A tale of two ragtime festivals (Part 2)

Just going on how the Saturday session of this year's Ragtime to Riches Festival went, I had high hopes about the Sunday leg- the 7-14-2019 turn at Omaha's First Central Congregational United Church of Christ.

In a nutshell, we didn't get the kind of crowd that assembled at the Pink Poodle Steakhouse the day before.

But all four of those who paid to come to see the First Central leg of R to R 2019 still had fun.

At 2:00 PM (Central time), I was supposed to give a workshop. 

I gave it, all right...but it wasn't the one I hoped to conduct.

Ever since last year, I've been wanting to showcase some of the work of four ragtime composers: Sadie Koninsky (1879-1952), Charlotte Blake (1885-1979), Julia Niebergall (1886-1968), and May Aufderheide (1888-1972).

I brought notes with me.

Yours truly forgot to bring sheet music.

So...I went the autobiographical route instead. (Next year, I want to build my concert around works like Sadie's "Eli Green's Cakewalk," Julia's "Hoosier Rag," May's "Dusty," and Charlotte's "That Poker Rag." And leave the workshop to another performer.)

Speaking of concert...Faye Ballard was the first to give one at this year's R to R.

Hers was a workshop in itself; the Champaign, IL native started her concert with favorites "The Entertainer," "Puttin' on the Ritz," "Sailin' Away on the Henry Clay," and "It Had to Be You."

The former University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana office manager put her tribute to ragdom's Big Three smack dab in the middle: Scott Joplin's "Pineapple Rag," James Scott's "Frog Legs Rag," and Joseph Lamb's "Cleopatra Rag." 

Faye went ahead and did one of May's followups to "Dusty" ("The Thriller") and followed it up with Adaline Shepherd's "Pickles and Peppers." "Raggity Rag" and "12th Street Rag" closed Faye's sixth R to R concert out.

Faye's mom, Erma, gave me the inspiration for my own concert.

Last year, Erma wanted to hear "Angry," a 1925 hit for a singer-pianist named Art Gillham, from me. I didn't have the sheet music with me at the time.

Fixed that here in 2019.

Matter of fact, my version of "Angry" led off a concert consisting of tunes whose titles have just one word apiece: Fellow 1925 hits "Cecilia" and "Collegiate," two compositions from 1927 ("Chloe" and a tune that somebody should've had a hit record with, "Beautiful"), 1920's "Margie," and two rags- Nellie M. Stokes' 1906 "Snowball" and another piece Scott J. came up with in 1902, "Cleopha." 

I felt better about my concert than my workshop, I'll tell you that. I'm glad the concert worked out.

Marty Mincer accompanying Buster Keaton's 1920 short, "One Week," worked out great.

We were hoping Erma and Faye would come back for the 7:00 PM showing of "One Week," and Marty vamped for a while so that the Two Ballards could see the film in its entirety.

Oh, well...

But the audience enjoyed "One Week..." as well as Marty's handling of the music.

The apple farmer from Hamburg, IA had time left in his set to fire off his version of "The Entertainer" before he took R to R 15.0 out in style with "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

Well...now it's back to the drawing board to get the word out about Ragtime to Riches 2020.

Hope you can make it!

Now that's more like it!

For a while, the 2018 Ragtime to Riches Festival looked as if it was going to be a bust.

Only six people showed up to each of the last two early-July old-time piano celebrations here in the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area. 

Fifty chairs were set up for spectators in Memorial Hall at the Big O's First Central Congregational United Church of Christ. The stage was set up with the greatest of care. 

The doors to Memorial Hall at Omaha's oldest currently-practicing Protestant church were opened at 1:00 PM (Central time) on 7-8-2018.

Nobody came.

About ten minutes into the festival's open-piano session, I went over to the church's turn-of-the-20th-Century Anderson & Newton upright to go over the tunes I wanted to do as part of the event's workshop: "Four Ragtime Composers You Might Not Have Known About."

Well, 2:00 PM came...the very time the workshop was to begin.

Still, nobody came.

2:10 PM came and went. So did 2:20 PM.

And yet...nobody came.

Not even the two featured performers I was scheduled to play alongside. 

Finally, at 2:31 PM, one of my fellow members of another local church (St. Paul United Methodist) walked inside First Central's Memorial Hall.

Marc May and I shot the breeze for a while as he and I wondered if this was going to be it...despite all the work to get the word out about the fourteenth annual Omaha ragfest.

One thing was for sure: The workshop had to get canceled. 

Then...BOOM!

Between 2:45 PM and 3:10 PM, twelve people came inside...including featured performers Faye Ballard and Diana Stein.

At 3:05 PM (five minutes later than scheduled), I went up to bat first with R to R 2018's initial concert.

This time, instead of using songs whose titles include the names of states of the US (last year's personal R to R fare), I went for some tunes that were in the Number One spot on the various US pop music charts on Independence Day. And the first number in the concert was a ditty from 1892, "Throw Him Down, McCloskey," written by J.W. Kelly and recorded by a man named Charles Marsh. (Charles was one of music's first one-hit wonders: His wax cylinder made it up to the Number One spot on 6-18-1892 and stayed there for three weeks.)

My next number turned out to be Tin Pan Alley's first blockbuster hit: "After the Ball," the Charles K. Harris tune that sold six million pieces of sheet music once it hit the streets in 1892...and became a smash recording the next year when George J. Gaskin put his lips to it (and made it Number One for ten weeks, beginning on 4-29-1893). 

