THE RAGTIME PIANO REVIVAL IN AMERICA: ITS ORIGINS, INSTITUTIONS, AND COMMUNITY, 1940-2015 by Bryan S. Wright B.A. in Music, College of William and Mary, 2005 M.A. in Musicology, University of Pittsburgh, 2008 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2016 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Bryan S. Wright It was defended on December 7, 2015 and approved by Mary Lewis, Professor Emerita, Department of Music Andrew Weintraub, Professor, Department of Music Joshua Rifkin, Professor, Boston University Advisor: Deane Root, Professor, Department of Music ii © Bryan S. Wright 2016 iii THE RAGTIME PIANO REVIVAL IN AMERICA: ITS ORIGINS, INSTITUTIONS, AND COMMUNITY, 1940-2015 Bryan S. Wright, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2016 Since the early 1940s, ragtime piano has been the focus of a musical revival community in the United States. Like many other music revival movements, what began as an effort by a dedicated few to revitalize and preserve a “vanishing” musical practice—in this case, one that had flourished from the mid-1890s to the mid-1910s—soon attracted ardent enthusiasts eager to collect, compose, and perform ragtime. They celebrated its historical roots while endeavoring to re-establish ragtime as a thriving tradition. This study, drawing on original archival research, interviews with ragtime community members, and the author’s twelve years as a participant-observer in the community, examines the origins and development of the American ragtime piano revival community. Chapter 2 analyzes selected writings of the 1940s, in which the earliest revivalists sought to legitimize ragtime and forge an identity for the music distinct from jazz. Chapter 3 discusses three prominent ragtime serial publications that began in the 1960s (The RagTime Review, The Ragtimer, and The Rag Times), the people and organizations behind them, and the ways in which geographically disparate ragtime revivalists sought to iv organize their efforts, generating a core ragtime community while debating notions of authenticity in ragtime performance. Chapters 4 and 5 examine two prominent annual ragtime events—The Scott Joplin International Ragtime Festival and the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest)—to discuss practices through which the ragtime community has maintained and expressed itself into the twenty-first century. The dissertation argues that as the revival community has established and maintained itself, it has witnessed a shift from product-oriented to process-oriented notions of authenticity, heralding the arrival of a “post-revival.” v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. xii 1.0 INTRODUCTION: RAGTIME AND COMMUNITY .................................................... 1 1.1 MY INTRODUCTION TO RAGTIME ........................................................... 4 1.2 WHAT IS RAGTIME? ................................................................................... 9 1.2.1 Etymology of “ragtime” ................................................................... 13 1.3 COMMUNITY THEORY ............................................................................ 17 1.3.1 Definitions and historical perspectives of “community” .................. 19 1.3.2 Alternatives to “community” .......................................................... 26 1.3.3 My role in the ragtime community .................................................. 34 1.4 PURPOSE AND OUTLINE ......................................................................... 40 2.0 A HISTORY OF THE RAGTIME REVIVAL IN THE 1940s AND 1950s ...................... 44 2.1 THE “RAGTIME ERA” ................................................................................ 47 2.2 THE “TRADITIONAL JAZZ” REVIVAL OF THE 1930s AND 1940s ............ 51 2.3 WRITINGS ABOUT RAGTIME IN THE 1940s ............................................ 59 2.3.1 The Jazz Record Book (1942) .......................................................... 63 2.3.2 Charles Payne Rogers: “Ragtime” (1942) ......................................... 66 2.3.3 Charles Wilford: “Ragtime—An Excavation” (1944) ........................ 68 vi 2.3.4 The Record Changer (1942-1957) ................................................... 71 2.3.5 The writings of Brun Campbell (1944-1951) ................................... 76 2.3.6 A summary of writings about ragtime in the 1940s ......................... 84 2.4 THEY ALL PLAYED RAGTIME (1950) ......................................................... 87 2.5 THE “HONKY-TONK” MOVEMENT OF THE 1950s .................................. 94 2.6 SUMMARY .............................................................................................. 