Things were starting to look up for the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival- at least from a competition standpoint- as a new century arose. The contest was now firmly established as a Decatur, IL attraction, what with the perfect location (the newly-renamed Holiday Inn Select)...a venue where ragtime fans no longer had to worry about it raining on the parade.
What could go wrong?
We'll tell you later.
But first...let's talk about the 2000 version.
That year, 23 contestants weighed in (14 in the Regular Division, nine in the Junior Division); while eight JDs were trying to wrestle the division's crown away from the new kingpin, Adam Yarian, everybody in the RD group fought to get the newly-vacated title...left open because the then rules said that Brian Holland couldn't go after a fourth straight championship.
Two Reg Division contestants had never tasted the OTPP experience before: Barbara Curry and Michael Urban-Piette.
Meanwhile, John McElhaney ended a sixteen-year wait between berths in the contest (an event that underwent all sorts of changes since he last tried it in 1984...the biggest being the competition's move indoors in 1987).
One thing hadn't changed for Johnny Mac: He proved he was still RD semifinals material.
In the JD competition, Jerry Ailshie, Erin Long, and Ashley Leverenz were back to tussle with Adam Y. and Harrison Wade. But for 2000, they were joined by first-timers Will Best, Charles and Chris Korban, and the newest Danville (IL) discovery, Lauren Clayton.
When all was said and done, Harrison passed up Jerry (and Charles turned out to be the better Korban)...but Adam from Maryland was able to notch a third straight Junior Division championship.
Fourteen-year-old Adam did it...he punched his ticket into the contest's adult division.
Back in the adult-division wars, Mimi Blais was determined to leave no doubt that 2000 was her year...no questions asked.
The question was: "Who's gonna place second?"
At first, Michael Stalcup was running second...but he flamed out in the semifinals, and fell so far behind that Dan Mouyard, Marty Mincer, and Faye Ballard passed him up (with Faye taking second for herself at the end of the RD second round).
Well...if 2000 wasn't going to Mimi's year, would it be Faye's? (After all, when OTPP was still a one-division competition, Faye nearly ripped the crown away from Joybelle Squibb in 1976, the contest's second year.)
As it all turned out, Dan and the Two Martys (Mincer and Sammon) passed Faye up...but all four of 'em couldn't come out ahead of Mimi. (Marty S. placed second in the Regs.)
It all came down to dueling versions of "Kitten on the Keys:" Mimi's version was better than the rendition Marty M. brought home.
And no woman contestant has since snared the Regular Division's top prize.
Circumstances prevented Mimi from coming back to Decatur for the 2001 C&F...so that meant both division titles were there for the taking.
2001 was the year the Memorial Day weekend extravaganza boasted 24 contestants (sixteen RDs and eight JDs); seven pianists were new to the contest this time...and all but two were Regular Division performers.
David Feurzeig and Janet Bullock were two of 2001's first-timers; so were Al Roma (an American living in Germany at the time) and Andrew Barker (a Briton living in America back then).
Lauren's piano teacher, Bev Wolf, filled out an entry blank, too.
Bev was the instructor who also showed Ashley and Erin- as well as 1999 JD performer Marcie Hunt- the ropes.
Speaking of JD...it was a one-Korban year (Charles carried the family banner this time) and the first year Illinoisan Karah Gettleman and Iowan Sarah Davison (who grew up to become a Tennessean and help start a great band called High Road III) got in there.
I first met Sarah two years earlier, when I competed at the National Old-Time Country, Bluegrass, and Folk Music Festival and Contest (still held at that time in Avoca, IA). In 1999, the then sixteen-year-old grabbed that festival's ragtime piano championship...a title I'm told I almost won on my own first try.
Getting back to 2001...it looked as if Al was going to triumph on his first try. He boasted a four-point preliminary lead over David and the youngest of the RD performers, ol' Adam Y. But Adam Y. and Al R. lost ground in the division semifinals, and Dan went from a fourth-place tie with Faye to a second-place tie with Al...while David F. scooted to the top coming into the Reg finals.
