by Larry Karp
After Berlin’s departure from the firm in 1919, Henry Waterson and Ted Snyder continued in business as Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder. In the early ’twenties, they published some major hits, but in 1927, Snyder decided to go to Hollywood, and sold his interest in the firm to Waterson. Two years later, Waterson’s gambling had bankrupted the company. In 1931, Mills Music bought the Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder catalog, and the firm was history. What happened to Waterson after that, I have no idea.
After a short stint as arranger for the J. Fred Helf Company, Joseph Lamb decided not to pursue a career in music. A modest, quiet man, he felt ill at ease in the hustling, pushy world of music publishing, nor did he care for the long night hours. For Lamb, ragtime was a passion to be pursued solely for its spiritual rewards. He didn’t socialize with musicians, and Scott Joplin was the only ragtime composer of his era he ever met. He continued to work at L. F. Dommerich’s customs house until his retirement in 1957. After jazz supplanted ragtime, Lamb stopped writing down his tunes, but continued to play piano at home. His wife Henrietta (Etty) died in 1920, leaving him with five-year-old Joe Jr. He remarried two years later, and fathered four more children, one of whom, Patricia, a frequent attendee at ragtime festivals, carries her father’s legacy forward through her delightful recollections of his life. After Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis tracked Lamb down in the late ’forties, he received a great deal of attention from ragtime revivalists, and began to transfer to paper many of the rags he’d been carrying around in his head for thirty years or more. In 1959, he performed publicly for the first time, at a ragtime festival in Toronto. He died of a heart attack in 1960.
Martin Niederhoffer and Birdie Kuminsky married on December 14, 1916. I don’t know whether Birdie remained at work after her marriage, but Martin’s draft card, filled out on June 5, 1917, stated he was still at the old firm, still a bookkeeper. The 1920 U. S. Census shows the couple living in the Bronx, with sons Arthur, 2-2/12, and Robert, 7/12. (Arthur Niederhoffer became a well-regarded educator and author; he was professor of sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice). In 1942, Martin and Birdie were living in Brooklyn, Birdie working at a department store on Fulton Street, and Martin being “self-employed.” One reference suggests he was in real-estate. Both lived long lives, and died in Florida, Martin in 1979, at age 87, Birdie in 1992, at age 92.
Lottie Stokes’ union with Scott Joplin probably was common-law; no one has been able to find a record of marriage for the couple. Lottie was devoted to Joplin, and while he lived, did all she could both to further his work and keep the wolf from their door, no small task on either account. After Joplin’s death, Lottie continued to receive royalties on his work from Stark and other publishers. Her boarding house in Harlem became a major gathering place for Black musicians; the boarders and visitors included Jelly Roll Morton, Willie the Lion Smith, Wilbur Sweatman, and Eubie Blake. Willie the Lion told an interviewer that Lottie once took him down to the cellar to show him a vast accumulation of Joplin manuscripts, all of which subsequently disappeared. Lottie’s later years must have brought her considerable satisfaction. Many ragtime revivalists sought her out for interviews, and Brun Campbell, the old Ragtime Kid, then living in California, recorded “Maple Leaf Rag” and other Joplin tunes, and sent Lottie the proceeds from sales. She died in 1953.
I can find no account of a real-life meeting between Ragtime Jimmy and Scott Joplin. Jimmy worked at the Alamo Club in Harlem until 1921, taking care to stay on the good side of characters like Footsie Vinny. The big-nosed piano player loved ragtime, but read the winds of change: in 1917, he formed his own New Orleans Jazz Band. Just a couple of years later, he got together with two young men named Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson, and his fortunes soared. As good a musician as Jimmy was, he was even better at comedy, and humor gradually replaced melody as his performance mainstay. In the tough entertainment world, no one ever seemed to have an unkind word for Jimmy. He continued to make people smile and laugh almost to the day he died, January 29, 1980, at the age of 86. Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.
Eubie Blake benefitted enormously from the ragtime revival, and his gain was ours. He lived to the age of 100 years and five days (though his birth date has been disputed), and his life story is a fabulous read. From the early 1900s, he was a prominent member of the east coast ragtime school, penning compositions such as Charleston Rag that became instant classics. In 1921, he joined with Noble Sissle to write Shuffle Along, a Black musical that took Broadway by storm, and the two friends enjoyed continued success through the decade. By the forties, Eubie had pretty much dropped from view, but doing nothing just wasn’t his style. He enrolled at New York University, and in 1950, received a degree in music. In the ’sixties, he captured the attention of the new generation of ragtime players, and until his death in 1983, Eubie Blake probably was the best-known and most influential composer and performer of ragtime. He appeared at countless festivals and concerts all over the world, cut recordings, and received honor after honor.
