A forerunner of jazz, ragtime was derived from brass-band music and European folk melodies, African-American banjo music and spirituals, minstrel songs, military marches and European light classics. The ‘raggy’ style, or ragged-time feeling, of this jaunty, propulsive, toe-tapping piano music refers to its inherent syncopation, where loud right-hand accents fall between the ...
the nail. In contrast, the ‘fingerpicking’ style is more akin to guitar technique, using the underside of the nail and the finger in an upward motion. Use in Ragtime The banjo’s staccato sound made it ideally suited to the ragtime style that developed around the turn of the century. The jagged, syncopated character of ragtime increased the banjo’s ...
weddings, funerals and picnics, as well as during the six- to eight-week Carnival season leading up to Mardi Gras. This incredible hodgepodge of sound would eventually lead to ragtime at the outset of the 1890s. In 1896, a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court would change the face of New Orleans music forever. This ‘separate but equal’ ...
what they did not think they would like with the 2004 Funeral debut. Essentially a modern gothic masterpiece, the record covered dance, folk, baroque, dancehall, ragtime and lashings of melancholy in a way no other band were at the time. David Bowie and David Byrne admired them, the former even performing onstage with them in ...
Out’, are still considered classics in both jazz and blues circles. Bessie worked for years in vaudeville and tent shows, and her versions of popular songs such as ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’, as well as her potential as a swing artist evident in the sides from her final recording session, show that she was a more versatile performer than she ...
(Vocals, guitar, c. early 1890s–c. 1933) Among the most influential instrumentalists in the blues, Blind Blake remains a mystery man in terms of his personal life. Born either Arthur Blake or Arthur Phelps, probably in Florida (Jacksonville or Tampa), he purveyed a ragtime-influenced, polyrhythmic picking technique that combined jaw-dropping technical virtuosity with an impeccably crafted symmetry. ...
June 1940. He cut well over 100 sides during that time. Fuller was known for the wide variety of music he played, including pop songs, religious material, ragtime and blues, and because of that range he is considered a unique figure in the pantheon of Carolina blues stylists. He underwent kidney surgery in 1940 and suffered blood ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1901–59) A skilled purveyor of the ragtime-influenced Piedmont fingerpicking style, Atlanta-based Blind Willie McTell incorporated pop songs and novelty numbers, as well as blues, into his repertoire – befitting an entertainer who got his start in tent shows, medicine shows and carnivals. His voice was unusually tender and expressive for a musician who ...
1887 or 1891 (accounts vary), Patton moved north with his family to Dockery Farms plantation and grew up listening to field hollers and levee-camp moans as well as gospel, ragtime, country folk and novelty songs. He learned guitar in his late teens from itinerant musicians such as Willie Brown and Henry Sloan, who travelled around the plantations. By ...
a higher calibre and the pay packets decidedly more substantial. The Jazz Influence Creeps In Although the Duke’s background was not in jazz, he began to absorb influences from ragtime piano players and other popular performers of the day, including Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith and James P. Johnson, the father of Harlem stride piano. Still, the repertoire ...
(Piano, bandleader, 1903–83) Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines was the key transitional figure between the early ragtime and stride styles and the essentials of modern piano. He stripped away much of the density of 1920s piano, replacing it with more linear octaves and edgy single-note lines with the right hand – his ‘trumpet style’ – while softening the rhythmic accompaniment ...
(Piano, composer, 1883–1983) A long-surviving link to the ragtime era, James Hubert Blake wrote his first piece, ‘The Charleston Rag’, in 1899. The Baltimore native started out playing piano in sporting houses and with travelling medicine shows in the early 1900s. He also worked with bandleader-composer James Reese Europe before teaming up on the vaudeville circuit with ...
more striking exponents of ‘hillbilly blues’ – music learned from, or influenced by, African-American sources, which in his case was acquired from railroad workers and miners. His ragtime picking piece ‘Coney Isle’, retitled ‘Alabam’’, was a hit years later for Cowboy Copas, while his slide guitar-accompanied ‘Worried Blues’ and ‘Train That Carried My Girl From Town’ continue ...
his Rhapsody in Blue at New York’s Aeolian Hall. Written in less than a month and advertised as ‘An Experiment in Modern Music’, Rhapsody melded Classical structures with jazz, ragtime and the blues, heralding a new era in American music. While George and his lyricist brother Ira turned out a string of hit songs and successful stage musicals, ...
(Vocals, piano, 1899–1993) Thomas A. Dorsey earned his greatest fame as the ‘Father of Gospel Music’ after leaving his blues career behind in 1932, but in his early days he was an important blues performer, songwriter, arranger and studio musician. In his youth in ragtime-era Atlanta and in Chicago from 1916, Dorsey developed his piano-playing ...
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