Although people generally think today of ragtime music as being started by Scott Joplin, it was not. Joplin became the King of the Ragtimers but he was not the inventor—at least if we go by publication dates. The earliest known published rag was by Ernest Hogan in 1895 called “La Pas Ma La” which put ragtime on the map and made Hogan quite famous.
The New Sunshine Jazz Band - La Pas-Ma-La - YouTube
Hogan, of Bowling Green, Kentucky, was a well-educated composer as well as high-ranking Freemason. He would become the first black composer to get his own show on Broadway. He became one of the highest paid entertainers in his day.
The following year, Hogan published “All Coons Look Alike To Me.” This is the start of what would be called “coon songs” or “coon shouts.”
Considered one of the most racist sheet covers of the ragtime era (although I think I’ve seen worse), the song itself is really not that bad.
All Coons Look Alike to Me - YouTube
There were quite a number of black coon songwriters such as Paul Laurence Dunbar and Will Marion Cook. These songs were quite popular in black vaudeville but whites also liked them and since they didn’t attend black vaudeville, white ragtime singers began to perform the coon songs. Onstage, they blackened their faces making ragtime a form of minstrelsy. We know that ragtime was in existence by 1893 when it played at the 1893 World’s Fair. We also know that some of the shapers of ragtime, such as Tom Turpin, were working on ragtime by 1892.
So where did ragtime come from and what does the term mean? The earliest form of ragtime was played on the banjo and was born from black barnyard dance music that slaves and sharecroppers played after the workday was through to loosen up a bit. When this music left the barnyards and plantation farms, it journeyed to the cities and port towns along the Mississippi River where it combined with riverboat songs. Another evolution took place in the 1870s and 80s when Irish jig piano was all the rage. Black pianists took up jig piano but began performing rags on the piano as well. White pianists also took to this new form of piano-playing. Another element that was crucial to the formation of ragtime was the marching band. Marching bands were a huge part of the American musical landscape back then. Virtually every city, town and village had at least one (picture the Hooterville Fire Department playing “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”). The left hand played the straight 1-2-1-2 rhythm (with the accent on 1) while the right hand played the syncopated melody.
Johnny Collins - Hard on the Beach Oar (riverboat song) - YouTube
“Hard on the Beach Oar” riverboat song sung by Johnny Collins.
So what is syncopation? It is the key ingredient to ragtime (and, later on, jazz). It’s what makes ragtime ragtime. Ragtime is usually played in cut time, that is, 2/4 time. So there are only two beats per bar with a quarter note representing a beat. With the left hand keeping straight marching time, the right hand contrasting against the left by emphasizing the 2-beat without changing the accent being on the 1. This could be done a number of ways: A beat can be subdivided into four smaller beats—16th notes in this case. Now, imagine playing a 1 for the full four sub-beats, then play the 2 only on the last sub-beat. The count sounds like One…twoOne…twoOne…twoOne. That’s syncopation. The accent stays on 1 but the 2 is emphasized. As a result, the timing sounds jumpy or ragged and hence the term ragtime.
Some have pointed out that syncopation is not heard in West African tribal music but was not unknown to European composers. Liszt and Chopin used it, for example. That demonstrates that ragtime is primarily a white invention. This is not a bad supposition but the evidence shows that syncopation did not enter the American musical vocabulary until the contributions of black composers and musicians became significant. Syncopation may have been the black musicians’ way of constructing African poly-rhythms into a European framework but no one is certain. (For example, African-American church harmonies are not found in Africa but have a European basis and yet nothing like them existed in Europe either. Exactly how they formed is a mystery)
So there are our strands of the fabric of ragtime: black banjo dance music, riverboat songs, marching bands and syncopated rhythm. One other strand is minstrel. It is impossible to fully separate ragtime from minstrel music.
In 1896, a white pianist and riverboat captain named William H. Krell published the first rag to use “Rag” in the title—“Mississippi Rag.” Krell was a competent musician who heard the ragtime being played at saloons and clubs all along the Mississippi and strung a bunch of strains together but no one is sure what parts he borrowed and which he wrote. Regardless, it’s a great piece and one of my personal favorite rags (although many ragtime scholars insist it is not a rag at all but a cakewalk, be that as it may):
William Krell - Mississipi Rag - YouTube
Played by the incomparable Claude Bolling.
