Blatant Promotion Of Someone Else's Book

I recently enjoyed a week of fabulous ragtime music - first at the Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia, and now at the Blind Boone Fest in Columbia, Missouri. In the process, I've had the pleasure of spending some time with Carol Binkowski, whose book, Joseph F. Lamb: A Passion for Ragtime has recently come out.

Joe Lamb was one of the three major composers of ragtime a century ago, and lived a life of stunning variety and accomplishment. To date, there's been no full-length biography of Lamb, but Carol has rectified this omission. She's presented Lamb's story in a most effective way, painting such a clear and captivating background of the times that at times you'll think you're reading a novel. But it all really did happen, and whether or not you're a musician, and whether or not you like ragtime music, you'll get sucked into this book, and then, when you turn the last page, you'll sit for a moment, dazed, feeling as if you've just been dumped out of a time machine. Get it from a bookshop, or from a library, but get it and read it. I don't think you'll be sorry.

Here's my short review.

* * *

A century or so ago, there were three major composers of classic ragtime music: Scott Joplin, Joseph Lamb, and James Scott. Book-length biographies of Joplin have been available for some time, but in this regard, Lamb and Scott have been sorely neglected. Now, happily, we now have Joseph F. Lamb: A Passion for Ragtime, by Carol Binkowski (McFarland, 2012). The wait has been worth it.

Joe Lamb's story is a classic American tale, and Binkowski does a first-rate job of telling it. Born in 1887, Lamb grew up in Montclair, NJ, basically taught himself piano, and as a teenager, began to compose popular tunes in the styles of the times. Then he heard Scott Joplin's ragtime, and became hooked. He began to write in this genre, met and got to be friends with Joplin (who enthusiastically endorsed the younger man's work), and saw his compositions achieve considerable popularity. But about 1920, the market for ragtime vanished. Lamb continued to write rags and other tunes for his own enjoyment, held a responsible corporate job, and lived a quiet life with his family, in Brooklyn.

By the time of the ragtime revival in the 1940s, Lamb was a mystery man to music historians. Most of them assumed that like Joplin and Scott, Lamb was Black, and probably long dead. But in 1949, while researching the book that became They All Played Ragtime, Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis discovered him, and he got to enjoy his celebrity for the remaining eleven years of his life. Many of the rags he'd composed during the prior thirty years were published, as were a bunch of new ragtime pieces he set onto paper during the 'fifties. He performed at ragtime festivals, and made recordings.

The author recounts Lamb's life story through a beautifully-drawn background of the times in which he lived, which stretched from the late Victorian age to the last days of the Eisenhower presidency. Social customs and mores of the day, business practices, geographic considerations, and certainly entertainment - particularly music - are used effectively to give the reader a full and satisfying picture of Lamb's personal and professional life. Binkowski's descriptions of places play like movies.

Most fortunate is the fact that two of Lamb's children are still with us, and cooperated fully with the author regarding documents, photographs, and family stories. (The composer's daughter Patricia has been active for years, attending ragtime festivals and presenting seminars related to her father's work).

The material should be of interest to musicians and music historians, while remaining fully accessible to nonmusical readers. In her introduction, the author states, "...this is not a musicological study. Nor is this a comparative or critical analysis of Lamb in relation to Scott Joplin, James Scott, or any other composer." But the scholarship is outstanding, as reflected in the long and comprehensive list of references, and the pertinent chapter end-notes. In addition, appendices list Lamb's published and unpublished compositions, recordings, and folios of his work.

No question, Joe Lamb lived the quintessential American dream. It's satisfying to learn that such a good man received his just and full reward, perhaps not in the coin of the realm, but in currency that mattered deeply to him.

Music Theft

There's nothing new about music theft. A lot of the 1950s hit ballads were nothing more than blah-blah words set to themes from well-known classical compositions. But by then, the original composers were long dead, relatively few people picked up on the thievery, and as long as the thieving composer's conscience or ego didn't trouble him, no sweat.

But sometimes a composer doesn't take the trouble to be sure the notes he cops are in anything like the public domain. In 1911, Scott Joplin accused Irving Berlin of stealing music from Joplin's opera Treemonisha to write Berlin's breakthrough hit, Alexander's Ragtime Band. Berlin had very recently reviewed Joplin's work for possible publication, but had returned it. Modern music historians have compared the two works and concluded that though the charge probably wouldn't pass muster in a court of law, there's enough to be at the least, suspicious. It's also possible that if this theft did in fact occur, it might have been unintentional, that the Joplin theme had taken root in Berlin's brain, and jumped onto the page unbidden and unrecognized.

My favorite story of musical theft involves one Saxie Dowell, who played in the Hal Kemp Orchestra during the 1930s and '40s. In 1940, Saxie composed a little tune, Playmates, which turned into a major hit for Kemp and Co. Even if you don't go back that far, you probably remember it from your playground days:

Oh, Playmate, come out and play with me
And bring your dollies three. Climb up my apple tree.
Look down my rain barrel, slide down my cellar door
And we'll be jolly friends forever more.

But not everyone was thrilled with the tune. An old man, Charles L. Johnson, came storming out of Kansas City, a lawyer in tow. Johnson had been a prolific composer of folk-style ragtime during the early years of that century, and he claimed Dowell had stolen the melody for Playmates, note for note, from Johnson's "Indian intermezzo," Iola, written in 1906.

You can listen for yourself and see what you think. Here's a link to a performance of Playmates.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLszaMafBQ4

And here's one to Iola. You'll have no trouble recognizing the theme in question.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUYnev75KAs

The judge had no trouble, either, and Mr. Johnson was awarded rights to all royalties from the tune, including those that had already been paid.

