Biography Jack Bradshaw is a classically trained pianist with degrees from Oklahoma City University and Northwestern University where he taught class piano. He was so immersed in the world of classical music that it wasn’t until 1974 that he, along with millions of others, discovered ragtime. Jack composed his first rag in 1974 and began his piano four-hand arrangements of ragtime the next year for concerts at Northwestern and other venues. A career change and a move to California in 1979 put ragtime on the back burner. His ragtime rediscovery began in 1999 at the West Coast Ragtime Festival and hasn’t stopped since. He has performed at the major ragtime festivals both as a soloist and as part of a piano four-hand duo with his wife Chris, for whom he writes the arrangements. Personal Reflections on this CD An unusual collection of ragtime and ragtime-related selections ranging from 1897 to 2007. Why choose these rags? Each has a personal connection for me—often inspired by performances of other ragtime pianists. Many of these rags are played in my own idiosyncratic arrangements. When I began playing ragtime, I approached it the same way that I approached classical music. That is, play it as written. Everything is in the score. However, the limitations of the printed page became evident when listening to many of the great ragtime performances I’ve heard over the years. The richness of the music is not on the sheet of paper. It’s in the hands of the players. Realizing this has given me the freedom to break from the score and play in my own style. Track Notes Mississippi Rag (1897) by William H. Krell This is one of the earliest published scores with rag in the title. It was initially performed in an arrangement for band by Chicago band leader, William H. Krell. The piano version which is widely available seems to me to be a piano reduction. My arrangement attempts to capture more of the band sound. I’ve heard many performances of this rag, but the one that really inspired me to learn it, is the recording by Morten Gunnar Larsen on his Ragtime and Rhapsody CD. Ragtime Nightmare (1900) by Tom Turpin This is an early rag by the owner of the Rosebud Cafe in St. Louis which was an important meeting place for ragtime pianists, including Scott Joplin, in the early days of ragtime. This is the second rag that I arranged for piano four-hand in 1974—after the obligatory The Entertainer by Scott Joplin. It’s also the first piano four-hand arrangement that Chris and I played together and the opening track on our 2006 Takes Two CD. The only remotely nightmarish part of this rag is the introduction. In my solo arrangement I’ve attempted to add more nightmares or at least dreams without straying too far from the original published arrangement notated by D. S. DeLisle. Charcoal (1903) by S. Gibson Cooke I first heard this rag played by Tom Brier and Elliott Adams in a two-piano version in a Ragtime Corner session at the Sacramento Jazz Festival. When I found the sheet music online, I was disappointed to see that it was so thinly scored. So, in my arrangement, I’ve attempted to capture the character of the Brier & Adams collaboration that had made such an impression on me. Thanks to research by Bill Edwards, we now know that the S. stands for Samuel. Suwanee Echoes (1904) by Al W. Brown This is a chain of waltzes in the manner of Echoes from the Snowball Club by Harry P. Guy, and Scott Joplin’s two masterpieces from 1905, Bink’s Waltz and Bethena. In the years leading up to the ragtime era, marches and waltzes were the most common types of popular music. While marches were absorbed and transformed by ragtime, waltzes continued in more of a nostalgic vein. The Suwanee referred to in the title, is a scenic river in Georgia and Florida which was a popular tourist attraction during the ragtime era. It happens to be the same river immortalized in song by Stephen Foster and George Gershwin, albeit with a more singable name and one less syllable. Little Jack’s Rag (19??) by Arthur Marshall This rag remained unpublished and unknown until Terry Waldo visited Arthur Marshall’s daughter, Mildred Steward, in 1975. She gave him a copy which he reprinted in his 1976 book This is Ragtime. No mention is made of when it was written, but it was sometime between Marshall’s early collaboration with Scott Joplin, Swipesy in 1900 and Marshall’s death in 1968. My arrangement is very close to the original score with some changes that attempt to emphasize the lyrical beauty of this rag—especially the last strain. Red Rambler Rag (1912) by Julia Lee Niebergall Although I had arranged several rags by Niebergall for piano four-hand, this rag escaped my attention until I heard an unbelievably beautiful performance by Squeek Steele at the Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival. This is another lyrical gem of the mature ragtime era. Although Julia Lee Niebergall was the first woman to own and drive her own car in Indianapolis (the town—not the speedway), the title refers to a variety of rose. Music Box Rag (1914) by Luckey Roberts I’ve always enjoyed the delightful and whimsical performances of this rag by Mimi Blais—both live and as recorded on her Taxi! CD. Hearing those inspired me to make a piano four-hand version which Chris and I recorded on our 2006 Takes Two CD. I eventually started playing it as a piano solo until 2014 when I used some of my ideas in a new arrangement for piano four-hand. This is a rag that benefits from a couple of extra hands. Such Is Life (1915) by Charles L. Cooke This is one of the many rags that Nan Bostick discovered in her research at the Detroit Public Library. Cooke’s 1914 rag Blame It on the Blues is widely known and played, but Nan was looking for something fresh and she found it in this rag which she enjoyed playing. She later gave me a copy and I’ve enjoyed playing it in my own arrangement. Does the progression from Blame It on the Blues to Such Is Life perhaps suggest a movement from blame to resignation? Georgia Grind (1915) by Ford Dabney I’ve heard many live performances of this rag by Steve Standiford at the Sedalia and Columbia ragtime festivals in Missouri and later by Tom Brier in California over the years and have always enjoyed listening to it. I finally got a copy of the sheet music a couple of years ago and made my own arrangement. It has become one of my favorite