OTPP Weekend 2001 turned out to have quite a few firsts:
*Harrison emerged victorious (his initial title) in the younger competition...in a year where the second-place and third-place JD finishers finally got awarded prize money, too.
*Sarah became the first female Junior Division contestant to receive prize money (she finished third while Will got second place).
*David couldn't hang on to the top Regular Division spot...and, instead,
Dan M. became the first OTPP contestant to follow up a JD title with a championship in the RDs. (Adam, Al, and Faye rounded out the RD Top Five.)
2001 was also the year Decatur's Holiday Inn Select went under new management.
This new management group decided to remodel the hotel...lobby, rooms, and all. And the danger was that the makeover wouldn't be done in time for 2002's Memorial Day weekend.
Plus, the group's members felt the Holiday Inn Select had room for just one big musical event per year. As a result, the new team decided to prop up the Central Illinois Jazz Festival and turn its back on the OTPP Contest.
The clincher came from the Decatur Convention and Visitors Bureau, a group that had been giving the Old-Time Music Preservation Association $2,000 per year to help with advertising the contest.
On the eve of the 2001 get-together, bureau officials told OMPA: "We're cutting you off!"
And so, for the first time in fifteen years, Ted Lemen and Co. needed a place for contestants to show their stuff on the 1883 Weber upright piano nicknamed "Moby Dink."
When we come back to take another look at the history of the OTPP soiree, we'll learn about the contest's next site.
I'm Jim Boston...thanks for reading this blog!
It's getting to be that time again...when ragtime musicians and their supporters gear up for the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival. And this year, the plot thickens.
The reason: After four decades of the event taking place in (as things turned out) four cities in Illinois (Monticello, Decatur, Peoria, and East Peoria), old-time piano's biggest competition (well, at least on American soil) begins a new chapter...on and around the campus of the University of Mississippi. This year's dates: 5-26/30-2016.
I won't get to go to Oxford, MS this time around. And the culprit is the cataract in my left eye. (It's going to have to be removed later this year or early in 2017, depending on when or if I'm able to receive a bonus from the plastics factory that currently employs me. And the eye-care clinic performing the surgery wants $1,500 up front- and the retina surgery I underwent on 12-14-2015 completely paid up- before an ophthalmologist can touch my left eyeball again.)
You bet I've got health insurance through my place of work.
It's just that, with its $1,500 deductible, the insurance is worthless when the staff at the eye clinic you trade with tells you: "We're going to have to shoot a laser into your eye."
Result: I've decided to retire from OTPP competition and focus on performing here in the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area.
I came back to this area on 3-29-1997, and as a result, I couldn't make the trip to Decatur that Memorial Day weekend (hadn't racked enough vacation time at my then-new gig as a data storage technician for an infotech firm).
So...I made gearing up for OTPP '98 one of my goals.
The 1997 Decatur experience featured an eighteen-player field (fourteen in the Regular Division and four in the Junior Division) in which Brian Holland grabbed the Traveling Trophy for the first time...and Noah Harmon beat out Mindy Dunkle on technical points for the JD title.
The next year, Noah, Mindy, and their fellow 1997 JD competitors John Clark and Neil Blaze had to fight off seven new younger contestants: Kara Huber, Peter Segrist, Joe King, Katrina Kappes, Noah's younger brother Zack, and two names we'd hear from during the decade to come: An Illinoisan named Harrison Wade and a 12-year-old Marylander named Adam Yarian.
Meanwhile, the adult field saw a 50% increase in size over its 1997 counterpart. First of all, Patrick Kelly, Theresa Milhoan, Bruce Walker, a Tennessean named Michael Stalcup, and a Kentuckian by the name of Allen Dale (maybe you've seen Allen's YouTube offerings) entered the OTPP wars for the first time. And then Mimi Blais, Will Hahn, and I came back after a year's absence. (Gale Foehner, Arlene Stoller, and defending RD finalists Adam Downey and Steve Kummer were no-shows this time around.)