Now comes the punch line. Dowell wrote a (seldom-heard) introductory verse to his song, and it went like this:

There's a catchy little tune a floatin' through the air,
You hear it here and there, they sing it ev'ry where
How it started, where it started, seems nobody knows.
But what's the diff'rence where it came from, here's the way it goes.

Big diff'rence, as it turned out. Was that a little bit of arrogance on the part of Dowell, maybe intended as a sly joke? If so, he did not laugh last. Or even for very long.

Movin' On

My office walls are covered with artwork and photographs which represent a number of my interests. There are music boxes and organ grinders, early twentieth-century sheet music, the wrapper from a giant chocolate bar, some beautiful Origami flowers made by the mother of a Japanese friend, and a photo of my son Casey and me at a ball game, wearing matching T-shirts with a big, blue PUTZ emblazoned across the front. (Mr. J.J. Putz once pitched for our Seattle Mariners). I've been a baseball fan since I was nine, so it stands to reason that some of my office wall decorations have been posters handed out by the Mariners over the past fifteen years.

But baseball ain't what it used to be. (I know, nothing is, but still). What I miss most about the baseball of sixty years ago is the loyalty and affection that grew between fans and the players who spent their entire career with one club. Joe DiMaggio wasn't called the Yankee Clipper for nothing. Jackie Robinson retired rather than accept a trade to his Dodgers' hated crosstown rival, the New York Giants. And if the Giants had ever traded Willie Mays, the fans would've demolished the Polo Grounds.

Most Seattle fans will never stop booing Alex Rodriguez for swearing fealty to the Mariners, then jumping ship to grab an unprecedented package of Texas simoleons. But Albert Pujols' defection to Los Angeles this past winter was worse. When he sailed southward, A-Rod was still a green kid, susceptible to the blandishments of a megalomaniacal team owner. But all it took for Pujols, a grown man in the prime of his career and an idol in St. Louis, to blow off his adoring multitudes of fans was a few pieces of Disneyland silver. His statue could've stood next to Stan Musial's forever. How many millions of dollars does anyone need?

 I have no particular attachment to the St. Louis Cardinals, but Pujols' flight to the coast was a spit in the face of every baseball fan everywhere. Last week, I cast a jaundiced eye at my walls, then pulled down the baseball posters, and put up the ragtime memorabilia I accumulated over the past several years, as I wrote my ragtime-based historical mysteries. Scott Joplin replaced Alex Rodriguez, a better trade than any the Mariners ever pulled off. Joe Lamb's "Nightingale Rag" replaced the Mariners' flamboyant proclamation, "You Gotta Love These Guys."

Well, no, I don't gotta. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Birds Of A Feather

In 1899, fifteen-year-old Sanford Brunson (Brun) Campbell ran away to Sedalia, MO, to take piano lessons from Scott Joplin. Before he left Sedalia, Joplin nicknamed him The Ragtime Kid.

For nearly ten years, Brun worked as an itinerant pianist throughout the midwest, Colorado, and California. When interest in ragtime faded, Brun took up the barber trade, first in Tulsa, then in Venice, CA. He played a major role in the ragtime revival of the 1940s, working tirelessly to promote ragtime, Scott Joplin, and, not incidentally, himself.

Last spring, I got an email from a Los Angeles antiques dealer who had cleaned out a house, and found three cartons of items that had belonged to Brun Campbell. Having never heard of Brun Campbell, the dealer googled his name, and up came Larry Karp's ragtime historical-mystery trilogy. A quick negotiation, and a few days later, three cartons arrived at my house. I opened them in jig time. My summer project lay before me.

One of the cartons was nearly filled with typed manuscripts. About half were titled When Ragtime Was Young; these were accounts of Brun's career as an ragtime pianist. The rest were short pieces, treating one or another aspect of the history of ragtime. Brun had hoped to publish this material.

 It didn't take me long to decide that the historical writings should remain unpublished. Most of the information is now common knowledge, but more important, Brun simply was not a historian. Why spend time chasing down a fact when an opinion would serve just as well, maybe better? In addition, Brun was, to put it tactfully, an embellisher. Probably his most egregious historical invention was a description of Scott Joplin's funeral. Brun alleged that the procession to the cemetery consisted of a long line of carriages, each bearing a placard with the name of one of Joplin's rags. But Joplin had died broke and forgotten, and was buried in an unmarked grave.

I spent six years in Brun's close company as I wrote my ragtime trilogy, and I think I got to know him pretty well. In my imagination, I pressed him on the point of Joplin's funeral procession. His answer? "Well, the way I told it, that's what Mr. Joplin deserved. That's how it should've been."

So, Brun's histories will stay in their acid-free protective sleeves. But the story of his musical career is another matter. The Kid didn't pick up much in school as regards grammar, spelling, and punctuation, but he was a master storyteller. Those pages held me enthralled - I could hear the old guy talking. Yes, he probably did toss in an exaggeration here and there, but the overall account rang true. He couldn't possibly have made up some of that stuff.

So, I guess for the next year or two, as I'm writing a followup mystery to A Perilous Conception, I'll be trying to work Brun's anecdotes into a coherent, publishable narrative. It's interesting that with all the capable writers of ragtime history throughout the world, Brun's works found their way to another storyteller. I think that would've amused The Kid. Maybe that's how it should've been.

When Fiction Comes Up Against Reality

For the past few months, I've been doing work that would have to rank at the top of any list of interesting activities for a historical novelist. After writing two books (THE RAGTIME KID and THE RAGTIME FOOL), which featured Sanford Brunson Campbell, the "Original Ragtime Kid of the 1890s" as protagonist, I was lucky enough to obtain three big boxes of items that once belonged to the real-life Kid, who died in 1952.

