had his Maple Leaf Rag published in 1899 by John Stark. Its meter and tempo marking (‘Tempo di marcia’), Western harmonic idiom and sectionalized structure are clearly associated with a march. Stark bought it for only $50 saw it sell 75,000 copies in six months, and by the time of Joplin’s death, Maple Leaf Rag had exceeded one million copies. He became known as the King of Ragtime.
Following the success of Maple Leaf Rag, Joplin and Stark set up the so-called Missouri School of ‘classic’ ragtime. There, Joplin composed his ragtime ballet, The Ragtime Dance; an operatic project titled A Guest of Honor circa 1903 and later wrote another opera circa 1911 titled Treemonisha. The latter was performed in Harlem in 1915 to an uninspired public and failed to gain recognition. Bitterly disillusioned, Joplin died in 1917.
Treemonisha was revived in Atlanta in 1972 and performed again by the Houston Grand Opera in 1975. The work was recorded and in 1976, Joplin was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his opera. The Entertainer was featured in the Robert Redford/Paul Newman movie titled The Sting which used Joplin’s song as its main title and Pineapple Rag as incidental music. The movie won seven Oscars and the song shot to the top of the pop music charts.
Harlem Stride and Jazz Pianists Benefit
The new jazz craze of 1917 hit America with the success of the first recordings by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Pianists such as Jelly Roll Morton jazzed up ragtime’s syncopation and oom-pah pattern and a more excited, jazzed up ragtime idiom was developed in the Harlem ‘stride school.’
Stride is a sort of ragtime, looser than Joplin’s classic rag, but sharing its march-like structures and oom-pah bass with the left hand. It’s the feel of the soft-shoe 12/8 rather than the 8/8 of ragtime.
Influenced by Eubie Blake, whose works typified the virtuosic Eastern rag style, stride pianist James P. Johnson’s The Charleston and his Carolina Shout defined the gaiety of the early jazz epoch and inspired the call-and-response patterns of the ring shout.
All jazz pianists in the 1920s were influenced by the Harlem stride style as their basic musical language. Count Basie had been practitioner of the stride piano style as was Willie “The Lion” Smith.
Edward “Duke” Ellington and Thomas “Fats” Waller had both memorized the piano roll of Johnson’s Carolina Shout early in their careers.The addition of blue notes imbued ragtime with a jazzier flavor. Ellington was a master of contrasting moods with elegant secondary themes. “Pie Eyes Blues” and “Black and Tan Fantasy” are but two of Ellington’s great compositions that produce powerful themes and straight up and down blues.
Waller’s “The Joint Is Jumpin’,”“Jitterbug Waltz” “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Honeysuckle Rose” all combine the virtuosic style of Johnson with Jelly Roll Morton’s down home swing. Waller died suddenly at age 39 and left a legacy of inimitable ragtime and jazz music.
After Waller, stride textures and rhythmic patterns continued to influence a later generation of jazz pianists including Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, Oscar Peterson and the young virtuoso American pianist, Marcus Roberts, who improvises several great ragtime era compositions on New Orleans Meets Harlem, Volume 1.
