Features and Reviews
Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival 2003
By Fred Hoeptner
Wednesday evening, June 4, arrived sunny and warm with fleecy clouds overhead to greet the several hundred early arrivals for the festival (who also greeted each other) plus a group from a tour bus filling Maple Leaf Park in downtown Sedalia. Sue Keller and friends (Rich Berry, Michael Stalcup, Dave Tucker, John Petley, and Mimi Blais) entertained the crowd with a varied program of ragtime. Tucker, a first-time festival performer, introduced this year's theme rag, "Weeping Willow."
Thursday morning marked the official festival opening with the usual parade of local officials, flivvers, high-wheeled bicycles, and folks dressed in elegant vintage wear, from Liberty Center Auditorium five blocks to the park. Following opening ceremonies, the four free venues scattered about the downtown area opened featuring continuous ragtime. In addition to Maple Leaf Park, they were the Stark Pavilion, a tent seating several hundred in the middle of the street next to the courthouse; the intimate Gazebo Park in an alleyway; and the Tea Dance Tent on a parking lot featuring dance instruction and dancing.
The 11:00 a.m. "Kickoff Concert" in Liberty Center this year was a tribute to the late "Ragtime" Bob Darch, who had devoted his life to performing and promoting ragtime since the early 1950s when it was far from fashionable. Sue Keller opened with Bob's "'C' Street Rag" which he had composed for a bridge opening in Springfield, MO. She then introduced several generations of Bob's extensive family (five sons and three daughters), whose performances of poetic tributes, Darch compositions, and ragtime songs associated with him were interspersed throughout the concert. Other performers were Darch protégé Steve Spracklen and his sister, Susan Cordell, pianists who played a number of Darch's excellent folksy rags; Dick Zimmerman, who played a 1968 Darch rag from a manuscript; and Kjell Waltman from Sweden, who played "Wyoming Waltz," which Darch had composed for Kjell's mother.
The 2:00 p.m. "Cradle of Ragtime" concert featured rags by Missouri composers. Host Glenn Jenks opened with "Coon Hollow Capers" by Frank Gillis. played as a patrol. Other memorable moments were John Gill's performance of "King Chanticleer" in a stop-time arrangement, Brian Holland's rendition of "Lion Tamer Rag," and Holland and Petley duetting on "Coal Smoak." The plentiful hors d'oeuvre at the donor party held in the Daum Museum of Art at the State Fair Community College served nicely for dinner this evening.
The 8:00 p.m. Ragtime Dance held at the "Joplin Hall" on the fairgrounds featured the Sunflower Ragtime Orchestra of Olathe, Kansas. Conductor, violinist, and clarinetist Steven Smith led the well-rehearsed 12-piece group through authentic arrangements of ragtime and related music from the era.
Friday morning the popular symposium sessions began at the comfortable United Methodist Church with Bob Ault's "Ragtime and the Phonograph." Bob brought some of his collection of acoustic disc and cylinder machines with the big horns demonstrating that cylinders were once technically superior to discs. He played a number of early ragtime pieces masquerading under exotic accreditations by Hawaiian, Hungarian, and Guatemalan musical groups. Nan Bostick, grandniece of Charles Daniels, followed with "Uncle Charlie Revisited," further information on Daniels' active life as a music composer and publisher. David Reffkin discussed John Stark Publishing's famous "Red Back Book," used by Gunther Schuller in helping to initiate the ragtime revival in 1972. Stark included fifteen ragtime selections in a set of eleven books, one for each instrument, all of which were republications of orchestrations originally written from 1899 to 1911. Stark marketed the books only to orchestra leaders, and few survive today. The keys used for the orchestrations usually differed from the keys used for the piano solos, ostensibly to accommodate the stringed instruments. For example, "Maple Leaf" was converted from A flat to A, "Sunflower Slow Drag" from B flat to G, and "Frog Legs" from D flat to D. He also played examples of various recorded performances of "Red Back Book" arrangements. The sessions continued right up to 2:00 p.m. with "Remembering Ragtime Bob Darch" and "Joplin Monologues," but lunch and certain performances at the outdoor venues seemed more attractive to me at that point.
Friday afternoon Jeff Barnhart hosted "The Legacy of Scott Joplin" featuring Joplin compositions played by pianists Brian Holland, Rich Berry, Alex Sandor, John Gill, and guitarist Giovanni De Chiaro. De Chiaro, a music professor from Mississippi who has transcribed and published arrangements of Joplin compositions for guitar, commented that he was playing "Heliotrope Bouquet" in the original key so that Brian Holland could duet with him. The concert ended with a "musical chairs" performance of "Maple Leaf Rag" by all participants. Before the evening concert fried catfish and ragtime music were offered at the "Ragtime Catfish Fry" at the fairgrounds.
Dick Zimmerman emceed the evening "Easy Winners" concert at the fairgrounds featuring pianists Alex Sandor, Butch Thompson, Brian Holland, Zimmerman himself, and The Elite Syncopators, a quartette led by pianist Terry Parrish with Jim Marshall on banjo, Steve Ley tuba, and Mike Schwimmer washboard. Some memorable moments included Holland's amazing performance of Robin Frost's "Space Shuffle," Zimmerman's performance of an obscure Stark publication "Manhattan Rag" by Fred Brownold, a real "flag-waver," and Sandor's rendition of "Pegasus." Following the concert, Schwimmer received the Scott Joplin Achievement Award for contributions to the field of ragtime.