Those were the only tunes where I used sheet music.

The remaining eight songs in my set were all done from memory..."Golden Slippers," "Sweet Rosie O'Grady," "Hello, Ma Baby," "A Bird in a Gilded Cage," "The Preacher and the Bear," "Sweet Georgia Brown," and two from outside the 1890-1929 period: "Sentimental Journey" and "I Can't Stop Loving You." 

Well, the crowd liked it. (Whew!)

Had to cut my set short so that Diana (a Memphis, TN native who, six weeks earlier, was one of the first finalists in the newly-created Senior Division competition at Mississippi's World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival) could make her Ragtime to Riches debut on time...4:15 PM. 

Actually, Diana launched her set at 4:10 PM...when she took to the church's 2015 Yamaha grand piano.

It was great not only to see her again (first time since the 2012 OTPP Contest), but also to hear her again. The audience really enjoyed Diana's robust, powerful blend of rags, stride, boogie woogie, and blues...and she kicked it all off with two Scott Joplin numbers: "Magnetic Rag" and "Pineapple Rag." (Diana added two more of Scott's compositions later on in her thirteen-tune set: "Solace" and the one that kicked syncopation into high gear, "Maple Leaf Rag.")

Diana's versions of "Nickel in the Slot," "Singin' in the Rain," "Monkey Strut," and "Memories of You" stood out, too, as did her version of James Scott's "Climax Rag." 

The community-college instructor closed out her concert with two Fats Waller tunes: The famous "Ain't Misbehavin'" and the not-as-well-known "Viper Strut."

Diana, what a debut you put on! You tore that Memorial Hall down!

At 7:00 PM, OTPP's contest coordinator kicked off this year's R to R anchor leg by firing off two medleys- one consisting of the theme songs of America's five Armed Forces branches, the other medley devoted to George M. Cohan's music. 

Staying at the Yamaha grand piano, Faye changed the music to "Puttin' on the Ritz."

She likened her set to a party...and what a party it was!

To substantiate that, the Champaign, IL native went back to the medley well to join "Beer Barrel Polka" with "Too Fat Polka." And Faye showed two of ragtime's Big Three composers some love by doing James' "Frog Legs Rag" and Joseph Lamb's "Cleopatra Rag." Plus, the former University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana office manager put in old favorites like "It Had to Be You," "Mack the Knife," "Harlem Rag," and "Sailin' Away on the Henry Clay."

Faye's one of the first people to tell you that the Illinois-turned-Mississippi get-together is, at its core, a cutting contest. And as a case in point, she played her famous version of one of the rags Diana put in her own set: Luckey Roberts' "Pork and Beans."

After playing ten ditties, Faye turned it over to one of this year's C&F Junior Division finalists: Rich Bliesener, a thirteen-year-old who lives in and goes to school in Burlington, IA. (Rich's number was "Humpty Dumpty," a rag written in 1914 by Charley Straight...one of the coauthors of "Mockingbird Rag.")

Faye's fifteen-tune set ended with "Charleston Rag" and "12th Street Rag." 

And then...the fun spilled over into the afterglow party, where Rich and Faye took to the two pianos. 

In fact, Faye and Rich made this year's R to R afterglow the most successful one in the festival's history.

What's more, the Great Plains Ragtime Society took in $90 in ticket sales...a 50% increase from 2017.

Those of you who came to R to R 14.0, well...all I can say is: 

Thanks for picking this festival up off the floor...and thanks for bringing the FUN! 

It's all about the fun!

I was so afraid that nobody was going to attend the 2017 Ragtime to Riches Festival. 

As things turned out, the 7-9-2017 get-together drew six paying customers to Omaha's First Central Congregational United Church of Christ (same as on 7-10-2016).

The difference was...everybody had tons of fun this year!  

Faye Ballard came back for her fourth R to R experience...and this time, fellow Illinoisan Nathan Beasley came along for the ride. (He'd just gotten through conquering the Junior Division competition at the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival, the Oxford, MS event where Faye serves as contest coordinator.) 

This year's activities (everything took place at First Central's Memorial Hall) got started with a bang...with Nathan and Faye kicking off the 1:00-2:00 PM open-piano session.

(In the meantime, while the twosome were working out Luckey Roberts' "Pork and Beans," I was still trying to set up chairs so that people would know that an actual festival was going to happen.) 

Our first R to R patron for 2017 came in during the open-piano session...and was blown away by Nathan's playing. 

Now, if another function at her church hadn't taken her away from First Central that afternoon, she would've loved the rest of the thirteenth incarnation of the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area's annual old-time piano celebration. 

At 2:00 PM, this year's workshop began...and it focused on the woman who penned "I Love You Truly" and 174 other songs.

If you've forgotten about (or if you haven't heard of) Carrie Jacobs Bond, you're in a lot of company.

Bond (8-11-1862/12-28-1946) didn't even think of trying to get a career going until she was 31...when the catalyst was the drive to turn to something to support herself and her young son Fred. 

Her first husband, E.J. Smith, abandoned her in 1887- after seven years of marriage. Then Carrie's next hubby, Frank Lewis Bond, died early in 1895 of an accident that a child caused by knocking Frank over and causing FLB to hit his own head on some pavement. (That child and some other kids were throwing snowballs and roughhousing in the Iron River, MI neighborhood where Carrie and Frank lived at the time.)