To top it all off, Floridian Dorothy Baldwin came back to C&F competition after a nine-year gulf...while Noah's and Zack's dad (and Linda's hubby) John ended an eleven-year sabbatical from going after the Big Loot.
Not since the Kaizers in the middle 1980s had a whole family tried to grab the top OTPP prizes. As it all shook out in '98 for the Harmons of Winneconne, WI, it was Mother and Oldest Son Know Best. (Noah lost his Junior Division crown...but he still outplayed Zack. What's more, Linda snared a place in the Reg Top Ten...leaving John behind.)
With Mimi back to perform her brand of sorcery on the contest piano ("Moby Dink," a Weber upright built in 1883), she and Brian made it a two-person RD race. And Theresa (a teacher from Illinois) initially looked like a Top Five pianist.
As Theresa flamed out in the Reg Division semifinals, Mimi broke a preliminary-round tie between herself and Brian to take a one-point semifinal lead...that evaporated when Brian aced his RD finals test, thanks to killer versions of "I've Found a New Baby" and "Handful of Keys." The Man from Indiana stood tallest again, while Mimi, Marty Mincer, John Skaggs, and Bill Edwards rounded out the division's money winners.
The biggest news in Decatur that May came in the JDs. Neil was hoping 1998 would be his year...but it actually was the year old-time piano fans found out about Adam Yarian's greatness.
A new force had emerged.
Instead of 32 pianists (the record-setting 1998 total; the old mark was 31 in 1984) duking it out, 25 showed up in the Holiday Inn Select's green room on 5-29-1999. Of the previous year's newcomers in the RDs, only Michael and Bruce came back for 1999 in their quest to prevent Brian from becoming the fourth pianist to get three straight Reg championships. In addition, only one newcomer enlisted in that division: Tom Cortese. And Marty Sammon (the JD champ in 1994 and 1995) made it into the ranks of the RDs this time around- his first contact with OTPP pressure in four years.
By contrast, the Danville Connection made its debut in the Junior Division bracket.
"The Danville What?" Well, a Danville, IL pianist and teacher named Bev Wolf started getting some of her students into OTPP; the first ones were 1999 combatants Ashley Leverenz, Erin Long, and Marcie Hunt.
Fellow Illinoisans Jerry Ailshie and Amanda Benoit joined Marcie, Ashley, and Erin as contest newcomers in the JDs for the last (or next-to-last, depending on your point of view) year of the 20th Century.
Jerry outpointed all the other newcomers (Tom included!), but it just wasn't enough to keep Adam Y. out of the driver's seat in the younger division.
Meanwhile, the 1999 Regular Division race was looking like the one from the year before...except that Mimi was clearly ahead of Brian during the first two rounds. (There'd be no stopping her this time, and she'd bring the $1,200 top prize back to Montreal, QC.)
"Oh, yeah?" said Brian.
With another nearly flawless final round (it included "Dallas Blues" and Scott Joplin's "New Era Rag"), Brian put his name next to those of Dorothy Herrold, Mark Haldorson, and Ron Trotta.
He closed out an era and became, at 27, the youngest three-time undefeated RD champ ever.
And so, the next question became: "With Brian Holland retiring unbeaten, who's gonna rule the Regular Division now?"
Stay with us and we'll find out.
It was 2014 all over again.
Eleven Regular Division contestants at this year's World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival.
Ten semifinal spots to fill in Regular Division competition.
What a decision for contest judges Paul Asaro, Patrick Holland, and Raymond Schwarzkopf to make. [And it was deja vu all over again for Paul, who teamed up a year ago with Brian Holland (no kin to Patrick) and Terry Parrish at the judges' table at Illinois' Embassy Suites East Peoria.]
Somebody would have to be left out of the Sunday competition at the 41st annual event.
This time, that somebody would be...
Nobody!
For the second straight year, all eleven OTPP RD hopefuls would compete for five spots in the Memorial Day weekend event's Final Five.
The first of the eleven to go up to bat was that lawyer from Los Angeles (no, not Robert Kardashian)...Adam Yarian. In the Reg semifinals, OTPP's first three-time Junior champ cum three-time Regular kingpin followed "Echoes of Spring" with what turned out to be the first of two versions of "King Chanticleer," the Nat Ayer romp that's become known in ragtime circles as just about the fastest number you can play.