Imagine my feelings, reading autobiographical manuscripts describing Brun's adventures as an itinerant ragtime pianist during the first decade of the twentieth century, and his efforts during the last decade of his life to revive ragtime music and the reputation of his hero, Scott Joplin. There were also musical compositions unknown to current ragtime enthusiasts, 78rpm recordings of Brun playing his and Joplin's music, personal effects (including his barber's razor strop), business and tax records, and extensive correspondence with prominent musicians, entertainment figures, and politicians.

Brun was known as someone who never let facts get in the way of a good story - no wonder he was such a compelling figure to an historical novelist - and so, some of his written material was contradicted by well-established information. I think what inspired Brun to tell many of his tall tales was the desire to bring Joplin the recognition Brun (rightly) thought his old piano teacher deserved. As my Brun put it in THE RAGTIME FOOL, "Well, the way I told it, that's what Mr. Joplin deserved...That's how it should've been."

Brun did tell some good stories, and told them well. He had a very engaging voice. After five years wandering through the midwest, playing bar-room piano, he decided to go home to Arkansas City, KS, to visit his high-school sweetheart. "While I had been away," Brun wrote, "the local gossips had told her all kinds of stories about me and my ragtime career, the places in which I had played and other poisonous gossip. Some of it was true..."

"I arrived dressed in a loud checkered suit; cloth-top, colored patent leather shoes with pearl buttons, a light-colored hat with a loud hatband around it, and that ever-loving loud silk shirt, together with the loud-patterned necktie, about made my ragtime dress complete. When the natives saw me in that getup, I created quite a sensation.

"I thought my girl would faint when she gave me the once-over, and my mother stood dead in her tracks when she saw my loud clothes. But I was her darling boy and my appearance was soon forgotten by her."

I was pleased and not a little surprised to see how well my fictional Brun fit with his historical profile. But now, what? Some sort of nonfiction book needs to come out of this material, probably with a CD of a ragtime pianist playing Brun's newly-discovered music, as well as transcriptions from Brun's recordings. It'll take some time, especially having to fit the work in as I write my next mystery, and probably the one after that. But it's got to be done. It tickles me that the story of the story-telling man who worked so hard on Scott Joplin's behalf now falls to another story-teller. Gonna be a challenge to sort out what's reality in Brun's accounts, and what's fiction.

On The Music Trifecta Trail

Following on the Seattle Folklife Festival, the 2011 Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia MO is history. And speaking of history - the only thing hotter than the music was the weather, the thermometer hitting the century mark, with humidity not far behind. As I wrote in Chapter 5 of THE RAGTIME KID, they say the devil once spent a week in Missouri in June, then went home and set up hell to specifications. At least we had air conditioning for the indoor concerts. They didn't have that in 1899, and considering all the clothing both men and women wore in those days, there must have been an epidemic of heat stroke and fainting in Sedalia around the time Scott Joplin and John Stark signed the contract to publish "Maple Leaf Rag."

At a concert at the beautiful restored Katy Depot, fiddler Mike Myer played a set with Rich Egan, a terrific pianist from St. Louis who specializes in midwestern folk rags, the kind composed by Brun Campbell, the self-proclaimed "Original Ragtime Kid of the 1890s." The duo played Brun's "Frankie And Johnny Rag," and Rich dedicated the tune to me for my portrayal of Brun in THE RAGTIME KID, and for my research into his history. Never thought anything like that would ever come my way. And just for good measure, my books were piled front and center in the Depot Store, one of those nice times when books get promoted with absolutely no effort on the author's part.

In fact, that was Number Two in recent musical honors for this musical illiterate. A couple of months ago, Randy Myers, a friend I've made through music boxes, read my first mystery novel, THE MUSIC BOX MURDERS, then wrote a tune for me, "The Death By Music Box Rag." How about that. Just writing my books has been ample reward in itself, but Randy and Rich have put a delicious icing on my cake. Thank you, both.

On to the antique phonograph/music box show in Union IL tomorrow, which will wrap up this year's spring extravaganza of music. I'm already looking forward to 2012.

The Ragtime Kid Comes To San Marino

"THE TWO-FOUR BEAT"
by
S. Brun Campbell

Down in St. Louis, on Chestnut and Market Streets,
That was the home of that old two-four beat.
It was there Tom Turpin wrote "Harlem Rag,"
While over at Sedalia, Mo., Scott Joplin wrote "The Original Rags."
But when he wrote "The Maple Leaf Rag,"
He put the two-four beat right in the bag.
Louis Chauvin played piano on Chestnut Street
And was the best of them all on the two-four beat.
That beat spread to Memphis down to old Beale Street,
And then down to New Orleans, to Rampart, Franklin and Basin Streets.
When Buddy Bolden heard it he blew out a loud jazz call
That rocked Lulu White's "Mahogany Hall."
It put New Orleans jazz right on the ball,
And made it the music of the Mardi Gras.
Then up at Memphis Handy blew a fuse -
For in 1912 he wrote the "Memphis Blues."
That was good, so he wrote another, the "St. Louis Blues."
Now Zez Confrey, just to be a tease,
Set a new jazz pattern and wrote "Kitten on the Keys."
Then George Gershwin got into a musical stew
And sat right down and wrote "Rhapsody in Blue."
So from Bolden to Gershwin it's been a musical treat,
But it all goes back to the two-four beat.

Sanford Brunson Campbell, age 15, rode a freight train from his Oklahoma home to Sedalia, MO in 1899, to take ragtime piano lessons from Scott Joplin. The composer nicknamed his student "The Ragtime Kid," and he went on to have a most interesting and colorful ragtime life - so interesting and colorful, he served as a principal character in two of the stories in my historical-mystery trilogy.