On top of that, Frank- a doctor by trade- was out of a job when the local mines shut down. And when that happened, CJB wanted to be the family breadwinner...but Hubby told Wifey to put that dream away. (Never mind the fact that when our twosome got hitched in 1887, Frank encouraged Carrie's songwriting efforts.) 

With Frank under six feet of dirt, Carrie had to borrow some loot to move to Chicago, IL, where she rented an apartment building that served as the first music-publishing headquarters for her and Fred.

And then there were CJB's frequent bouts with rheumatism...bouts that kept her bedridden for weeks (if not months) and put her into a position where Bond's tenants ended up looking after her.

Those health issues caused her to have to sell off all her belongings until she and little Fred were down to the family piano. 

Without those 88s, the two visitors one of CJB's neighbors asked her to look after one day in 1900-01 wouldn't have found- and played- "I Love You Truly." 

And Carrie's career wouldn't have taken off...to the point where she not only became the first woman to make it big writing pop tunes, but also the first woman to take in a million dollars from composing ditties.  

Plus: I would've had to build my 2017 R to R workshop around somebody else.  

The workshop ended early (2:48 PM, Central time)...and that gave Faye plenty of time to get ready to be the first performer to give a 2017 Ragtime to Riches concert. 

It was Ragtime 101 as the Champaign, IL native took to the church's 2015 Yamaha grand and launched her concert with "The Entertainer" and followed that up with Tom Turpin's "Harlem Rag," the first published rag an African-American composer ever came up with.

Next were three Ballard favorites: "Sailin' Away on the Henry Clay," "Mack the Knife," and "It Had to Be You." (Faye told the crowd that these were examples of songs ragtimers and stride pianists back in the first thirty or forty years of the 20th Century might've used in "cutting contests," where performers tried to top each other for audience applause.)

After the newly-retired office manager offered "Puttin' on the Ritz," she got back to rags...beginning with Scott Joplin's "The Cascades" and Irene Giblin's most famous number, "Chicken Chowder." 

Faye's thirteen-tune set closed out with James P. Johnson's "Carolina Shout" and Zez Confrey's crowd favorite, "Dizzy Fingers." 

And then...seventeen-year-old Nathan came up to bat.

He nuked it on that same Yamaha grand piano. 

The Eldorado, IL native had the audience going right from the start, kicking off his concert with Eubie Blake's "Charleston Rag" and Andy Razaf's and Fats Waller's "Honeysuckle Rose."   

Just as Faye doubled up on Scott Joplin, Nathan did, too, offering "Maple Leaf Rag" and "Pineapple Rag..." in addition to "Swipesy," where Scott collaborated with one of his proteges, Arthur Marshall.

The Eldorado High School student added another Eubie Blake number along the way: "Fizz Water." And his superb command of the 88s continued, with tunes such as Joseph Lamb's "Bohemia," the Creamer and Layton tune "After You've Gone," Harry Belding's "Good Gravy Rag," and W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues..." the first published blues song ever composed. 

Faye- one of otherwise largely self-taught Nathan's mentors- jumped in to turn "Pork and Beans" into a duet (this time, with both pianists working the Yamaha). She jumped back into the set right after his "St. Louis Blues" to team up with him on "Give My Regards to Broadway" and fellow George M. Cohan standout "You're a Grand Old Flag." 

Beasley and Ballard were a hit together.

And it seemed like a great time to jump in and make it a trio.

So...I sneaked back over to the church's early-20th-Century Anderson & Newton upright (the workshop piano) and joined Nathan and Faye (both of them still at the Yamaha grand) for "Beer Barrel Polka" and "Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey."

There it was...the Three B's.

Nathan consummated his conquest of R to R 2017 with his set's seventeenth tune, a standout version of "Ol' Man River."

It's up on www.youtube.com (along with some more efforts of his, Faye's, and mine)...and Nathan's version of "River" has proven highly popular. (Check it out if you haven't seen it yet!)

Well...at 7:00 PM, I ended up running the anchor leg of this year's Ragtime to Riches Festival.

And, thanks to a sore left pinky that I received a cut a couple of days earlier when I went in to rehearse at First Central Congregational, I kept threatening to drop the baton.

At first. 

Even with a couple of bandages covering the cut on that left pinky, I wanted to keep in mind that I didn't want that cut to hamper the only thing I've been successfully able to copy from ragtime great Del Wood: Her sock action on the keys.

I wanted to lead the audience through a musical tour of America...but I thought I'd have time for only twelve of these fifty states.

So...I started out with a 1923 waltz from a Missourian named Charlotte Brackelsberg, "Carry Me Today, Away Back to Iowa," then went to a 1902 Paul Dresser number called "In Dear Old Illinois." (I ended up eventually jazzing up both tunes.)

Then things started to get more comfortable as my set progressed through "Back Home Again in Indiana," "Beautiful Ohio," and a 1913 Ballard MacDonald-Harry Carroll collaboration called "There's a Girl in the Heart of Maryland (with a Heart That Belongs to Me)."

Even a 1967 hit for the Bee Gees, "(The Lights Went Out in) Massachusetts," got into my set. (Well...the crowd didn't mind.) 

