Ragtime is maybe the most misunderstood genre in American music. Arising in the 19th century in black urban communities, ragtime was one of the first truly indiginous music forms to arise in America - involving syncopation, seventh chords, back-beat and lots of other goodies that I'm not technically gifted enough to explain, it was essentially a form of very catchy dance music. Although popular for many years in vaudeville and medicine show circles, the first published form of ragtime was the, heh, Coon song.
Coon songs were basically songs written by both black and white ragtime composers which stereotyped, ridiculed and charicatured the lifestyles and society of black people. I suppose at the time a lot of people thought they were accurate representations of black society, but today they can only be percieved as bizarre and offensive. Still, you've got to allow for historical perspective - it's not as though they're white power songs, they're just hopelessly dated in their ideas.
One of the catchiest was Mary Irwin's (most famous as the first woman to kiss on film) "The Bully Song" from 1895. This song was later sanitised as the folk song "Bully of the Town, but here it is in it's original glory, recorded in 1907; you may shit yourself when you hear the lyrics...
At the turn of the century, however, a new form of ragtime arose now known as classic ragtime. The leading proponents of this were Joseph Lamb, James Scott, Tom Turpin and, most famously, Scott Joplin, who is maybe America's greatest composer. The main thing Scott Joplin and his ilk brought to the table was a classical influence - their rags are considerably more complex and harmonically interesting then coon songs or country rags. The first published rag by an African-American was Tom Turpin's Harlem Rag in 1897, but inarguably the quintessential ragtime composition, perhaps ever, is Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin from 1899. Joplin never lived long enough to record anything properly, but he did make piano rolls - programmed sheets of paper which record the pianist's playing for it then to played back on a player piano, motorised pianos like the ones you see in old Tom and Jerry cartoons. Anyway, here's him playing America's answer to Ode to Joy:
Scott Joplin is most famous to today's music lovers through the film, The Sting, where various compositions of his provided the soundtrack. Like most people in his position, Joplin caught syphilis, went mad and died in a mental hospital in 1917. The ragtime era produced few recording dues to both an inability to record it properly and the unwillingness for companies to record African-Americans but there are a few gems that made it through. Perhaps the greatest ragtime musician of the era was Vess L. Ossman, a virtuoso banjo player who, with his ragtime band, produced some surprisingly well recorded, extremely catchy and very intricate recordings. Here's a recording from 1909 of the classic St. Louis Tickle:
What happened to ragtime? One word: Jazz. Ragtime fell out of popularity and was almost completely replaced in public mind by jazz. Even old ragtime musicians dropped their original style in favour of jazzing it up. Jazz introduced improvisation, blues, energy and dispersed with the plantation associations that still plagued ragtime. By the mid 1920's, ragtime was all but gone in the public mind. However, ragtime compositions still popped up in the repetoire of jazz bands. Take Louis Armstrong's 1927 recording of the 1914 "12th Street Rag":
And ragtime also found its way into a new medium: the guitar. Blind Blake, arguably the greatest guitarist of all time, was known as the Kind of Ragtime Guitar and songs like "Southern Rag" from 1927 adapted the piano style to the 6-string:
So, that's ragtime for you!
Various recordings are available from this site:
http://www.archive.org/
Anyway, hang loose bloods!
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