One of those books, THE RAGTIME KID, is the focus of this year's One Book/One City Festival in San Marino, CA. I'll be down there next Thursday with a presentation, "The Ragtime Kid - Separating Fiction From Reality." Not an easy undertaking, since Brun could rarely resist the temptation to embellish a story, and he rarely told the same tale the same way. Emerson could have been thinking of Brun when he made his point about consistency, hobgoblins, and little minds. But that was a great part of what made The Kid such an interesting character, in both senses of the word.

The lines of THE TWO-FOUR BEAT don't scan awfully well, but all right. Brun gets his point across, and more charitably than he usually did. Brun hated jazz; for him, it all began and ended with ragtime, and most of the time he was far from shy about making that clear.

My talk will be at the Crowell Public Library, 1890 Huntington Drive, San Marino, CA 91108, April 28, 7pm. Please come by, if you're in the neighborhood. There'll be food for mind and body.

A Novelist's Research Near-Disaster

I closed last week's blog with a research adventure from when I was writing THE RAGTIME KID. Here's one from THE RAGTIME FOOL.

Not a spoiler - the first chapter of TRF reveals the plan of a bunch of Klansmen to blow up a high school in Sedalia, MO during a racially-integrated ceremony to honor Scott Joplin. Since what I knew about explosives would have rattled around inside a watch case, I set out to get information. I learned a good bit about dynamite, but couldn't quite get my head around the specific protocol for its use in bringing down a building.

That summer, I went to Canada to visit my friend Jim, in Sechelt, on BC's Sunshine Coast. We went to lunch with Jim's friend, Ralph, and as I looked around the room, I realized the construction was similar to that of Sedalia's old Hubbard High School. We were sitting in the lower level of a two-story building, the ceiling above us being supported by a large horizontal beam that ran the length of the room. That beam in turn was held in place by two stout vertical wooden beams.

And Ralph was a contractor!

"Tell me something," I said to him. "If you wanted to blow up this building with dynamite, exactly how would you go about it?"

Ralph turned to Jim, who waved aside his concern. "He's a writer," Jim said. "He's probably doing a story. Go ahead and tell him what he wants to know."

So, as Ralph gave me detailed step-by-step directions, I took them down in the little pocket notepad I always carry. When he finished, I thanked him, and told him I'd send him a copy of the book.

Two days later, on my way home, it was only as I was next in line for the customs inspector that I realized I was carrying in my shirt pocket a pad whose first page was titled, "How to blow up Hubbard High School." All of a sudden, air-conditioned car or not, I was sweating profusely. Too late to turn back. It occurred to me that I might tear out the page and swallow it, but I thought no, I'm probably on camera right now. They'd lock me up and pass a tube down one end or up the other. Bad idea.

The inspector waved me forward. Since I'm not a praying man, all I could do was hope. Fortunately, he just asked me a couple of quick questions about purchases, then waved me through. Lesson learned. Next time, information like that gets to my house by mail, snail or e-.

San Marino's One Book/One City Festival Is Underway

The programs for San Marino's 2011 One Book/One City Festival have begun. Viewings last week of the movie, "The Sting," featuring Scott Joplin's music, were a great success. Here's what's coming up.
-March 3: Gil Gunderson - Ragtime Piano Performance.
-March 17: Brad Kay - Ragtime Piano Performance.
-March 31: Doug Haise - Ragtime Piano Performance.
-April 14: Crown City Dixieland Band - Ragtime/Dixieland Band Performance.
-April 28: Larry Karp - The author of the ragtime historical mystery trilogy will talk about his books, and about Brun Campbell, the real-life Ragtime Kid, a long-term resident of Venice, CA. After Larry's talk, he'll sign copies of the three books.

All programs start at 7pm, and will be held at the Crowell Public Library, 1890 Huntington Drive, San Marino. Refreshments will be served.

I'd love to hear all those concerts myself - too bad Seattle is so far from San Marino. But I've heard Brad Kay on several occasions, and I can promise a terrific hour of music and talk on March 17. Here's a link to Brad playing "Dew Drop Alley Stomp," and here's another of him playing Joseph's Lamb's first classical ragtime hit, "Sensation," with two other wonderful musicians, Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod.

If you're so inclined, you might also rent the movie, "Scott Joplin," from 1977, starring Billy Dee Williams, with Art Carney as Joplin's publisher, John Stark. It's not the most historically-accurate piece, but the Hollywood take on 1899 Sedalia is pretty good. I rented the film myself when I was researching "The Ragtime Kid." When I went into the video store and told the clerk they were holding a movie for me, he asked, "Whatsa name?" "Scott Joplin," I said. The clerk gave me a truly withering look. "No, man," he drawled. "Not your name. Whatsa name a the movie?"

The Ragtime Kid in Venice

It's official now. The Friends of the Crowell Public Library in San Marino, CA have announced the selection of THE RAGTIME KID (and by extension, THE KING OF RAGTIME and THE RAGTIME FOOL) as the 2011 selection for their annual One Book/One City Festival. There's a preliminary schedule of programs during the next three months, leading up to my talk at the library on April 28. If you live in Southern California, you might enjoy taking in some of the ragtime festivities.

The Ragtime Kid was a real person. His name was Brun Campbell, and in 1899, at age 15, he hopped a train in Oklahoma, and traveled to Sedalia, MO, to take piano lessons from Scott Joplin. Before Brun left Sedalia to pursue a career as an itinerant pianist in the midwest, Joplin nicknamed him The Ragtime Kid, a title which Brun carried proudly for the rest of his life.