Had fun with "Tennessee Waltz," "Mississippi Mud," "California, Here I Come," and a 1919 song written by the team of Dorothy Terriss and Ethel Bridges, "Hawaiian Lullaby."

By then, it was time to wrap things up...and I didn't want to go into overtime, knowing darned good and well it was time to "get everybody back to Nebraska."

Well, anyway...the six people who heard me play gave me the green light to perform the song I thought I'd have to cut out: "North to Alaska." 

The whole thing ended with a 1915 Ray Sherwood-Bert Rule ditty called "I'm Goin' Back to Old Nebraska (Goodbye)."  

Everybody DID have tons of fun at this year's R to R celebration...especially you-know-who. 

Something Nathan told me just before R to R 13.0 got under way really helped: "I performed at an event where just three people showed up. And I still had a lot of fun."  

Faye, Nathan, and I are coming back to First Central next July...and we hope to see you there, too!

I've Got Some Really Good News and Some Very Bad News

First, the very bad news:

Only six tickets were sold for this year's Ragtime to Riches Festival, held at Omaha's First Central Congregational United Church of Christ. (Last year, the Great Plains Ragtime Society sold thirteen ducats.)

Now here's the really good news:

All the attendees really enjoyed themselves at this past Sunday's event.

Admittedly, 7-10-2016 was a scorcher here in the River City. (7-12-2015- the day of the previous R to R Festival- turned out to be hot outside here in Nebraska's largest city, too.) 

Well, some things were different about the twelfth R to R. One of the differences was...a new workshop presenter. 

2016 represented Faye Ballard's first year of giving a Ragtime to Riches workshop. This year's topic was one that one of the 2006 performers, Nan Bostick (one of the best ragtime historians who ever lived), touched on: "Women in Ragtime." 

And like Nan's presentation from a decade ago, Faye's presentation hit the spot. 

The Champaign, IL native presented a dozen rags by women composers. (Did you know that at least 500 women wrote one rag or more apiece during the 1899-1917 period?) 

For me, some of the standouts in Faye's workshop were "The Allen Glide," written by Louise Allen in 1915; "Chicken Chowder," penned a decade earlier by a St. Louis teenager named Irene Giblin; Adeline Shepard's rousing "Pickles and Peppers;" "The Thriller," a 1909 May Aufderheide rag; and a 1907 number, Julia Lee Niebergall's "Hoosier Rag."

When it came time to change from workshop presenter to concert performer, Faye switched the focus to some of ragtime's men composers. First up was "The Harlem Rag," the Tom Turpin piece that was the first published rag written by an African-American composer; then 1899's "Original Rags," the first of five Scott Joplin numbers the recently-retired office manager from Central Illinois played at this year's R to R. 

Faye didn't leave the other two members of ragtime's Big Three behind; she turned in James Scott's "Frog Legs Rag" and Joseph Lamb's "Ragtime Nightingale."

Then she gave two examples of what rag pianists would play in the "cutting contests" of that 1899-1917 period: "It Had to Be You" and "Mack the Knife," both of which actually were written in the 1920s...long after the Ragtime Era ended. 

Faye wrapped it all up by coming up with a fine, fine version of "Twelfth Street Rag." 

I was scheduled to go up at 4:15 PM (Central time)...but I ended up deciding to start my own concert at 4:30 PM after helping Marty Mincer get set up for the anchor leg of R to R 2016. (We'll take a look at the anchor leg later!)

Actually...my turn at bat had a head start, preceding the workshop by ten minutes, the better to help out a festival fan who needed to attend her oldest grandson's birthday party. 

So I wrapped up the festival's open-piano session with my first two concert selections: "In the Good Old Summertime" and "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans."

Once the clock ticked 4:30 PM, I picked my own concert thread back up and continued to focus on tunes I'd done in competition at the event Faye serves as its coordinator: The World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival.

Mindful of the fact that the Illinois-turned-Mississippi competition started out as a fundraiser for the Monticello (IL) Railway Museum, and thinking about how contestants initially had to choose a rail-related song among their selections, I offered up "I've Been Workin' on the Railroad..." one of just two numbers I'd been able to play as a finalist (the year was 1994).

In addition, George Giefer's 1899 winner "Who Threw the Overalls in Mrs. Murphy's Chowder?" worked out fine (well, at least the audience thought so); so did my closer, "In My Merry Oldsmobile."

This concert included three rags: Charles Hunter's 1899 "Tickled to Death," W.C. Polla's 1904 "Funny Folks," and E. Warren Furry's only rag of consequence, his 1902 "Robardina Rag."

And this machine operator from here in Omaha (by way of Des Moines, IA) called an audible, replacing would-be selection "Grand March (from 'Aida')" with "Take Your Girlie to the Movies (If You Can't Make Love at Home)."

Speaking of movies...the R to R anchor leg was a movie. 

For the first time in R to R history, we'd show a silent film. In this case, it was Harold Lloyd's 1920 winner "Get Out and Get Under." 

And instead of giving a conventional concert, Marty was in town to cue the movie. 

With Marty (the apple farmer from Hamburg, IA) providing the DVD, some friends from the church I go to providing a DVD projector, and First Central itself coming up with a DVD player, we were ready to go. 

We didn't even need a screen.

The DVD projector went on top of the church's turn-of-the-20th-Century Anderson & Newton upright piano and was aimed at one of the blank walls at the church's Memorial Hall.

That setup worked out fine. 

