![]() ![]() There was still some ragtime composition and publishing activity into the 1920s. Many had trouble either understanding or effectively writing a music that seemed to have so little structure, and it was hard to notate for piano as well, so they simply vanished or played in silent movie houses and the like. The most popular piano novelty of the 1920s. So pianists and composers were in a position to either adapt or move on. Prohibition also played a role in the process since brothels and drinking establishments were shut down in large numbers (then quickly reestablished in the back rooms of many otherwise legitimate businesses). Pianists had been doing this for some time, but the changeover into ensemble-based music helped to drive the excitement of the jazz craze, and led into the 1920s which are often referred to as The Jazz Age. In reality, much of early traditional jazz was basically ragtime played in a free-form fashion with improvisation infused into it. When jazz started making headway in the late 1910s into the venues that ragtime had occupied for nearly two decades, a new musical craze was established while the older one started a decline. ![]() The Original Dixieland Jazz Band circa 1918. Artists like myself owe them recognition at the very least.Ī bit dramatic perhaps, but not too far off base. Without these pioneers who were able to create what the public apparently wanted and was ready for, interest in ragtime as a genre may have continued to wane, perhaps for decades. Nonetheless, we will endeavor to encapsulate the genesis, development, motivation, marketing, and performance analysis of 1950s style Ragtime and Honky-Tonk piano to give some perspective of where it has gone since and why. Given the volume of works put out in a hurry by lesser known artists or small labels capitalizing on the public thirst for honky-tonk during the era of "space-age pop," it is nearly impossible to make this a comprehensive article without spilling off the bottom of many screens/pages, and would be replete with redundancy. Utilizing the collective research by myself and many distinguished colleagues and ragtime historians, we will provide an overview of some of the more significant facets of the ragtime revival of the 1950s into the 1960s along with the major players and their various stage names. I t was a wise man (or wise cracker in a good sense) who has been widely quoted as having answered an unheard question long ago, saying "Ragtime dead? Hell, I didn't even know it was sick!" This, of course, was the late "Ragtime" Bob Darch, one of the lesser seen forces behind the first ragtime revival, but an important figure in this interesting segment of ragtime history. ![]()
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