By the end of World War I, though, ragtime gave way to jazz, and Brun was out of work, so, like his father, he became a barber. In 1929 or 1930, he moved his family from Tulsa to Venice, CA - less than 15 miles down the 110 Freeway from San Marino - both to take advantage of better economic conditions on the west coast, and to provide a more healthful environment for one of his daughters who suffered from asthma. Brun lived in the same house and worked at the same barber shop in Venice from then until his death in 1952. Despite his wife's highly negative attitude toward ragtime (which led me to re-christen him THE RAGTIME FOOL), he was a major player in the ragtime revival of the 1940s. He even appeared as a character, though not in a very favorable light, in Ray Bradbury's homage to old Venice, DEATH IS
A LONELY BUSINESS.

But Venetians these days don't seem terribly interested in Brun; relatively few have even heard of him. That's not as it should be. I'll have more to say on this in upcoming blogs, as I keep you posted on the San Marino festivities. And I'll certainly have my say in San Marino on April 28. Crowell Public Library, 1890 Huntington Drive, 7pm.

Two Great Performers At The West Coast Ragtime Festival

       Hard to pick favorites among the performers at the recent West Coast Ragtime Festival, but here are a couple with whom I've become friends, and whose performances I especially enjoyed.
      Jack Rummel lives in Niwot, CO, where he hosts the Ragtime America show on KGNU, Thursday evenings, 8-9 Mountain Time, http://www.kgnu.org/. He also writes the popular monthly Ragtime Music Reviews, http://www.ragtimers.org/reviews/. Jack writes and plays midwestern-style rags, and at the Festival, he presented two hour-long sets of his own compositions, displaying to full effect this complex ragtime form, which is simultaneously rollicking and nostalgic, even wistful.
      Washboard Kitty Wilson is the percussionist in the Raspberry Jam Band, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNxWU6sHlAU&feature=related  (whose pianist is the amazing Tom Brier, the man with two hands on each arm and twenty fingers on each hand).   Here they are at the Festival, playing one of my favorite pieces, Scott Joplin's, "Cleopha."  Historian/pianist Rosemary Hallum interviewed Kitty at the Festival, and it was very interesting to hear what she said and demonstrated to explain the way percussionists need to remember that their role is to enhance the performance of the pianist or the band, not drown them out. A lesson there for us all.

Scott Joplin Leads The Way In Any Language

A couple of weeks ago, pianist Karen Pate and I presented a program, Ragtime in Music and Words, at the King County Library in Federal Way, WA. Karen played selections from ragtime composed during the past century, and I talked about the history of ragtime, focusing primarily on Scott Joplin and his efforts to transform folk ragtime into a form of classical music, respected and honored as fine art. Joplin succeeded, but acknowledgement of his success only came years after the composer's death.

After the event, a woman in the audience came up to thank Karen and  me, and presented us each with a message in kanji on a small wooden block. She'd written them during the concert. The gift to Karen complimented her musical performance, while mine, the artist said, was  her own take on Scott Joplin's lifelong ambition to create a new American musical genre, and translated out to 'beautiful dream,' or 'beautiful vision.' Right on.

A Wednesday Doubleheader - Yankees Suck, Mariners Rock & A Ragtime Urban Legend

YANKEES SUCK, MARINERS ROCK
      To follow up on last week's post, I got a nice phone call Saturday from Randy Adamack, the Seattle Mariners' Vice-President of Communications. Mr. Adamack told me that ever since the original brouhaha over the Yankees Suck T-shirts in 2002, the official club policy has been that fans may wear a 'Yankees Suck' T-shirt (or any T-shirt they'd like) to Safeco Field, and specifically, the alcohol enforcement officer should not have ordered me to remove my shirt and turn it inside out. As part of the apology, Mr. Adamack invited my wife and me to a game of our choice this month, on the Mariners, something not requested, but gratefully accepted. 
      There always have been and always will be people who set themselves up as guardians of public morality. They need to be opposed vigorously. I'm gratified that the Mariners have taken a clear stance against censorship.

A RAGTIME URBAN LEGEND
      I keep coming across a word-for-word story about Scott Joplin, my latest encounter being at this site. The account holds that Scott Joplin was the "first music teacher" of Rollin Rodgers, a young white boy in a "small town" in Texas. Years later, Rodgers was offered the opportunity to sing at the Met, but insisted on bringing his old teacher to hear him. The Met refused to allow a black man in, so Rodgers went back to Texas and never did become a star opera singer. Joplin, so touched by Rodgers' sacrifice, decided to take up the composing he'd abandoned because of "money problems, health problems, and a messy divorce." So, Rodgers allegedly was in large part responsible for our having Joplin's ragtime to hear today.
      What really happened: in about 1880, in Texarkana, young Scott Joplin, recognized through the town as a prodigy, came to the attention of one Julius Weiss, a German immigrant employed as a tutor for the children of the wealthy Rodgers lumber family. One of the Rodgers children was Rollin, so he and Joplin were contemporaries. Weiss arranged to give young Joplin free lessons in piano, sight-reading, and harmony, and may also have tutored the boy in academic subjects (which might account for the fact that Joplin, as an adult, was so well-spoken, and moved comfortably in white society). And since Weiss' music lessons focused on European music, Joplin got a healthy exposure to that, and came to know classical and operatic music well.
      Joplin studied with Weiss until 1884, when Mr. Rodgers died, the family cut expenses, and Weiss had to leave town. Joplin, then 16, left Texarkana as well, and became an itinerant pianist in the midwest, finally settling in Sedalia MO in the mid-1890s, where he became a central figure in the city's music communities, and began to write the ragtime music that would make his reputation. He (and his publisher, John Stark) called his music "classic" or "classical" ragtime, since Joplin wanted to make over the rough, raucous folk ragtime of the day into a respected and respectable form of classical music.
      I can find no evidence of any operatic performances by Rollin Rodgers, only that he played the violin, and had a "lifelong interest in opera." Joplin's not-very-messy divorce was in 1903, before he ever went to New York, determined above all else to compose a ragtime opera. During his subsequent health and money problems, he never stopped composing; by all accounts, he was a tune-writing machine. 
      And just for the record, Weiss' appearance in my book, THE RAGTIME KID, is pure fiction. Once he left Texarkana, there is only sketchy information of his whereabouts and activities; he may have been in Houston for a while.