Marty's accompaniment (on the church's turn-of-the-21st-Century Yamaha grand piano) was right on. (He even threw some post-1920 wrinkles in there, and also pulled out a song from 1962- "Puff, the Magic Dragon-" during a scene where Harold was lighting up a cigarette.)

"Get Out and Get Under" was some kind of hilarious. 

Now if we'd been able to get more people to come to First Central this past Sunday. 

I'm thinking of some projects that can get more people (especially people here in the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area) to check out the R to R Festival...and help keep old-time piano alive.

If you've got any suggestions, feel free to pass them along. (Nope...giving up isn't an option!)

It's time for some really good news and some very GOOD news.

Who Said You Can't Play a Rag on the Violin?

If that's what you believe, you should've come to Omaha's First Central Congregational United Church of Christ on 7-12-2015...the day of the eleventh annual Ragtime to Riches Festival.

More about that later.

But first of all...it started with a heckler.

He came into the church's Memorial Hall at about 1:30 PM (Central time); he announced that he was trying to cool off. (It was 95 degrees Fahrenheit here in Omaha at that time that Sunday.)

At that time, Nick Holle (who codirected the 2012 documentary movie "The Entertainers"), Faye Ballard (one of the movie's stars), Daniel Souvigny (old-time piano's newest star), Danny's mom Vicky, and Marc May (nope, football fans, not the one from ESPN; I'm talking about a local free-lance photographer I play alongside in our church's praise band) were in the building with me.

Daniel (one of Faye's students, by the way) was warming up on both R to R pianos- that battle-tested turn-of-the-20th-Century Anderson & Newton upright as well as a brand-new, 2015 Yamaha grand brought in to replace the church's 1920s Mason & Hamlin grand.

Heckler heard Daniel go to town on one piano after the other...then wondered out loud: "Who's that?" 

The question-and-answer session continued after Vicky, Faye, and Daniel left to get a bite to eat. Eventually, the questions began to get personal. (One of those was directed at me after Heckler took a look at the cover of one of my CDs: "Did you lose weight?") 

Yes, I did. I'd lost weight since December of 2011...when my profile picture was taken. 

Take a look at that profile pic. It was snapped at an antiques shop in Omaha's Old Market.
The store had concrete walls, and I was in the Old Market on a cold day...and concrete walls just don't do a good job of keeping the cold out.

To beat all of that, I had on five layers of clothing.

Too bad Mr. Heckler couldn't think about that.  

And the Man Who Wanted to Beat the Heat was becoming the Smart Aleck in the Room.

So...it became 1:55 PM. In five minutes, R to R 11.0 would officially begin. 

Heckler hadn't made up his mind yet.

I told him: "You can either stay and pay the $10 (admission) or you can leave." 

Mr. Smart Aleck left the church.

After Mr. Jerk (well, that's what somebody else called him!) left First Central, an audience began to build...and, at 2:15 PM, Ragtime to Riches 2015 began with a workshop about how Tin Pan Alley worked in the 1920s. 

This year's workshop went more smoothly than the 2014 effort...only because, this time around, I buckled down and prepared so that I wouldn't need to keep looking at my note cards.

I didn't want to look like a dork.

In preparing for R to R's 2015 workshop, I went back and reread my post about last year's Ragtime to Riches ("The Tenth Time Around!")...and realized I'd skipped a decade. (In 2014, I talked about the Alley's 1900-1909 period...and I promised that the 2015 workshop would focus on 1910-1919.)

Oops!

So...I went ahead and spotlighted the Roaring Twenties in this year's workshop...and I'd pick up the Taft-Wilson years- okay, the bulk of the Taft years plus the lion's share of the Wilson years- during the Omaha event's first concert (at 3:00 PM, right on the nose). 

As things turned out, it all fit nicely. After all, the audience found out that the 1920-1929 period was the most prolific decade in Tin Pan Alley history (all because composers and performers alike wanted to come up with the next "Tiger Rag," what with the 1917 tune's 1918 debut as a recording ushering in the Jazz Age)...and this year's first R to R concert was set up to show how the Ragtime Age morphed into the Jazz Age.

Planned on eleven numbers...but I ended up getting eight of 'em off, starting with 1910's "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" and including 1914's "St. Louis Blues" (the first written blues number ever published) and closing it all out with..."Tiger Rag."

The only other rag in the set was 1910's "Spaghetti Rag."

Well, the audience did enjoy R to R Concert #1...and it ended at 4:00 PM, right on the nose.

Fifteen minutes later, that fourteen-year-old sensation from Hampshire, IL (on the northwest edge of the Chicagoland area) made his Nebraska debut...and took to that brand-new Yamaha grand.

And he rocked it!

Daniel's first number was Adeline Shepard's "Pickles and Peppers," one of the tunes he and fellow World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival participant (and fellow Illinoisan) Nathan Beasley had fun with this past Memorial Day weekend.

Danny went on to craft a lively, fourteen-selection set that included several tunes found in the three-time OTPP Junior Division champ's latest CD, "Possibilities." (If you haven't heard this collaboration with noted jazz drummer Danny Coots, you're in for one heck of a treat!) 

The R to R audience heard Daniel Souvigny put forth "Possibilities" cuts such as Clarence Wiley's "Car-Bar-Lick Acid," Andy Razaf's and Fats Waller's "Honeysuckle Rose," and "Ham And!"

