Pianophilia

During the 1920s many fine novelty piano solos were issued in folios, and sometimes not in single sheet form. Here is an early one entitled "Jack Mills Incomparable Folio Of Rags and Blues No. 1." It contains pieces by well known composer/pianists such as Harry Jentes "Blooey Blues," Mike Bernard "Good Gravy" (the latter I believe is his last published composition), and jazz songwriter Elmer Schoebel, amongst others. Enjoy!

note: for some reason my scanner chose to use horizontal rather than vertical placement of 2 pages of the folio. Could someone adept at Adobe Acrobat turn these around please? Thanks

All best,

Frank

fhimpsl wrote:

gigiranalli wrote:

fhimpsl wrote:Dear Luigi,
Certainly I will scan "Hot Coffee" and "The Candy Rag" for you...I just need to get through the unfiled music stacks which are still in storage after our move! However, I do have a midi file of "Candy" which I made from the sheet music score, and am attaching that. The second and third themes are so close to 12th st. Rag that I personally have always felt that Bowman at least got the idea from "The Candy Rag," as the similarities are so blatant. Thanks for the Piano Price Rag score, that is a nice piece of ragtime history. Keep the rags rolling along!
All best,
Frank

CandyRag2.mid

Thanks so much, Frank!
THat's a great rag! I love this midi!!!
Tomorrow I'll post the manuscript of "12th Street Rag", as notated by Euday Bowman's sister (she wrote down all the pieces Euday played): there's an interesting detail about that....
Gratefully
Luigi

Dear Luigi,

Here as promised is the score to Sid Reinherz' "Hot Coffee". I'm still in the process of searching for "The Candy Rag." With a red cover you'd think it would be easier to find!

All Best,

Frank

Reinherz - Hot Coffee.pdf

Dear Luigi,

The original sheet of "The Candy Rag" is still missing but today I came up with a photoreduction that I had used for the midi sequence (which was already posted on PP). Here it is..enjoy!

All best,
Frank

Dear Frank,
WOW!!!!!!!Thanks SO MUCH for the sheet music of "Candy Rag" and "Hot Coffee"!!!!
It was a lot of time I was looking for these two numbers!
And you know, I had asked several collectors about "Hot Coffee" and nobody knew the piece. You have the rarest and neates rags!!!!
I also enjoyed the Mills Folio no1 very much!!!
Thanks for the kind words about the Bowman thread. I certainly don't deserve them...
In the weekend I'm going to post the Arthur Marshall and Claude "Chauf" Williams recordings from 1959.
Today I'd like to send some recordings of another ragtime pianist, a white ragtimer of the 1910s named Dave Minor.
At age 80 he recorded a disc of piano solos, mostly in ragtime, entitled "88 keys at 80".
After the ragtime craze finished, Minor, who was strictly a hear pianist, started a music course to learn to play piano by hear.
It seems that in the '30s he also hosted a radio show in which he taught how to play piano without reading notes and I have somewhere an instruction book written by him, again on playing piano by ear.
His style was quit ethe typical white ragtime piano style of the Teens. I think that he sometimes sounds quite similar to how Axel Christensen played (in the future I will also post a couple of Christensen recordings).
The pieces I chose are "1910 Rag", a Dave Minor original, a ragtime arrangement of "Vilia Love Song" and then another Minor composition that is a non-ragtime tune, but quite typical I think, entitled "Arabian Capers".
I hope you'll find them interesting. He was 80 and he was still playing so well!
Best RAGards
Luigi

Dear Luigi,

Many thanks for posting the Dave Minor recordings for us! I never heard of him before. It's amazing how many albums were produced during the first ragtime revival, if after all this collecting we can still come across new ones. The only other place I've heard the Minor name is as composer of a rag/blues from the late 'teens entitled "The Weary Way Blues," and credited to one Coleman L. Minor. Maybe a relative...not too common a name....who knows?

All Best,
Frank

Fixed the 2 pages that were rotated in Mills Folio part 2.

- Bill

Bill,

Thanks much for fixing the pages!

Frank

Cuban born composer/pianist Harry Jentes had a career spanning from ragtime to swingtime. He composed a number of very good rags and novelty piano solos. Attached is a novelty piano solo collection which he published in 1924 containing three original solos.

Frank

More novelty piano solo music by Harry Jentes.

Frank

In 1927 there appeared a folio of novelty piano solos by Harry Jentes and Paul Ash. It's very likely that Paul Ash had nothing to do with them except offer his photograph for the front cover!

Frank

A host of novelty piano solos by Harry Jentes....enjoy!


Frank