The most comprehensive reference on Julius Weiss is: Julius Weiss, Scott Joplin's First Piano Teacher, by Theodore Albrecht, College Music Symposium 19 (2), Fall 1979, pp. 89-105.

Hasn't EVERYONE Heard of Scott Joplin and Maple Leaf Rag?

      Apparently not.
      Early on in my search for background material for my historical mystery, THE RAGTIME KID, I called a local video shop to reserve a copy of SCOTT JOPLIN, the 1977 movie, starring Billy Dee Williams and Art Carney. I told them I'd come in the next day to pick it up.
      First thing next morning, I walked into the store and up to the counter, and interrupted a clerk's daydream by telling him I wanted to pick up the movie they were holding for me. He showed his displeasure by muttering, "Whatsa name?"
      "Scott Joplin."
      If looks really could wither, I'd have been a cornstalk in October. The clerk looked me up, down, and sideways, then growled, "No, man! I don't mean your name. Whatsa name of the movie?"

      Shortly after THE RAGTIME KID came out, I went on tour through California. At a big-chain bookstore north of Los Angeles, the assistant events manager asked me to tell him "a little" about my book, so he could make an announcement over the store's P.A. system. "Well," I said, "It's a historical mystery, set in Sedalia, Missouri in 1899, when Scott Joplin signed the contract to publish Maple Leaf Rag, the tune that started the ragtime craze in America."
      I was going to say more, but the A.E.M. was ready to roll. "Great. I'll go make the announcement."
      A couple of minutes later, I heard, "Please stop by the table near the checkout counter, and meet Larry Karp, author of THE RAGTIME KID, which tells all about Scott Joplin and his knockout hit, the Make Believe Rag." 
      There's a punch line...two, in fact. In June, 1979, ragtime performer, composer, and historian David Jasen actually did publish a tune he called Make Believe Rag.
      And I could send you to youtube to hear Make Believe Rag, as transcribed for guitar by Tony Ackerman. That's what the caption says. But the tune Ackerman will play for you is Maple Leaf Rag.

Don't Jazz Me, Man. It's Ragtime

       I've been delighted at how many people have told me they've enjoyed my three ragtime-based historical mysteries. But churlish as it may be, my stomach tightens when I hear, "I really liked your jazz series."
       Let's clear up a couple of points.
       First, the books comprise a trilogy, not a series. In three parts, they cover the story of popular ragtime music in America, from its birth in 1899, to its death in 1916, to the early stages of its revival in 1951.
       More important, it's ragtime, not jazz. As conceived by Scott Joplin and his publisher, John Stark, popular ragtime, a blend of the syncopated melodies of early Black Americans and the classic regular double beat of the European march, was intended to be a form of classical music, no different from a Schubert song or a waltz by Brahms, and so, was to be played strictly according to the score.  
       Joplin and Stark's caution, "Do not play this piece fast. It is never right to play ragtime fast" became famous, but not everyone agreed. One (possibly apocryphal) story has Charles L. Johnson, a fine composer of midwestern folk ragtime, a more rollicking form, putting Allegro Vivace on a composition, then telling John Stark at a party, "You know what that means? It's Latin for 'Stick it in your ear.'"
       Nor did the hot piano players from the saloons, barrelhouses, and brothels take heed. They competed to see who could play ragtime fastest and with the most impressive embellishments, and gradually, the music evolved into an improvisational form which was first called jass.
       John Stark, no surprise, hated jazz. Not long before the publisher's death in 1927, Paul Whiteman, the self-titled King of Jazz, came to St. Louis with his orchestra to play a concert, and dropped by to issue Stark a personal invitation. But no amount of persuasion succeeded in convincing the old man to come.
       So let's give proper consideration to one of our very greatest American composers, and the publisher without whom we might well never have heard this lovely music. Nothing wrong with jazz, folks, but this is ragtime.

  

The Ragtime Fool is a Killer Book...and Introducing Mrs. Marjorie May Campbell

     Good news for the week: The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association selected The Ragtime Fool as one of its Killer Book recommendations for March.  www.killerbooks.org

     Now to the business at hand. Having read The Ragtime Fool, Mrs. Marjorie May Campbell, Brun's wife, has requested space to tell her side of the story of the Ragtime Fool. I'm glad to let her do that. The keyboard's yours, Mrs. Campbell.