Then, for his eleventh number, Daniel really broke it open.

He did it by breaking out his violin.

Faye came over to the Yamaha and turned Danny's next offering into a duet...in this case, Scott Joplin's "Bethena," the most famous ragtime waltz ever composed.

Daniel reeled the Memorial Hall crowd in...and won 'em over.

He put an exclamation point at the end of it all by playing  Nat Ayer's "King Chanticleer." (On the Yamaha piano, not his violin!)

Two concerts down...one to go. 

When Faye took to the Memorial Hall stage at 7:00 PM to run R to R 2015's anchor leg, she wanted to take something from Danny's playbook (she called him "the technician") and something from my own playbook (she termed me "the historian"). 

What OTPP's contest coordinator (who's also an office manager at the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning at her alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) came up with was a continuation of her "Ragtime 101" concert from last year's turn here in the Big O...and it was still some kind of special. 

Faye kicked her set off with two of her all-time favorites: "Sailin' Away on the Henry Clay" and "It Had to Be You." 

After using those two numbers to show how songs can be turned into rags, Faye Ballard shifted the music to "Harlem Rag," the first published rag written by an African-American composer (in this case, Thomas Million Turpin).

And following her tribute to ragtime's Big Three (that's right: Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb), it was Full Circle Time.

That's absolutely right: Faye invited Daniel to come back up. This time, the two Illinoisans reprised a tune Danny did that afternoon, "Pork and Beans," and made it into a duet.

Faye's renditions of May Aufderheide's "The Thriller" and of Julia Niebergall's "Horseshoe Rag" came before her closing number, Zez Confrey's digit-busting "Dizzy Fingers." 

All in all, the audience (filling up 40% of Memorial Hall) came to enjoy the eleventh annual Ragtime to Riches Festival, and they'd like to see more syncopated events come to the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area. (Who knows, what with OTPP's future still up in the air? Perhaps this is a real opportunity for R to R to gain more of a following.)

Oh, by the way...the Great Plains Ragtime Society took in $130 from ticket sales this time around.

The Tenth Time Around!

Well...we did it.

On Sunday, 7-13-2014, at Omaha's First Central Congregational United Church of Christ, the Great Plains Ragtime Society staged the tenth version of an event called the Ragtime to Riches Festival.  

Okay...we didn't completely fill up the church's Memorial Hall. But we did get more of an audience this time around than in 2013.

And right from the time the doors opened (1:00 PM Central time), the place was jumpin'.

The first event right after the doors of First Central's Memorial Hall open is an open-piano session.

So glad someone else got it going.

And, at this year's open-piano hour, Brent Watkins (he competed in the early 2000s at the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival, then went on to coproduce the first documentary about the event) got the ball rolling on one of the two pianos at Memorial Hall. (Brent did "Maple Leaf Rag" on the hall's 1920s Mason & Hamlin grand; eventually, he tried the other piano...a 1900s-or-so Anderson & Newton upright.)

I'm glad Brent went up to bat first, because I was still nervous about the second R to R event...something I was still furiously preparing for. 

People started coming in while the man from Iowa City (by way of Cedar Rapids, IA) continued to knock out rags. And by 2:00 PM, we got our biggest audience of this year's festival.

And those thirteen people watched me switch between contemporaneous speaking, the use of note cards, and a few turns on that A&N upright...as I delivered a workshop about how Tin Pan Alley sounded during the 1900-1909 period.   

The main message I tried to get across was that, when the 20th Century started to kick in, America's music publishing industry started to grow and grow and grow...not just physically, but also in influence, what with more and more people coming over from other lands to get in on the bounty America had to offer. (And in many cases, the newcomers of the early 20th Century met with real resistance, too...just like the newcomers right here in the early 21st Century.)  

Plus: The resistance of 100-110 years ago showed up in lots of Tin Pan Alley songs. 

And...did I mention that Broadway was starting to become an entertainment force at that very moment, thanks to composers like George M. Cohan? 

Originally, this workshop was to stop at 1919...but to cover nineteen years in sixty minutes felt more like a fly-by overview. (Even so, chopping off the 1910s turned the presentation into a drive-by summary. But the crowd- including an official from the Nebraska Department of Education, John Sieler- liked it.)  

They liked it even more when Faye Ballard took to the stage.

The OTPP contest coordinator/collegiate office manager from Champaign, IL delivered a concert that doubled as Ragtime 101. In her first Ragtime to Riches, Faye turned in a set that emphasized the music of ragtime's Big Three (that's right- Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb). 

And for good measure, this star of "The Entertainers" (the movie Brent coproduced) threw in Zez Confrey's "Dizzy Fingers," Jelly Roll Morton's "Grandpa's Spell," and three of her signature numbers: "Sailin' Away on the Henry Clay," "Mack the Knife," and "It Had to Be You."  (Maybe you've seen Faye's version of "Mack the Knife" on YouTube.) 

When Faye's 14-tune concert wrapped up, we showed...that's right, we showed "The Entertainers."

Now if eight of those thirteen people had stuck around to see the film...they would've loved it, too.

At the end of each showing of the now two-year-old documentary, there's a question-and-answer session. Usually, Nick Holle (he was here in Omaha for this year's R to R) conducts it; sometimes, his fellow "Entertainers" codirector, Michael Zimmer, does the honors (which was the case when the movie was shown in San Diego on 3-14-2014). And the rest of the time, Michael and Nick team up to field audience questions.  