102 3.0 RAGTIME SOCIETIES IN THE 1960s ...................................................................... 104 3.1 SOURCE MATERIAL AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF CHANGING COPYRIGHT LAWS ................................................................................. 107 3.2 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: CHRISTENSEN’S RAGTIME REVIEW (1914-1918) ............................................................................................ 122 3.3 THE RAGTIME REVIEW (1962-1966) ....................................................... 127 3.4 THE RAGTIME SOCIETY AND THE RAGTIMER (1962-1986) ................. 145 3.5 THE MAPLE LEAF CLUB AND THE RAG TIMES (1967-2003) ................. 174 3.6 SUMMARY .............................................................................................. 187 4.0 THE SCOTT JOPLIN INTERNATIONAL RAGTIME FESTIVAL................................. 189 4.1 SEDALIA, MISSOURI: “THE CRADLE OF RAGTIME” ............................... 193 4.1.1 All ragtime roads lead to Sedalia ................................................... 197 4.2 SCOTT JOPLIN RAGTIME FESTIVAL PRE-HISTORY ................................ 205 4.3 THE FIRST AND SECOND SCOTT JOPLIN RAGTIME FESTIVALS (1974-1975) ............................................................................................ 207 4.4 THE SCOTT JOPLIN FESTIVAL SINCE 1983............................................. 222 vii 4.5 SUMMARY .............................................................................................. 231 5.0 THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP OLD-TIME PIANO PLAYING CONTEST .............. 232 5.1 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: CUTTING CONTESTS ................................. 234 5.2 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP OLD-TIME PIANO PLAYING CONTEST .................................................. 241 5.3 THE CONTEST EXPERIENCE .................................................................... 251 5.4 PARTICIPANT REACTIONS ..................................................................... 267 5.5 SUMMARY .............................................................................................. 270 6.0 CONCLUSION: AUTHENTICITY AND COMMUNITY .......................................... 271 6.1 CRITERIA FOR AUTHENTICITY ............................................................... 276 6.2 AUTHENTICITY AND THE RAGTIME COMMUNITY .............................. 282 APPENDIX A. RAGTIME FESTIVALS ATTENDED BY THE AUTHOR (2003-2015) ........ 293 APPENDIX B. THEY ALL PLAYED RAGTIME PRESENTATION RECORD (1950) ........... 294 APPENDIX C. “TICKLISH TOM—A CAROLINA CAKEWALK” BY BRYAN S. WRIGHT .. 297 APPENDIX D. LISTING OF SELECTED INTERVIEWS .................................................... 302 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 304 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 LP records produced by the Ragtime Society ........................................... 160 Table 4.1 Ragtime revival compositions named in honor of Sedalia, Missouri ..................................................................................... 202 Table A-1 Ragtime festivals attended by the author (2003-2015) .............................. 293 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Brun Campbell’s 78 rpm recording of “Maple Leaf Rag” (c. 1948) ............. 78 Figure 2.2 Honky-Tonk Piano (1950) .......................................................................... 97 Figure 3.1 Christensen’s Ragtime Review .................................................................. 123 Figure 3.2 The RagTime Review ............................................................................... 133 Figure 3.3 The Ragtimer ........................................................................................... 151 Figure 3.4 Classic & Modern Rags by Tom Shea ....................................................... 155 Figure 3.5 Prairie Ragtime and Monk ........................................................................ 158 Figure 3.6 Photos from the 1964 Ragtime Society “Bash” ......................................... 169 Figure 3.7 The Rag Times ......................................................................................... 179 Figure 4.1 Logo of the Sedalia Convention and Visitors Bureau ................................ 199 Figure 4.2 Ragtime community members gathered at Bob Darch’s grave during the 2013 Scott Joplin International Ragtime Festival ..................... 204 Figure 5.1 Rules of the 2011 World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest .......................................................................................