Finally, what to say in a short summary of the life of Irving Berlin? Thanks to a stunning gift for musical composition, work habits that would have felled a horse, and a flair for self-promotion, the little man from Cherry Street produced an unparalleled body of popular songs and show tunes. He’s been called America’s Most Beloved Composer, but I think the real object of all that affection was not the songwriter himself, but his music. Berlin possessed a genius for reading the public mood, then writing tunes that crystallized and expressed societal sentiments. He gave people what they wanted. But his biographies are saddening. As successful as he was, he seems never to have been satisfied. No amount of adulation was too much; any expression of admiration for another composer’s work was too much. Came the 1960s, and a generation appeared that the old composer could not read. The Peace-and-Love Kids disdained his music as corny and old-fashioned, and at the Washington premiere of his last show, Mr. President, he suffered the indignity of seeing Jack Kennedy arrive late and leave early. By the late ’sixties, Berlin was eighty, and resented it mightily. For the final two decades of his life, insecurity and paranoia ruled his behavior. He became increasingly reclusive and hostile, often meeting requests of any sort with abusive outbursts. Regarding financial matters, he could be unreasonable, even miserly. Since the public would no longer value his music, he would offer them nothing in its place, and spent his last years as a geriatric Achilles, sulking in his tent. Unlike Achilles, he never relented. It would be difficult not to admire Berlin, equally difficult to love him.
***
Bartlett Tabor, Robert Miras, Fannie Solomon, Dubie Harris, Detective Ciccone, Patrolman Flaherty, Jasper Billings, Isaac Stark, and Clarence and Ida Barbour were products of my imagination. They bear no resemblance to any person in my real world.
***
So, who really was The King of Ragtime?
We know what Scott Joplin thought; we know what Irving Berlin thought. Both men are on the record.
What do I think?
Musicologists and historians are sharply divided as to whether ragtime songs should in fact be acknowledged as ragtime. Most definitions of the form mention syncopation as an important feature, and while almost all vocal ragtime composed and performed between 1890 and 1910 featured syncopation, the music of Irving Berlin contained very little. Thus, some authorities hold that Berlin never wrote ragtime at all. “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” has often been called a song about ragtime, not a song in ragtime. Eubie Blake said, “Funny thing about [‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’], there’s no ragtime in it. No syncopation at all! Still it’s a great tune, and it sure was what the public wanted.”
I think Eubie was on the mark. Who ever was better than Irving Berlin at giving the public what it wanted? As long as people wanted ragtime, Berlin would give them ragtime—or at least what he called ragtime. Perhaps “Tin Pan Alley Ragtime” had its origin in a marketing ploy. Insist long enough and hard enough that a magpie is a nigh
tingale, and you’ll likely convince a lot of people. You might even convince yourself. And if I shake my head and say, “Gee, that just doesn’t sound like a nightingale,” you’ll reply, “It’s a new breed of nightingale, better than the original. Get with it. ‘Everybody’s Doing It Now.’”
In a contest to select the King of Tin Pan Alley or Broadway, Irving Berlin probably would get my vote. But the great tunesmith’s outrageous assertion that “…such songs of mine as ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band,’ ‘That Mysterious Rag,’ ‘Ragtime Violin,’ ‘I Want To Be In Dixie,’ and ‘Take A Little Tip From Father’ virtually started the ragtime mania in America” rings like a cracked bell. By itself, that should disqualify him from any competition for the ragtime throne.
What of Scott Joplin’s claim? After all, it was “Maple Leaf Rag” that truly ‘started the ragtime mania in America,’ and at the same time set the standard for a new form of musical art. Joplin was a major, if not the major, influence for a whole generation of musicians, one of whom was Joseph Lamb. He was generous in his teaching and support of young composers. He constantly pushed musical frontiers, composing ragtime of increasing complexity, and sought to extend his idiom into operatic and symphonic music.