     Well, hello. My name is Marjorie May Campbell. I was Brun Campbell's wife, and I'll say right off, if anybody was ever a Ragtime Fool, it was Brun.
     I want to thank Mr. Karp for letting me have my say on this blog of his. He promised not to change anything I write, and I intend to hold him to that. It's not that I think he wrote me up unfair, but there are always reasons why people do and say things, and if I come across a little bit prickly in his book, well, you  just try being married to Brun Campbell for upwards of 30 years.
     Brun and me got married in Oklahoma in 1918. I knew he had some bad habits, but don't all men? But he was very good looking then, and charming besides, and he promised sincerely, no more drinking, and no going to low places to play that ragtime music of his. He'd cut hair in his barber shop 6 days a week, and go to church on Sundays.
     Well, in the next seven years, we had three beautiful daughters. The youngest had asthma, and the doctors said we should move to Venice, California for her health. I was glad, even though I'd be leaving all my friends and family in Oklahoma, but I figured so would Brun, and it was them who kept getting him to drinking and playing ragtime, and I figured in California, we could start off new.  
     Not that it didn't work pretty good for a while. Every so often, Brun would fall off of the wagon, which did grieve me, but like my mother always told me, men are just plain going to do that, so I put up with it best I could. But then around 1940, these musicians in California, this Lu Watters and Turk Murphy, and I don't know who-all else began playing ragtime again, and people took note,. And that was all Brun needed to hear. I could put up with a drink here and there, but when he started playing ragtime on our piano, that was the last straw. I mean, that music is the devil's own, it leads young people into temptation, and the low places they go to hear it just pours gasoline on their fire. And it's not only the preachers who say it's bad - I've read lots of articles by medical doctors, brain specialists, and they all say the same thing. Ragtime can damage young peoples' brains. Well, I had to look out for my daughters, didn't I? I told Brun, no ragtime in the house, period, so he went and moved his piano into the garage out back. Sometimes he and his pals took it down to the barbershop a few blocks away. 
But that wasn't the end of it. He started spending all of his time writing articles for magazines about ragtime and that Scott Joplin person who invented it, who I figure he's burning in you know where on account of that. Then, Brun started to make records of it, and sent the money to Mrs. Joplin, who was still alive then in New York. Never mind what it cost us to make those records. I tried reminding Brun about his promises, but of course, he said he didn't remember making any such promises. Isn't that the living end? Well, you can believe who you want.
     Some man, his name was Paul Affeldt, came to interview Brun around 1948, and he brought along a Mr. Spiller, with some new music recording paraphernalia...hold on. Mr. Karp says I've got to stop here, else it's going to be too long for his blog. He says I can go on next week if I want, and I'll hold him to that.

THE APRIL RAGTIME FOOL

      Happy April Fool's Day, the official release date for The Ragtime Fool, the concluding book in my ragtime historical-mystery trilogy.

      Calculated publicity stunt? No. Until recently, Poisoned Pen Press released books near the end of the month. When I finished writing The Ragtime Fool last May, which projected to an April publication date, I assumed the book would come out in late April.

     Where'd that title come from? In 1951, Brun Campbell, the real-life Ragtime Kid, was old and sick, and questioning what he'd done with his life. His wife seems to have had no doubts; she thought her husband was a fool for having devoted his existence to Scott Joplin and ragtime, the Devil's music.  

      But late in writing the story, I wondered whether Joplin's Journal might be a better title, since my fictional Brun's hope for validation centered upon recovering a diary his mentor had written many years before. But my editor pointed out that as the final volume of a trilogy, coming after The Ragtime Kid and The King of Ragtime, The Ragtime Fool was right on, and should stay. Feeling just a little foolish, I agreed.

      I built my story around an event which I believe was the first public honoring of Scott Joplin and his music, a 1951 ceremony in Sedalia, MO, at the Hubbard (Black) High School. The racially-mixed audience listened to speeches and music, and applauded the presentation of a plaque proclaiming Joplin's accomplishments, which was to be hung on a wall in the school. To make the fictional antecedents fit a proper time line to the real-life ceremony, I had the story begin on April 2. But in the second draft, I realized I'd omitted a critical scene, and to remedy that, I needed to push Page One back to April 1. I resisted the change, because April 1, 1951 was a Sunday, and in 1951, in Missouri, Sunday was a day of rest, when nothing much happened. But I finally saw a way around that problem, and the plot of The Ragtime Fool began to unfold on April 1.

     For ragtime enthusiasts, April 1 is The Day the Music Died. On April 1, 1917, Scott Joplin, ravaged by syphilis, and exhausted by years of fruitless attempts to get his opera, Treemonisha, into performance, died on a psychiatric ward in Manhattan State Hospital. Old Brun Campbell refers to that sad day in Chapter 2 of The Ragtime Fool.

      In addition, some jazz authorities list April 1, 1917 as the date Victor Records released the Original Dixieland Jazz Band's “Livery Stable Blues,” the first recorded example of the music then called jass. Ragtime then stretched out beside its most illustrious composer, not to stir for a quarter-century, when music historians and musical performers began to breathe new life into the corpse.  

      Until about a month ago, these coincidences never caught my attention. But as I looked through Poisoned Pen Press's spring catalog, and noticed the date for The Ragtime Fool, a chain of associations cascaded through my mind: April 1...April Fool's Day...The Ragtime Fool...the day Scott Joplin and his music died...the day a bunch of damn-fool diehard Klansmen set a plot into motion to blow up Hubbard High School, with its integrated audience gathered to honor a great Black composer.

      I'm glad I didn't think along these lines sooner. If I had, I'd have tied myself in knots, trying to avoid having people think I was trying to pull off a cheesy publicity stunt.  

      Now, all I can do is eat a little crow with my cheese.

      While you're wondering whether to marvel at the way the stars have aligned for this book, or condemn me for over-the-top disingenuousness, click here:                                                      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tx1jky1D1A , and enjoy “The April Fool Rag,” composed by Jean Schwartz, in 1911. I don't know the precise date of publication, but I could make a good guess.

