Ragtime

A Musical and Cultural History

Edward Berlin

• Publisher: Open Road Distribution
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781504030649
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Ragtime, the jaunty, toe-tapping music that captivated American society from the 1890s through World War I, forms the roots of America's popular musical expression. But the understanding of ragtime and its era has been clouded by a history of murky impressions, half-truths, and inventive fictions. Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History cuts through the murkiness. A methodical survey of thousands of rags along with an examination of then-contemporary opinions in magazines and newspapers demonstrate how the music evolved, and how America responded to it.

Part One

The Ragtime Era: Perceptions of the Music

In 1974, seventy-two years after its publication, Scott Joplin’s piano rag The Entertainer swept the country, reaching the number three spot in Billboard’s survey of best-selling recorded singles. Promoted by the award-winning film score for The Sting, this piece led the return of ragtime to a prominence in American popular culture unequaled since the first two decades of the century.

The present interest does not quite parallel the original ragtime phenomenon, for the musical emphasis has shifted. Had Billboard made a survey of favorite rags in 1902, the list probably would have included Mister Johnson Turn Me Loose, All Coons Look Alike to Me, My Coal Black Lady, Hello! Ma Baby, and Under the Bamboo Tree. All songs! Today, in contrast, ragtime is generally thought of as piano music, especially that of Scott Joplin, Joe Lamb, James Scott, and a few others. While such recorded ensemble versions as The Red Back Book have demonstrated how vibrant ragtime can be in other media,¹ the keyboard remains at the center of the present-day conception of the genre.

Clearly, if the contemporaries of that past period perceived ragtime as primarily a vocal form, then ours is an altered view. Nor is the view of ragtime as predominantly a music for piano held only by an uninformed lay public; it is expressed also in respected studies of American music:

It is noteworthy that from the time of its origin rag music seems to have been associated primarily with the piano.²

… ragtime is essentially music for the piano. Ragtime may be described as the application of systematic syncopation to piano playing and composition.³

Even ragtime specialists, unquestionably familiar with the ragtime song, tend to deny its legitimacy. It is not considered at all in the discography Recorded Ragtime, 1897–1958,⁴ and in Rags and Ragtime the term “ragtime song” is called “a contradiction in terms.”⁵

In contrast, writings from the ragtime era—the years from about 1896 to 1920—reveal far less interest in ragtime as piano music. In a sampling of 230 ragtime-related articles and books from that period, only 21 refer to piano music, with a mere 16 citing specific piano rags. The number of items referring to ragtime played by bands or instrumental ensembles is smaller—15—but ragtime songs have a higher representation—40. While the remaining writings make no reference to performing media, the contexts in most clearly imply that the concern is with songs.

These statistics underline an important requirement for a comprehensive historical study of ragtime: since piano ragtime accounted for only a small part, perhaps less than 10 percent, of what the music’s contemporaries understood by the term “ragtime,” it is necessary to consider the other forms as well. Only in this way can piano ragtime be perceived in a valid historical and cultural perspective. Such consideration, while broadening the scope of our study, does not detract from the significance of the piano music, which remains the focus of this book. Vocal and piano ragtime are, for the most part, two different types of music: the former belongs in the realm of popular song, while the latter is a unique body of instrumental music which by virtue of its rhythmic impulse and historical influence is most properly considered within the sphere of instrumental jazz. These two categories, despite their differences, are not mutually exclusive; there are important overlappings between the two, overlappings that become apparent when viewed in the broad context advocated here.

Part One of the present study examines how the contemporaries of the ragtime era perceived the various aspects of ragtime. The main issues considered are: (1) the contemporary understanding and identification of ragtime; (2) the contemporary conception of the origins of both the music and the term; and (3) the reactions to the music and the underlying causes of these reactions.

Notes

1. Angel S-36060.

2. Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), p. 312.

3. Gilbert Chase, America’s Music from the Pilgrims to the Present (2d ed., rev., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p. 434.

4. David A. Jasen, Recorded Ragtime, 1897–1958 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, Shoe String Press, 1973).

5. David A. Jasen and Trebor Jay Tichenor, Rags and Ragtime (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), p. 7.

CHAPTER I

The Scope of Ragtime

Ragtime as Popular Song

The earliest kind of popular song identified as ragtime is the “coon song,” a Negro dialect song frequently, but not always, of an offensively denigrating nature.¹ Although the coon song had a long prior existence in the American minstrel and vaudeville traditions, in the 1890s it acquired the additional label of “ragtime.”