But Joplin is not a unanimous choice as the greatest ragtime composer. Pianist Ron Weatherburn (among others) selected Joe Lamb, stating that Joplin’s rags are “as good as anything ever written, but not in the same class as Lamb’s greatest.” Weatherburn went on to explain that Joplin’s rags are more “simple,” and that Lamb’s work is more impressive as classical piano music. Trebor Tichenor did not rank the two composers as to degree of greatness, but remarked that Lamb’s music is “…unlike Joplin’s incredibly beautiful melodies, of intensely rustic folkishness that only he could create…By [Lamb’s] later work he advanced and extended the entire idiom of classic ragtime as far as it would go.”
John Stark published the first ragtime blockbuster, then spent his last twenty-eight years publishing and promoting classic ragtime and the composers who wrote it. Had Stark stayed in his music store in Sedalia in 1899, it’s possible “Maple Leaf Rag” might have never been published, Scott Joplin might have remained in obscurity all his life, and ragtime music might have been no more than a passing fad. By continuing to force ragtime into the public view until the time of his death, Stark kept the form at least marginally visible until it caught the attention of the revivalists in the 1940s. If titles really are to be conferred, Stark would seem a strong candidate for Defender of the Crown, or perhaps High Priest.
Tom Turpin? Turpin’s “Harlem Rag,” from 1898, was the first published ragtime tune by a Negro. His Rosebud Café was for many years the center of Black music in St. Louis, and Turpin provided important support to ragtime composers and musicians, Scott Joplin included.
Ben Harney? In 1897, the Kentuckian composer and entertainer claimed to be the originator of ragtime.
Mike Bernard, who won ragtime-playing contests in New York (most of which included only White contestants), and was designated “Rag Time King of the Whole World?”
The incomparable Eubie Blake?
No.
Ragtime is a joyously anarchic territory, only partially explored, and with ever-shifting borders. It’s populated by a divided but enthusiastic company of women and men who compose the music, play it, listen to it, study it, research it, write about it, love it. Those among them who’ve grabbed for a glittering crown have found themselves in the end to be holding only a handful of ashes. Ars longa, vita brevis.
In the Land of Ragtime there is no king.
That’s not a statement of fact. It’s just what I think.
What do you think?
Ragtime Resources
RADIO SHOW:
“The Rag Time Machine,” David Reffkin, Host. KUSF-FM, San Francisco, Monday, 9-10 pm. Streaming at www.live365.com/stations/kusf
WEBSITES:
Edward A. Berlin’s Website of Ragtime and Scholarship. www.edwardaberlin.com/index.htm
Jack Rummel’s Ragtime Music Reviews. www.ragtimers.org/reviews/
“Perfessor” Bill Edwards’ Ragtime MIDI, Sheet Music, Nostalgia and Ragtime Resource. www.perfessorbill.com/
The Mississippi Rag. www.mississippirag.com/
Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project. www.cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/
Parlor Songs MIDI Collection. www.parlorsongs.com/
The Ragtime Ephemeralist. http://home.earthlink.net/~ephemeralist/index.html
West Coast Ragtime Society. www.westcoastragtime.com/
Scott Joplin International Ragtime Foundation. www.scottjoplin.org/
Selected Bibliography
RAGTIME HISTORY
Berlin, Edward A. King of Ragtime. Oxford University Press, New York, 1994.
Berlin, Edward A. Ragtime, A Musical and Cultural History. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1980.
Berlin, Edward A. Reflections and Research on Ragtime. ISAM Monographs: Number 24, Institute for Studies in American Music, Brooklyn NY, 1987.
Berlin, Edward A. “A Biography of Scott Joplin.” Electronic publication, written for the exclusive use of the Scott Joplin International Foundation, 1998.
Berlin, Edward A. “On Ragtime: A Different Perspective on Tin Pan Alley.” CBMR Digest, Spring 1991, pp. 5-6.
Berlin, Edward A. “On Ragtime: Ragtime and the Church.” CBMR Digest, Fall 1991, pp. 6-7.
Berlin, Edward A. “On Ragtime: Scott Joplin, the Educator.” CBMR Digest, Spring 1990, pp. 3-4.
Berlin, Edward A. “Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha Years.” American Music, Fall 1991, pp. 260-276.
Blesh, Rudi and Janis, Harriet. They All Played Ragtime. Grove Press, New York, 1959 (originally published by Knopf, 1950).