rags to perform. Ford Dabney wrote a handful of rags but is probably better known for his collaborations with James Reese Europe and the Clef Club Orchestra for the dancers Vernon and Irene Castle. Bantam Step (1916) by Harry Jentes This is yet another animal dance from the period when they were so popular. In this case, Bantam is a colorful variety of chicken. They are small and usually docile, just looking for something to eat but when they get aroused, they become quite fierce. Just as quickly they return to their docile manner. The spirit of these chickens is captured quite well by Harry Jentes. I’ve enjoyed hearing Keith Taylor play this rag many times and my arrangement is certainly influenced by his. Baltimore Blues (1917) by Henry Lodge I discovered this rag on Richard Zimmerman’s Long Lost Blues CD. The Blues in the title was probably added to help increase sheet music sales, as was common in that era. The middle section is definitely blues-related, but the haunting character of the opening and closing strain is what captivated me about this rag. It sounds like a different Henry Lodge than the composer of the well-known and deservedly popular Red Pepper and Temptation Rag. Holiday (1933) by Ethel Ponce The sheet music for this gem was discovered by Chris at one of the many antique stores in the California foothills. I was reluctant to learn it at first because the sheet music cover looked so much like the sheet music cover to Felix Arndt’s Nola of 1916—a piece which frustrated and eluded my many attempts to learn it as a young pianist. Holiday was challenging to learn but worthwhile and unlike anything else in my repertoire. Ethel Ponce along with her younger sister Dorothea were an accomplished and well-known vocal duo on nationwide radio in the 1920’s and early 1930’s. There is a precious Vitaphone Movie that shows the sisters singing as teenagers as well as numerous audio selections available for listening on YouTube. Show Me Rag (1964) by Trebor Tichenor I found this rag in a collection published by Rudi Blesh in 1976. I attempted to read through it many times but never understood it until I heard the recording by David Thomas Roberts on his 1995 Early Tangos to New Ragtime CD. That was an aha moment for me—so that’s how it’s supposed to sound. Though the rag is clearly in the folk rag tradition, it has many innovative uses of dissonances and blue notes that give it a character of its own. This was written at a time when very few new rags were being written by a handful of true pioneers. It is subtitled A Missouri Defiance and the title clearly refers to Missouri—the Show Me state. Boone County Rag (1983) by Galen Wilkes Another Missouri rag. In the preface to his Authentic Ragtime folio, Galen writes that Boone County was named after two sons of Daniel Boone who discovered a salt mine there. It is also the home of Blind Boone and of the Blind Boone Ragtime & Early Jazz Festival in Columbia, Missouri. This is one of several Galen Wilkes rags that I keep returning to as a soloist. Ruby Lorraine (199?) by Terry Waldo This is one of my favorites from Terry Waldo’s 1997 Classic Waldo CD. The outer sections of this rag sound to me like pure rock and roll and the middle section more like a soft shoe. According to the notes written by Ralph Allen, Ruby Lorraine is dedicated to Terry Waldo’s former partner and vocalist, Susan LaMarche, who intended to use the name Ruby Lorraine in her Nashville career. This piece is a lot of fun to play but it took me years to develop the skill to transcribe it from the recording so I could play it myself. Definitely worth the effort. One Shoe Blues (2004) by Steven Stiller I first heard this played by Steven Stiller at the 2004 Rocky Mountain Ragtime Festival. The inspiration for the piece was a children’s theatre production of Snow White which included additional characters from other fairy tales. As he relates, “One of these was Cinderella… Her character never found prince charming and was left hobbling on one shoe.” I obtained a copy of the sheet music sometime later and started playing it regularly. My version differs somewhat from the original but I hope it captures the mood and intent. This blues is an oasis in the sometimes frantic world of ragtime. Oklahoma Rag (1974) by Jack Bradshaw This dates from the year that I discovered ragtime along with millions of other Americans thanks to the soundtrack from the movie The Sting. I tried improvising what I thought of as ragtime and recorded a couple of takes. It was more than thirty years later that I figured out what I had played and created a score so I could learn to play it, again. Although I grew up in Oklahoma and attended schools there from kindergarten through college, I left for good in 1965. Somehow the music reminded me of my years there. Country Rag (2004) by Jack Bradshaw I improvised and recorded a couple of versions of this rag shortly after returning from the 2004 Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival. I have no idea where it came from but my muse was definitely working. Again, it took me almost two years to get around to transcribing the recording and learning to play it. I played it every chance I got and included it on the live recorded A Rousing Good Time CD as well as one of the Ragtime Sampler CDs given to contestants in the West Coast Youth Ragtime Competition. Mimi Blais heard it and asked me for a copy in 2014 and has made it her own as only she can do. She also included a beautiful extended version on her 2015 Interlude CD. Thank you, Mimi. A Minor Entertainer (2007) by Jack Bradshaw As much as I love the original, like anyone teaching piano in the 1970’s, I’ve heard it way too many times to hear it with fresh ears. It bears repeating—just not by me. My arrangement changes the opening sections from major to minor to capture the bittersweet irony of Joplin’s belated recognition as a major figure in America’s musical history. Too bad it didn’t happen until more than a half century after his death. Credits Recorded September 2014 in Gilroy, CA Recording & Editing - Jack Bradshaw Mixing & Mastering - Dale Price of Sound Pro: www.electriccanyon.com Graphic Design & Layout - Lewis Motisher Photography - Jake Dahm Liner Notes - Jack Bradshaw Production - Disc Makers © 2015 Jack Bradshaw For additional information see my website at: http://www.bradshaw88.com