“Rag time” is a term applied to the peculiar, broken rhythmic features of the popular “coon song.”²

A hopper is fitted onto the press and into it are poured jerky note groups by the million, “coon poetry” by the ream, colored inks by the ton, and out of the other end of the press comes a flood of “rag-time” abominations, that sweeps over the country.³

The coon songs which are cited most often (indicating a degree of popularity and currency) are Ernest Hogan’s All Coons Look Alike to Me (1896), Joseph Howard and Ida Emerson’s Hello! Ma Baby (1899), and Theodore Metz’s A Hot Time in the Old Town (1896).⁴

By 1906 the popularity of the more flagrantly abusive form of coon song had faded, but popular vocal music retained the ragtime label. Some song hits, such as Lewis Muir’s Waiting for the Robert E. Lee (1912), still presented Southern imagery, but even songs totally devoid of regional or racial implications, such as Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1911) and Everybody’s Doin’ It (1911), fell within the scope of ragtime. This deracialization of ragtime songs was, in fact, viewed by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938), a prominent writer on black culture, as a theft from the black man:

The first of the so-called Ragtime songs to be published were actually Negro secular folk songs that were set down by white men, who affixed their own names as composers. In fact, before the Negro succeeded fully in establishing his title as creator of his secular music the form was taken away from him and made national instead of racial. It has been developed into the distinct musical idiom by which America expresses itself popularly, and by which it is known universally. For a long while the vocal form was almost absolutely divorced from the Negro; the separation being brought about largely through the elimination of dialect from the texts of the songs.⁵

A controversial article appearing in the London Times includes a rhythmic analysis of Waiting for the Robert E. Lee and cites as other examples of ragtime Oh, You Beautiful Doll, Going Back to Dixie, and How Are You Miss Rag-Time?⁶ Although the article was widely quoted and discussed, both in praise and criticism,⁷ there was no disagreement on the choice of music cited as ragtime. Similarly, in a pair of articles by Hiram K. Moderwell, a prominent music critic, ragtime is portrayed almost exclusively in its vocal forms:

I remember hearing a negro quartet singing “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee,” in a café, and I felt my blood thumping in time, my muscles twitching to the rhythm.…

I think of the rollicking fun of “The International Rag,” the playful delicacy of “Everybody’s Doing It,” the bristling laziness of “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee,” the sensual poignancy of “La Seduction” tango, and the tender pathos of “The Memphis Blues.”⁸

In proposing that ragtime be taken out of the cafés and put into the concert halls, he writes:

I firmly believe that a ragtime programme, well organized and well sung, would be delightful and stimulating to the best audience the community could muster.⁹

The novelist, critic, and essayist Carl Van Vechten (1880–1964), while disputing the advisability of some of Moderwell’s proposals, nevertheless agrees that ragtime is vocal music.¹⁰ And composer-educator Daniel Gregory Mason (1873–1953), who vehemently opposes most of Moderwell’s views on this subject, has no qualms about accepting such songs as Everybody’s Doin’ It and Memphis Blues (1912) as ragtime:

Suppose … we examine in some detail a typical example of ragtime such as “The Memphis Blues” … ¹¹

As songs were the most conspicuous species of ragtime, it follows that songwriters were the most conspicuous composers. This assumption is confirmed by the literature of the time, for those named as ragtime composers were almost invariably songwriters (some exceptions will be discussed in Chapters Four and Nine). Some of the most frequently mentioned were Irving Berlin (b. 1888), George M. Cohan (1878–1942), Louis Hirsch (1887–1924), Lewis F. Muir (1884–1950), and Jean Schwartz (1878–1956). Irving Berlin, who did not attain prominence with his ragtime songs until 1911, even claimed a part in the genesis of ragtime:

I believe that such songs of mine as “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “That Mysterious Rag,” “Ragtime Violin,” “I Want To Be in Dixie,” and “Take a Little Tip from Father” virtually started the ragime mania in America.¹²

It has been suggested in recent years that the popular understanding of ragtime today is not what it was when the music was being created, but the thesis has not met with general acceptance. In a letter to the Ragtime Society newsletter in 1965, one who was apparently present during the early days of ragtime expressed his perplexity over the present trend of emphasizing a particular kind of piano ragtime and ignoring vocal ragtime:

… we who were around when “Boom de Ay” was discove...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Preface
• Part One: The Ragtime Era: Perceptions of the Music
• Part Two: Piano Ragtime
• Part Three: The Historical Perspective
• Selected Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright Page