This time, the Q-and-A involved an audience of one: A local pianist named Kevin Robinson. (Check out his "Play Me, I'm Yours" videos on www.youtube.com.) 

Still, this Q-and-A session was no less effective than previous ones. (And I remember when Redd Foxx talked about being able to entertain a one-person audience!)  

Well, another open-piano session took place (with Faye and Brent taking to both pianos); after that, Nick, Brent, Faye, and I ate dinner (we got take-out food from a neighborhood restaurant called Crescent Moon Ale House; it's at 3578 Farnam St., 68131).

Then, at 7:30 PM, it was time for the last event of the 2014 Ragtime to Riches get-together.

Last year, I built my own concert around the memory of some of the big-name newsmakers and big-name celebrities who passed away in 2012, focusing on the Number One recording on the day this or that personality came into the world. (For instance, "For Me and My Gal," recorded by the duo of Van & Schenck, hit the top spot on the pop charts on 7-17-1917...the very day Phyllis Diller was born. And I even ragged up "So Much in Love," the leading pop hit on the Billboard charts on 8-9-1963...Whitney Houston's birthdate.)

For 2014, since this year's R to R would be the tenth one, I wanted to call up tunes whose titles had a T, an E, and an N...in that order.

As a result, the fans who hung around got to hear numbers like "A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight," "Listen to the Mockingbird," "After You've Gone," and "Hardhearted Hannah." There was also a 1952 song from composers Johnny Lange and Hy Heath, "There'll Be No New Tunes on This Old Piano." (Tennessee Ernie Ford put it on his 1962 album, "Here Comes the Mississippi Showboat." And I even saw him sing it on his old TV show when I was little.)

Two rags were in there, too: "The Entertainer" and something I wrote in 2001 (on an old piano, of course): "Stompin' at the Children's Museum." 

I'd never performed my own rags at any R to R before...and I was relieved to find out the audience liked my ode to the nine years (1997-2006) I spent not only banging the 88s at the Omaha Children's Museum, but watching the children themselves (and some adults) show off their own skills on the old upright.

Some of Faye's (and some of my) offerings at the festival made it onto YouTube. (Just type in "Ragtime to Riches Festival.")  

Man, we had a ball at R to R 10.0, and we raised $140 for the Great Plains Ragtime Society.

Don't know how the eleventh annual festival will shape up...but I do know this:

I hope you'll be able to check out next year's Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue ragtime outing. We think you'll have a ball, too.  

Everybody Still Had a Great Time

Two weeks ago, the ninth annual Ragtime to Riches Festival took place at Omaha's First Central Congregational United Church of Christ.

It would've been three weeks ago today...except for a scheduling conflict that allowed an organization called Omaha Chamber Music to wrap up a four-consecutive-Sunday stint on 7-7-2013 (the date this year's R to R was originally scheduled).

But...as things turned out...yours truly didn't check with First Central's staff earlier than 6-5-2013, the day yours truly came to the church at 36th and Harney to pay for rental of the church's Memorial Hall.

So...the church staff gave us 7-14-2013 (and at the same time, the Great Plains Ragtime Society snapped up 7-6-2014).

It worked out fine...even with the festival jumping right into the teeth of the Omaha Country Club hosting the 2013 men's US Senior Open, which said "hello" to the two biggest crowds to ever attend a sports event in person here in the city that gave us sports greats Bob Gibson, Gale Sayers, and Bob Boozer.

We sold eight tickets this time. Yeah, I know...that's a far cry from the 38 ducats GPRS sold last year and, as a result, got Ragtime to Riches out of the local shadows.

Nevertheless, everybody who came to R to R 9.0 had a great time.

And the crowd included four people who'd never attended the local ragtime fest before.

Plus: One of them's a student at Benson High School. (So there!)  

It started out, once the doors opened at 1:00 PM (Central time), with a workshop an hour later; it focused on the 1885-1899 period...the first fourteen years the United States had a real music-publishing industry (okay...the first fourteen years said industry was based in New York City, NY).  

One thing I found out in doing research for the R to R workshop was that many of the first big-name Tin Pan Alley songwriters were traveling salespersons before jumping into the music industry full blast. They sold sheet music when not selling clothes and other items...and eventually, they got the notion that they could write better than the composers whose work these dealers agreed to peddle.

One of them was Edward B. Marks, who got off the road in 1894 to hook up with another salesperson with a desire to write ditties, Joseph Stern.  

And with Charles K. Harris' 1892 monster "After the Ball" (only the first million-selling song ever written; it went on to sell six million pieces of sheet music) providing the yardstick, Marks and Stern got together to write Tin Pan Alley's next monster...1894's "The Little Lost Child."

TPA (so named because, according to legend, all those multiple old upright pianos getting played at the same time all over the Big Apple's music-publishing district- West 28th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues- sounded like tin pans being banged) originally specialized in sentimental, treacly ballads like "After the Ball" and "The Little Lost Child."

But as the 1890s started to draw to a close, Americans wanted to shake their hind ends...and Tin Pan Alley started to get the ragtime bug, thanks to two 1899 smashes: Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" and Abe Holzmann's "Smokey Mokes."

I shifted gears at a little after 3:05 PM, getting myself into concert mode. And, for the second straight year, I took a page from the book of the late Burns Davis and gave my own concert a theme.