      To leave this blog and return to the main Larry Karp Books website, click here

Rich Egan's Missouri Ragtime

When I go to bookshops to talk about THE RAGTIME KID and THE KING OF RAGTIME, people ask me whether they can buy CDs so they can actually hear the music I've been referring to. Usually, I give them the names of a recording or two of classical ragtime, music by Scott Joplin, Joe Lamb, and James Scott. Great music, but there's more to ragtime, and it's readily available.
Scott Joplin's goal was to transform the rough-and-ready folk ragtime music of the 1890s and earlier into a classical form, to be played strictly as written, preferably in a concert hall, rather than in a bar or a brothel. But the prototype also developed along other lines, the most prominent of which is usually called Missouri, or midwestern, ragtime, a more boisterous music, but with a prominent days-gone-by feeling.
Richard Egan of St. Louis is a pianist-composer-historian whose playing taps heavily into the nostalgic mode. Rich has two CDs available: FROM THE LAND OF RAGTIME (Piano Joys#PJ006) and LOWLAND FOREST (Piano Joys#PJ023). Listen to them, and you'll come away with a comprehensive feel for ragtime music today.
Just about everyone has heard Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag," and "The Entertainer," but on the Lowlands Forest disc, Rich plays four lesser-known Joplin pieces, "The Sycamore," "Eugenia," "The Rosebud March," and "Pleasant Moments," and one by James Scott, "Sunburst Rag." You'll also hear midwestern/southern/country rags from a hundred years ago, such as Charles Hunter's "Tickled to Death," and modern pieces in that mode by Tom Shea (a wonderful player-composer who died far too young in 1982), David Thomas Roberts, and Rich himself. There are a few pieces by Brun Campbell, The Ragtime Kid; if you don't want your feet to tap when Rich plays Brun's tunes,  you'll have to tie them down. Then there are the outright barnburners, like "Old Dan Tucker/Bingo" and "You've Been A Good Old Wagon But You've Done Broke Down," which will take root in your brain and not give you respite for days - not that you'd want it to. And  if you think nostalgia ain't what it used to be, take a listen to Rich's rendition of "Slippery Elm Rag."
Rich Egan's playing is the antithesis of the old pizza parlor style: gussy it up and bang it out. This guy is sensitive to every emotional component of ragtime, and is in every sense an interpreter of the music. Give him a listen. You won't be sorry.

Take A Little Salt With Your Facts

     Many people say they never read fiction, because "it's not real. What's the point of it?" They'd rather spend their book time on history, "which really did happen."
     Is that a fact?
     John Stark, Scott Joplin's publisher for "Maple Leaf Rag," comes across in historical accounts as an honest and honorable man, blunt-spoken, hard-working, a pillar of society. But when I read in They All Played Ragtime (the widely- and rightly-acclaimed first comprehensive history of ragtime music) that Stark had married a New Orleans girl when he was 24 and she, 13, I had trouble representing Stark in The Ragtime Kid strictly according to history. Even allowing for the fact that the marriage took place in 1865, I couldn't help feeling there was a kink in Stark's nature no one had picked up on. So I decided to look further into the situation.
     In a 1915 military pension application, Stark stated his wife was 15 when he married her, and also that they were married in 1864 (contrary to every other document that's been uncovered), as opposed to 13, as reported in TAPR.
     John Stark's claim was supported by information on Sarah Ann Stark's death certificate, in which her son, Will, represented that his mother had been born on Oct 29, 1849. That would have made Sarah 15 at the time of her marriage.
     However, in an affidavit, sworn before a New Orleans Justice of the Peace on Feb 18, 1865, Mrs. Mary Casey gave consent to the marriage of Sarah Ann Casey, a minor of eighteen years, to John Stark. Another affidavit, signed the same day, before Justice of the Peace, M. Weisheimer (what a great name), bore affirmation by two witnesses that "they are well acquainted with John Stark and Sarah Ann Casey, and know them to be above the age of twenty-one."
     At that rate, I thought, the bride would have been menopausal by the time of the ceremony.
     But a copy from the New Orleans Birth Records Index stated that Sarah Ann Casey, daughter of William and Mary Eagan Casey, was born on Oct. 13, 1848. That would have made her 16-1/3 years old when she married Stark.
     Family recollections nearly a century after the event gave rise to the statement that Sarah Ann had been 13 at the time of her marriage. Stark's pension application was full of factual errors. Will Stark did not even know his maternal grandmother's name, and may never have known his mother's actual birth date. And the affidavits could well have been misrepresented to get around inconveniently-illegal youth on the part of the bride-to-be.
     So, once I decided to give the most credit to the Birth Records Index, which likely was filed reasonably soon after the baby's birth, the kink in my fictional John Stark vaporized.
     Not all history is carved in stone - and what is, we usually don't understand,anyway.

 

THE KING OF RAGTIME: First Review

In its June 30 issue, Publishers Weekly printed the first review of THE KING OF RAGTIME. Here's what they had to say:
     Set in Manhattan in 1916, Karp's well-crafted second homage to ragtime (after 2006's The Ragtime Kid) charts Scott Joplin's race against time and the effects of a ravaging illness to secure his musical legacy. Joplin has written a musical play that he wants Irving Berlin to publish and produce. In the past, Joplin has accused Berlin of plagiarizing his music, but Martin Niederhoffer, a piano student of Joplin's and an employee of Berlin's firm, persuades Joplin to try Berlin again. When Niederhoffer and Joplin are seen fleeing the scene of a murder, they're forced into hiding while Scott's friend Nell Stanley, a musician, and her music publisher father try to find the real killer. Going undercover at Berlin's publishing company, Stanley proves to be a formidable detective, though her investigation uncovers some painful truths about both Joplin and her father. Karp's meticulous research helps create a vivid picture of the time and locale. Memorable, authentic characters are another plus.