Will Bennett (not just one of two Michiganders in the competition, but also one of two to come out of the city of Ann Arbor!) kept it 1930s by turning in two more numbers from that decade: "Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails" and "Cheek to Cheek."
You thought Walter Murphy had the only unusual take on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony? Check out David Cavalari's version- it's now up there on YouTube.
For his other second-round selection, the man from the Twin Cities suburb of Burnsville, MN kept it interesting (and kept it rockin') with "Sing, Sing, Sing."
Next up was Michael J. Winstanley, from the Philadelphia, PA area...and for his return to the Regular Division semis, he came up with "Cotton Balls" and Jelly Roll Morton's "The Perfect Rag." (The latter was played three years earlier by another native Pennsylvanian, Martin Spitznagel...who's since moved over to the Washington, DC area.)
John Remmers (the second half of the Ann Arbor, MI duo) took to the stage next, then put the contest's 2010s-era Charles Walter studio piano through "The Crimson Rambler" and "Original Rags," the Scott Joplin number that got a boost when fellow composer Charles N. Daniels published it.
Then came the defending RD champion, Ethan Uslan...University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign letterman's sweater and all.
Ethan's semifinal bid consisted of "Oskee Wow-Wow" and the much more familiar "Chicago (That Toddlin' Town)."
I didn't get to watch the New Jerseyite-turned-North Carolinian work those two numbers onstage (only while he was rehearsing)...because I had to rehearse as well.
And after a break in the competition came a certain Iowan-turned-Nebraskan-turned-Iowan-turned-Nebraskan.
What's more, this Iowan-turned-Nebraskan-turned-Iowan-turned Nebraskan still had an axe to grind.
After being told the night before by one longtime C&F fan that he couldn't follow along with my version of "Hardhearted Hannah" and then told half a day later by another longtime contest fan that "Jim, you have no rhythm," I most certainly had an axe to grind.
So I did my grinding with "St. Louis Blues," the longest tune I've ever competed with; and "Barney Google," the shortest OTPP competition number I've ever turned in.
Felt really comfortable up there.
Darn right it felt great to, after all these years, be able to hold my own alongside (or against, depending on your point of view) the other contestants...especially old-time piano's big guns.
One of those big guns was next...1991 Reg titleholder Bill Edwards.
The man from Virginia (by way of California, Colorado, and the District of Columbia) still had a chance to be one of the division's Last Five Standing...a very good chance, what with "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" (Bill's own dip into the 1930s waters) and "That's a-Plenty."
And afterwards came the biggest gun in old-time piano.
Adam Swanson showed why he's the genre's biggest gun by knocking out his incomparable version of "Maple Leaf Rag" and by taking his own dip in the 1930s pool, "Forty Second Street."
As things turned out, the last three RD performers to go up in the 2015 division semis started competing in Ted Lemen's claim to fame as youngsters (a la Adam Y.), and that meant Pennsylvanian-turned-Marylander Dan Mouyard got the next set...which he used to mount two of his old standbys, "Snowy Morning Blues" and the first of two "Charleston Rag" renditions in this year's title test.
Faye Ballard (from Champaign, IL) rounded out the Regular Division semifinal competition for 2015...and old-time piano's First Lady followed "Puttin' on the Ritz" with OTPP Weekend 2015's second version of "Charleston Rag." (Did you know that Eubie Blake wrote the number in 1899, the year he turned sixteen?)
Well, Paul, Patrick, and Raymond had a real decision to make; and as Ted put it: "The competition's getting better every year." Another thing: Of the eleven RD hopefuls for 2015, eight had made the division's finals at least once apiece. (John, Michael J., and Will were the exceptions.)
And of those eight past finalists, five went on to win the whole ball of wax. And that quintet had racked up twelve of the forty RD titles coming into 2015.