Cassidy, Russell E. “Joseph F. Lamb: A Biography.” Newsletter of the Ragtime Society of Canada, Summer 1966, pp. 29-42.
Conn, Patricia Lamb. “Patricia Lamb Conn in an interview with David Sager.” Library of Congress, 2006. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200035773/full.html
Conn, Patricia Lamb. Personal correspondence.
Curtis, Susan. Dancing to a Black Man’s Tune. University of Missouri Press, Columbia MO, 1994.
Gammond, Peter. Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1976.
Haskins, James. Scott Joplin. Doubleday, New York, 1978.
Hasse, John Edward, ed. Ragtime, Its History, Composers, and Music. Schirmer Books, New York, 1985.
Jasen, David A. and Jones, Gene. That American Rag. Schirmer Books, New York, 2000.
Jasen, David A. and Tichenor, Trebor Jay. Rags and Ragtime. Dover Publications Inc, New York, 1978.
Lamb, Joseph, with Mike Montgomery. “Joseph Lamb: A Study in Classic Ragtime.” Smithsonian Folkways Archival. Folkways Records FG 3562, 1960/2007.
Montgomery, Mike. “Joseph F. Lamb—A Ragtime Paradox.” The Second Line, March-April 1961, pp. 17-18.
Rose, Al. Eubie Blake. Schirmer Books, New York, 1978.
Schafer, William J. and Riedel, Johannes. The Art of Ragtime. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1973.
Scotti, Joseph. “Joe Lamb: A Study of Ragtime’s Paradox.” PhD diss, University of Cincinnati, 1977.
Waldo, Terry. This is Ragtime. Da Capo Press, New York, 1991.
Wolf, Rennold. “The Boy Who Revived Ragtime. The Green Book Magazine, August 1913, pp. 201-209.
IRVING BERLIN
Bergreen, Laurence. As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin. Viking Penguin, New York, 1990.
Friedland, Michael. Irving Berlin. Stein and Day, New York, 1974.
Furia, Philip. Irving Berlin: A Life in Song. Schirmer Books, New York, 1998.
Hamm, Charles. Irving Berlin: Songs from the Melting Pot: The Formative Years, 1907-1914. Oxford University Press, New York, 1997
Whitcomb, Ian. Irving Berlin and Ragtime America. Century Hutchinson Ltd., London, 1987.
TIN PAN ALLEY
Goldberg, Isaac. Tin Pan Alley: A Chronicle of the American Popular Music Racket. The John Day Company, New York, 1930.
Jasen, David A. Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song. Routledge, New York, 2003.
Witmark, Isidore and Goldberg, Isaac. From Ragtime to Swingtime. Lee Furman, Inc., 1939.
AMERICAN BLACK MUSIC
Brooks, Tim. Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry 1890-1919. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago IL, 2004.
Riis, Thomas L. Just Before Jazz. Black Musical Theater in New York, 1890-1915. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London, 1989.
Shaw, Arnold. Black Popular Music in America. Schirmer Books, New York, 1986.
Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans. Norton and Company, New York, 1983.
NEW YORK CITY, 1916
Adams, Michael Henry. Harlem, Lost and Found. Monacelli Press, New York, 2002.
Burns, Ric and Sanders, James. An Illustrated History of New York. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1999.
Diamonstein, Barbaralee. The Landmarks of New York II. Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1993.
Jackson, Kenneth L. The Encyclopedia of New York City. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1995.
Oppel, Frank, comp. Tales of Gaslight New York. Castle Books, Edison NJ, 2000.
Phillips, David Graham. “The Delusion of the Race Track.” The Cosmopolitan, January 1905, pp.289-300.
Simmons, Peter. Gotham Comes of Age. Pomegranate Communications, San Francisco, 1999.
MISCELLANEOUS
Anonymous. “Lester A. Walton Biography.” New York Public Library Digital Collection, undated.
Beeson, Paul B. and McDermott, Walsh. Textbook of Medicine. W. B. Saunders, Philadelphia, 1975.
Dooner, Kate E. Telephones, Antique to Modern. Schiffer Publishing Ltd., Atglen PA, 2005.
Fowler, Gene. Schnozzola. Viking Press, New York, 1951.
Walsh, Jim. “History of the Peerless Quartet.” Hobbies Magazine, December 1969, pp. 127-130.
