TT 281: Max Morath, David A. Jasen, Dick Hyman

88 keys in wonderful abundance

Max Morath got a fine obit in the New York Times by Robert D. McFadden.

Scott Joplin is the gateway, the source, the answer, the undiminished, the triumph. The King of Ragtime published “Maple Leaf Rag” in 1899 and changed the world.

During the swing and big band era, Joplin was not too visible, but in the 1950s, records of ragtime began showing up, often played on a “tack” piano for a deliberately old-timey sound. In the 60’s, Max Morath took center stage, talking about “The Ragtime Life,” leading into a hit 1970 hit record Scott Joplin: Piano Rags by Joshua Rifkin. Shortly thereafter, Joplin went truly mainstream with the famous Paul Newman/Robert Redford movie The Sting in 1973.

I was born in 1973; The Sting ran frequently in syndication, and after seeing the movie as a tyke, I didn’t rest until I had the sheet music to Joplin’s “The Entertainer.” Not long after, I asked my aunt Judy if she had any ragtime records, and she said, “I like Max Morath.”

The World of Scott Joplin was her Morath LP, where the last track was Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” I dropped the needle on that ineluctable hit over and over.

I was what, maybe 10 years old? I didn’t have any frame of reference, didn’t check out much of the rest of the LP, and as time went on forgot about Morath.

After Morath died, Matthew Guerrieri sent me homemade videos of two Morath rags, “One for Amelia” and “The Golden Hours.” I was, frankly, stunned. They were great! And it turns out, they are both on The World of Scott Joplin. The LP was released in 1973, but the two Morath rags were written in the 1960s.

I might learn “The Golden Hours,” which is full of strange rhythmic groupings in the phrasing.

Frankly, I prefer these Morath compositions to his slow and square performances of Joplin and the rest. Was Morath a great composer who never got a chance to spread those wings?

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”Slow and square” is part of what made the ragtime revival the ragtime revival. Rifkin’s epochal Scott Joplin: Piano Rags is fairly unlistenable by sophisticated standards. (I certainly prefer Morath to Rifkin.)

At times Rifkin almost sounds like a student sight-reading, which must be part of the charm and part of the accessibility.

I fell in love with the soundtrack to The Sting because Marvin Hamlisch plays “The Entertainer” slow and square, with tons of rubato. On one hand it’s terrible, on the other, it’s a perfect gateway. God bless Scott Joplin, who keeps merrily chugging along, immune to any kind of performance practice.

(Due credit to Hamlisch for playing Joplin’s mood piece “Solace” so memorably on the soundtrack.)

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Many genres of American popular music have a day in the sun, followed by some wilderness years where hardly anyone cares, and eventually some kind of revival and cult following.

There’s an elephant in the room with many of those revivals, and that is race.

The Max Morath Times obit has this description:

In a straw boater and sleeve garters, pounding an old upright with a cigar clenched in his teeth

Black history is forgotten as Morath performs his own kind of non-black carnival barker entertainment.

It’s not the worst thing in the world, and Morath gave a lot of joy to a lot of people. Fine. But Morath’s liner notes to The World of Scott Joplin are pretty unimpressive on this topic. (Race isn’t mentioned once.) This is of a piece with director George Roy Hill’s liner notes to the soundtrack of The Sting. (Race isn’t mentioned once.)

For that matter, The Sting is not exactly perfect in terms of African-American agency. The one black character, Luther (played by Robert Earl Jones) is killed off early to start the story. (Not quite “Black Dude Dies First” on TV Tropes, but close enough.)

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I respect all the ragtime revival cats, and I like all the composers, too, such as William Bolcom and William Albright. Since ragtime seemed to be a written form, it was a place to mash up different ideas in a readily digestible manner. The best of that world is awesome. I have the recent recording of Bolcom’s complete rags by Marc-André Hamelin, and when I finally get around to dealing with this CD I know I will have a great time, just like I had a great time with Morath’s “One for Amelia” and “The Golden Hours.”

But when it was new, ragtime was black music, and black music has its own mores and folkways. It’s not just improvisation, it’s a whole set of circumstances and aesthetics. The records of Joplin and other ragtime composers by actual practitioners such as Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Mary Lou Williams, Hank Jones, and Eubie Blake deserve special consideration. (Of course there are white cats who are also in the lineage; Ralph Sutton and Burt Bales are two that I dig.)

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David A. Jasen was an important part of the ragtime revival. He played well but was even more visible as an editor, librarian, and writer. Jasen passed away last year, comparatively unheralded; the one online obit seems to be at The Syncopated Times.

One could see Jasen wrestle with including race more and more in his analysis. Later books are really great, including Spreadin’ Rhythm’ Around: Black Popular Songwriters, 1880-1930 ( with Gene Jones) and Black Bottom Stomp: Eight Masters of Ragtime and Early Jazz. The latter is simply one of the best books on this topic that I’ve ever read.

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After I wrote about Billy Strayhorn’s “Tonk,” Peter Levin told me to check out Dick Hyman’s solo piano recording. It is part of the 1999 CD Dick Hyman Plays Duke Ellington, and the whole disc is a marvel. I have underestimated Hyman’s wonderful abilities until now.

The album opens with “Jubilee Stomp,” which in the original 1928 form was a landmark in virtuosity.

Hyman just plays it down like a James P. Johnson flag-waver, adding plenty of his own tips and tricks along the way. Excuse me! What the heck. I’m almost aghast.

Hyman’s Piano Pro is just wonderful, a collection of good-humored anecdotes from a life lived at the keyboard. The book is spiral-bound, for it contain reams of teaching material including a lot of sheet music. (You can easily prop it on your piano desk and the pages lie flat.)

A highlight is the score to "Virtuoso Rag" by Johnny Guarnieri. The piece was dedicated to Hyman, and Hyman performed it at Guarnieri's funeral at St. Peter's in 1985.

I know Guarnieri best for some sensational sides with Lester Young; he also played harpsichord as part of an important Artie Shaw group, the Gramercy Five. Later on, Guarnieri experimented with ragtime and stride for compositional and at times quite esoteric purposes.

Hyman recorded "Virtuoso Rag" on a hitherto obscure album released in 2017, Solo at the Sacramento Jazz Festivals (1983-1988) on the Arbors Records label. The set list is a mixture of standards and stride showpieces recorded in casual and lo-fi conditions, and apparently Hyman himself thinks it shows himself at his best. He was 90 at the time of release, and perhaps Solo at the Sacramento Jazz Festivals (1983-1988) will stand as part of his epitaph. It’s a hell of a record.

I'm very happy to know about "Virtuoso Rag," especially its recording in Sacramento. It's quite perfect -- I'd give it 11/10 -- and goes a considerable way towards explaining and encapsulating a certain lineage.

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Related DTM: “Two-fisted on 33 1/2 RPM”