Saturday the symposia resumed with Jack Rummel's primer on how to review a CD. He indicated that reviewers must be willing to tell the truth, but to avoid inflammatory criticism. He played excerpts from recordings demonstrating errors made by performers in reading scores, and opined that it was the reviewer's decision whether such errors were important enough for comment. He looks for good fidelity, a quality instrument, an attractive package, information about the artist, the composers, and the compositions, and a purchasing address. He commented that the purchaser should be able to determine what he or she is getting from the visible cover information and demonstrated several CDs that violated this principle. He demonstrated several CDs whose purport to be ragtime is certainly debatable. Dr, James Gai, member of the Kansas City Symphony, presented a session on the life of Blind Boone, assisted by Kjell Waltman on piano playing Boone's arrangements. Michael Mason, a professor of religion, tenor banjoist, and expert on early banjoist Harry Reser, presented "The History of the Banjo." He demonstrated an early gourd banjo of three full-length strings with a shorter fourth string ending up the neck and commented that the fifth string added by Sweeney for use in minstrel shows was a base string rather than the shorter fifth string. In 1907 Shaw invented the 4-string tenor banjo tuned a fifth lower than the mandolin for the convenience of mandolinists wishing to convert to banjo to play in recording orchestras. Richard Berry, photographic hobbyist, presented his slides of festivalgoers that he has taken over the years since the 1980s.
The "Ragtime Revelations" concert hosted by Jack Rummel began with teenagers David Williams and Emily Sprague playing two rags each, David with Joplin's "Ragtime Dance" and Marty Mincer's "The Mechanic's Rag" and Emily with French's "Belle of Louisville" and Lamb's "Sensation." Steve Spracklen followed with Bob Darch's composition "Calico Queen" and Artie Matthew's "Pastime Rag No. 5." Rummel then played a set of his compositions including his newest, "Dry Creek Days." Glenn Jenks continued with "The Black Preacher" and his classic "Ragtime Hermit Thrush." The Elite Syncopators concluded the concert with a set of three fine Parrish originals and then were joined by Bob Ault on the second piano for "Joe Lamb's Old Rag."
At 4:30 the superb Ophelia Ragtime Orchestra from Oslo, led by Morton Gunnar Larsen and enhanced by vocalist and dancer Staale Ytterle, played a special benefit concert for the Joplin Foundation. The program of seventeen selections featured Eubie Blake compositions, a set from Joplin's opera "Treemonisha," Larsen's arrangement of "Tortuga Blues" composed by Hal Isbitz, and a fine reading of the tango "Panama" by Tyers. Larsen expounded on his quest for the meaning of the word "tortuga;" apparently it's a type of sea turtle. However, Hal later denied having named the piece with the turtle in mind.
The first of two Saturday evening concerts, "The Entertainer" hosted by Glenn Jenks at Joplin Hall on the fairgrounds, opened with Jenks playing James P. Johnson's "Mule Walk," a Nazareth tango, and Northup's "The Cannonball." Versatile Jeff Barnhart followed with a varied program ranging from Lodge's "Temptation Rag" and Johnson's "Steeplechase Rag" played fast and furiously to Morath's tranquil "Golden Hours" and even including a vocal number, "Down in Honky Tonky Town." A special guest with evident operatic training whose name I failed to record sang with piano accompaniment "It Ain't Necessarily So" and "A Real Slow Drag" to strong audience response. Australian John Gill, exhibiting his consummate pianistic technique at all tempos, treated the audience to six selections including James P. Johnson's "Jingles," "Twelfth Street Rag," and an amalgamation that he described as "Mr. Joplin meeting Mr. Liszt" in which he played the "Hungarian Rhapsody" in the left hand and "Maple Leaf Rag" in the right. Peterson's Original Ragtime Band, featuring hammered dulcimer, guitar, fiddle and banjo, closed the concert with seven instrumentals including "Salty Dog Rag" with a dance demonstration, "Creole Belles," "Lime Rock," and "Beaumont Rag."
The hasty drive back through Sedalia to Liberty Center followed for the "Ragtime Music Hall" hosted by Sue Keller and featuring the usual informal mixture of song, instrumental, and high jinks. Jeff Barnhart and Brian Holland performed "The War in Snyder's Grocery Store," Butch Thompson performed several Jelly Roll Morton numbers. The skit, featuring Mimi Blais in feathered pink boa and Brian, Jeff, and Alex performing in simian disguises, was great fun although I had some trouble comprehending the overall plot. Brian finally silenced Jeff by dragging the piano bench out from under him. Sue sang Bob Darch's song "She Was a Great Big-Chested Woman" and immediately the Creole Dixieland Jazz Band from Springfield, MO, which Darch had asked to play for his funeral the next day, appeared onstage to finish the concert with several selections capped by "That Teasin' Rag."
Sunday the usual free concert in Liberty Park was cancelled in favor of the Darch funeral. Bob had selected his monument and gravesite next to a roadway at the rear of the Sedalia cemetery so that fans could easily find it. A goodly procession of ragtimers paraded across the cemetery behind the Dixieland band to the gravesite to pay their final respects. One of Bob's sons recited a frank, detailed biography of his father, who had made an early decision to abandon an army career to become a professional entertainer and promoter of ragtime despite its having meant the end of his first marriage and considerable hardship for both his families.
The festival attendance this year was down again at the paid events, but seemed to be holding steady for the free events. In an effort to avoid losses, the Foundation slightly increased ticket prices, charged a $5-per-day fee for the symposia, and actively solicited donations at the free events. Sales volume at the store increased. However, with state funding rapidly disappearing, the future of the festival appears uncertain.
More Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival Reviews:
2006 Festival
2004 Festival
2002 Festival
2001 Festival
2000 Festival
