Ragtime
A fifth major influence on jazz emerged from around 1890. 'Ragtime' developed and became the popular music craze in America between 1900 and 1914. The term "Ragtime" was first used in 1883 by Fred Stone in the title of his song "My Ragtime Baby".
Work songs, plantation songs, spirituals and minstrel songs all preceded Ragtime, but they were seldom written down in musical notation.
Ragtime and 'blues' were played by street bands prior to the Storyville fusion that produced jazz. Blues was a 'lower class' music and loose. Folk ragtime preceded classical ragtime which was a precision music, aspiring for white audiences, an alternative to the after midnight blues of the slow drag.
Ragtime came mainly from middle class blacks steeped in conventional piano playing, who absorbed the songs of Minstrelsy and wrote and published their songs. They presented them with exciting, relentless syncopation which gave feet a tapping life all of their own.
The roots of ragtime were in minstrelsy and the 'coon song' craze of the 1890s but a blend of influences, blossomed first in Sedalia and then St. Louis became the centre . It was rather formal music but exuberant.
The ragtime dance was the Cakewalk. The black craze dances were the cakewalk, buck dances and the breakdowns. The 'white' dances were the Schottische, the polka, the two step and the jig.
They led to the later craze dances the bunny hug, the Grizzly Bear, the Texas Tommy, the Turkey Trot and then the fast dances of the 1920's the Charleston, the Black Bottom, the Lindy Hop and the Castle's one step or Fox Trot.
Ragtime -
European folk melodies, instruments and harmony, built on the 'Quadrille' structure bringing several black folk melodies, or 'rags', together in a formal pattern
a piano dance suite, dancing rhythms based on the march, the Cakewalk was a 'grand promenade'
rigidly syncopated piano music; left hand, single note on the strong beat, chords on the weak beat plus a horizontal rhythmic flow with the right hand
the original rags were piano imitations of plantation banjo party music, with syncopation from ‘pinging G strings’, and Irish 'jig' style ragtime led to a boom in parlour pianos and sheet music sales
with Minstrelsy and ragtime American entertainment developed the wild disrespectful fun which became a hallmark of jazz but starting with virtuoso banjo players and string and jug bands with the buck dancers of the Minstrel show
almost universally syncopated, including breaks and stop time with a stylistic pattern for black dance music generating the typical 'boom click' left hand which at its best generated a back beat against the syncopated 'cakewalk' patterns of the right hand
essentially 'two step' dances with a typical cakewalk syncopated pattern
Ragtime prospered with player pianos and performers but the torch was handed over to jazz with the advent of recordings and then the movies killed it off.
However Jazz was more than instrumental Ragtime, Jelly's 'stomp' piano freed up rigid the boom click into a propulsive two handed swinging improvisation.
Why the piano? Piano rhythms imitating the plantation banjo?
The mainstream piano rhythms that preceded jazz can be sampled in Sam Lucas's 1878 'Shivering and Shaking Out in the Cold' written by a black composer in the white style.
Various piano rhythms were being explored c1890. Barrelhouse piano (aka 'fast Western') may have originated in the saloons of western mining camps. 'Honky tonk' piano got its name from the Tonk Piano store that supplied Tin Pan Alley. And a later style called 'stride piano' would evolve into boogie woogie.
The cakewalk dance rhythm had come from the Caribbean c1890 as a syncopated blend of march, polka and two-step, and led directly to the ragtime piano style of a heavy, syncopated 2/4 left hand and a fast, melodic right hand.
In the early 1900s, ragtime moved from solo piano to small orchestras, military bands and piano-banjo combos.
'The Red Backed Book of Rags' published in 1912 by Stark Music Company for small ensembles -
first violin lead
second violin doubling on the 2nd & 4th beats (prior to the banjo)
bass viol on the 1st & 3rd beat
piccolo or clarinet on obbligato
cornet would also play a lead with second cornet harmonies
trombone played the bass line
strict time drumming
First there was Stephen Foster, Dan Emmett and James A Bland also published songs, then came the songs of classic Ragtime - AABBACCDD
Music publishing had been centred on New York's Tin Pan Alley neighbourhood starting in 1892 with Charles Harris's 'After The Ball' which was a waltz, there were also mad crazes for 'Indian Intermezzos', 'Hawaiian Songs' and 'Ethiopian' pieces.
Recordings / Songs -
1892 D Emerson's 'Kullud Koons Kakewalk' for banjo virtuoso and 'jig' piano, the
beginnings of 'folk' ragtime leading to 'Country' music and the Hokum Bands of
the 1920's
1892 Tom Turpin, the first published African American composer, wrote the first rag - 'Harlem Rag'
1895 Ben Harney, self styled inventor of ragtime - 'You've been a Good Old Wagon', 'Mr. Johnson Turn Me Loose'
1896 Hayden and Metz, advertising the McIntyre and Heath minstrel show in Old Town, Louisiana, wrote a song with irresistible rhythm, first sung by Mama Lou at Babe Connors in St Louis, adopted as a rallying song during the Spanish American war and became Roosevelt's Campaign song - 'There'll be a Hot Time in Old Town Tonight'
1897 Kerry Mills, a white classically trained academic, cashed in on the craze - 'At a Georgia Camp Meeting'
1897 William Krell published the first true ragtime composition 'The Mississippi Rag'
1899 Scott Joplin (1868 - 1917) was the important figure and John Stark published his 'Maple Leaf Rag' - the song sold over 75,000 copies in the first year .
James Scott (1886 - 1938) - 1914 'Climax Rag'
Joseph Lamb (1887 - 1960) - 1908 'Sensation' also enjoyed John Stark's support.
1902 Bob Cole - 'Under the Bamboo Tree'
1902 Hughie Cannon - 'Bill Bailey'
1911 Irving Berlin's 'Alexander's Ragtime Band' was a popular song not a rag
John Philip Sousa, James Rees Europe, banjo players, Wally Rose and 'The Yerba Buena Jazz Band', Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis' book 'They All Played Ragtime', and the film 'The Sting' all contributed to popular ragtime.
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