Lots of audience members probably would've wanted their money back if a Michigander-turned-Texan-turned-Iowan-turned-Coloradan-turned-Marylander hadn't earned his way back into the Big Money.
The Embassy Suites East Peoria crowd did get its money's worth, for Adam S. got back to the Big Money after five years away from competition (three of those years teaming up with Ted to emcee the whole thing).
Last year, if you played your way into the Reg finals, one of your last two selections had to have the name of a color in the title. This time around, the wild-card piece needed to include the name of a food item (or the name of a beverage) in the title.
One of just two previously undefeated-and-retired RD champions to take advantage of the biggest rule change for what had been billed as the final version of OTPP, Adam G. Swanson showed he was Adam G. Swanson, what with him nuking "French Pastry Rag" and the second "King Chanticleer" heard in competition in East Peoria.
AGS' biggest rival (none other than Ethan) was the next to jump on ol' Charles Walter...and the man from Charlotte, NC didn't disappoint, either. He reeled 'em in with "Ramona" and kept 'em in by unleashing "Beer Barrel Polka."
Then it was...Dan's turn.
The same Dan Mouyard who set up the contest's current Website, www.oldtimepianocontest.org, found his way to the money line three years after his last turn as a competitor. And in this year's finals in the RD's, he turned to one of his old standbys ("Honeysuckle Rose") and followed that up with his food tune, "Blackberry Blossom."
Three finalists down...two to go.
Would one of them be Bill, who'd taken home prize money twenty times coming into OTPP 41.0?
Well, one of the remaining finalists was Adam Y.
The other previously unbeaten-and-retired RD titleholder (the youngest to accomplish that until Adam S. came along) showed 'em with "Pork and Beans," followed by "Bach Up to Me."
This left one more slot to go. Who in the world would walk away with the fifth check at the end of the competition? If not "Perfessor" Bill, would it be Michael J. or John R. or Will?
How about Faye?
Would it be...me?
No way!
David C. ran the anchor leg.
The Virginian-turned-Minnesotan made it two finals appearances in two years; and just like in 2014, he stuck in some numbers that were off the beaten path. Taking a page from his prelims playlist, David came up with "The Watermelon Trust" and "Bonehead Blues."
Meanwhile, watching the festivities all this time- and taking notes- were Floridians John and Kimberly Santamaria, heads of a group trying to bring OTPP magic to the Tampa-St. Petersburg area. If the group from the Sunshine State could pull it off, the C&F would be held in February instead of May (the better to attract tourists).
Two other groups have expressed interest in taking over the contest- a group from Oxford, MS (headed up by former contest judge Ian Hominick, who'd like to bring OTPP to his place of work, the University of Mississippi) and one from Franklin, TN.
Only the Tampa Bay group sent anyone to Greater Peoria this past Memorial Day weekend...and here's what Kimberly and John saw at the end of Regular Division competition:
Dan took home $250- and fifth place.
David jumped over the 2001 and 2003 RD champ (who also took the 1996 JD crown) and took fourth place, pocketing $400.
Third place- and $550- went to Adam Y., the 1998-2000 Junior Division titleholder who went on to top the Regular Division in 2004, 2005, and 2006.
And the result would ensure that somebody would tack on a fourth Reg championship.
First place meant $1,350 and possession of Ted's Trophy...this time, for good instead of having the statue for just a year.
Second place? Well, that would make somebody $800 richer.
It was close again (okay...maybe not as close as it was in 2008, when the margin of victory was a single point)...but Ethan (tops in 2007, 2012, and 2014) watched Adam S. hoist the Ted Lemen Traveling Trophy one more time...just like in 2008, 2009, and 2010.
And all of that on top of his triumphs in the J's in 2003, 2004, and 2006.
Plus his 2013 victory in OTPP's New Rag Contest.
To say nothing of his teaming up with the ol' "Perfessor" to snag the very first OTPP Duet Contest championship.
At any rate...if this 41st edition of the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival was THE final one, the event sure went out with a bang. (Okay...a BANG!)
If not...will Adam Swanson have to give the Big Trophy back?
All we can do is stay tuned.