After building my own 2012 show around some of 1912's top hits, I chose as my 2013 theme..."They All Died in 2012."

During the early 1990s, I got interested in the work someone from Phoenix, AZ (I think his name is Sherman Cohen) was doing linking the birthdates of big-name celebrities with the cuts that topped Billboard's US Pop charts the day each celebrity was born...and using the songs to predict what kind of lives the big names would end up leading. (For instance, the day Michael Jackson was born, the top pop hit in the US was "Little Star," by the Elegants. 'Nuff said.) 

Well, the audience at this year's R to R found out that "Peg o' My Heart," by a singer named Charles Harrison, was the Number One recording on 12-25-1913...Tony Martin's birthday. In addition, they learned that fellow singalong favorite "For Me and My Gal" was a chart-topper for one of the top duos of the World War 1 years, Van & Schenck. (The V&S version was #1 on 7-17-1917...Phyllis Diller's birthday.)

Today, we know Alma Gluck as the mother of Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (you might remember his two big TV series, 77 Sunset Strip and fellow ABC hit The FBI) and as the grandmother of Stephanie Zimbalist (who got to costar alongside Pierce Brosnan on the 1980s NBC hit Remington Steele).

But in her time, Gluck was one of the world's best-known opera singers. In 1915, she reached back to 1878 to turn James Bland's "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" into just the fourth million-selling recording in history.

And that cut was the top hit in the land on 4-10-1915...the day Harry Morgan was born. (That's right...the same Harry Morgan who got to work alongside Jack Webb on the 1967-1970 version of NBC's Dragnet, in addition to doing all kinds of other series...like CBS classics December Bride and M*A*S*H.) 

Toward the end of my time up there, I took a chance.

I ragged up a couple of post-TPA songs: 1963's "So Much in Love," which was the first big hit for the Tymes...and the top pop hit on 8-9-1963, the day Whitney Houston was born; and the next year's "A Hard Day's Night," one of the many, many Number Ones the Beatles racked up.

"A Hard Day's Night" made the list as a tribute to Beatles fan Jesse Lewis and the nineteen other Sandy Hook School children who, along with six teachers at the Newtown, CT facility, were gunned down 12-14-2012.

What's more, I got squeamish about performing the song that actually topped Billboard's US Pop chart on 6-30-2006, Jesse's birthday: "Hips Don't Lie," where Shakira teamed up with Wyclef Jean.

And I couldn't get off the stage without paying tribute to the late Nan Bostick, so I closed out with her first and best-known tune, 1974's "Bean Whistle Rag."

Nope...the sky didn't fall.

In lieu of a movie, we had a preview of the upcoming local showing of Luke Jerram's famous "Play Me, I'm Yours" art project. (Here in the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area, ten painted old pianos will be placed at public spots all over the area for passersby to play...regardless of skill level. In fact, the exhibit will run locally from 8-24-2013 to 9-8-2013.) 

Ended up giving the oral presentation myself, then Nick Holle (that's right, THAT Nick Holle) and I got together to show a 60-minute compilation of "PMIY" videos culled from YouTube.

By the way...to learn more about Luke's claim to fame, just visit www.streetpianos.com. And for more local information about the exhibit, you can also log on to http://omahacreativeinstitute.org. (The Omaha Creative Institute did the lion's share of the heavy hitting that brought "PMIY" here.)

Speaking of fame...at 7:00 PM, Marty Mincer went up to bat.

And Marty was smacking homers all over the place. 

The apple farmer from Hamburg, IA showed why he took the Regular Division crown in 1990 and 1993 at Illinois' World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival...and the first proof was his rip-roaring version of an E.T. Paull march, "The Burning of Rome."

Later on in Marty's concert, he talked about how his grandmother got him started tickling those keys. It was the late 1960s, and she taught him how to play a piece called "Old Fiddle Tune."

He did it the conventional way, then ragged it up...only to get an admonishment from Grandma: "Don't you ever play that piece like that again!"

Then Marty went back to playing "Old Fiddle Tune" the way it was written.

And, 44 years later, he does "OFT" the same three ways. (And it brings the house down every time!)

Marty writes 'em, too. His biggest one came together in 1989 because, at that time, he owned a 1964 Studebaker (remember Studebaker automobiles?) that kept breaking down.

And he captured that in his "The Mechanic's Rag." (Its subtitle: "A Well-Tooled Piece." On top of that, the instruction on the first page tells you to play this one "with great repair.")

Marty kept it going all through his concert, burning through "A Bag of Rags," Mark Janza's "Aviation Rag," George Botsford's "Black and White Rag," and Scott Joplin's other Monster, "The Entertainer." (When you take out "The Entertainer" and "Maple Leaf Rag," you find his other rags were monsters.)  

Toward the end of the show, Marty led a singalong; after he sang and played "Sioux City Sue," he (and I) led the audience into "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "When You're Smiling," and "Side by Side."  

Then his rollicking versions of "Tiger Rag" (with multiple false endings) and "Show Me the Way to Go Home" (he handled the vocals, too) brought the 2013 version of Ragtime to Riches to a close.

And, when all was said and done, the festival took in $100, which went to the Great Plains Ragtime Society...not bad for the situation at hand.  

Well...it's off to work on the 2014 version of R to R. 

Now...to find out how to get another movie into the festival...or something...