Pianophilia

Dear Frank,
these scores are fantastic!
I'm particularly surprised by "Keyboard Express", because I've never heard of this piece and it looks great!
The Fletcher Henderson and J.C. Johnson songs are very interesting and the Bob Zurke arrangement is fantastic!
Thanks also for posting "Zah Zu Zah"
Yes, I'm a big Calloway fan and I didn't have the sheet music of this piece. Thanks so much for that and I notice something very interesting it that: the published version has very different lyrics apart from the second verse.
For example, the first verse of the song as sung by Cab on the 1933 record and in films is something like:
"Now, here's a very entrancing phrase,
It will put you in a daze,
To me it don't mean a thing,
But it's got a very peculiar swing"
I don't post the recording because it's not a piano recording, but those who like Calloway can find MP3s of "Zah Zuh Zah" on internet and YouTube also features several soundies starring Cab Calloway & his Orchestra, including "Hi-De-Ho" from 1934 (Paramout Pictures), in which Cab does "Zah Zuh Zah", "The Lady With A Fan" and a fine instrumental (horribly cut by the film editor) entitled "Railroad Rhythm". The soundie was partly filmed at the Cotton Club.
Here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-kJqM7h ... ideo_title
By the way, in reply to "Zah Zuh Zah" I post here "Minnie The Moocher".
Calloway's manager, Irving Mills, was also Duke Ellington's manager. Mills was a mediocre singer and kazoo player and he also had the habit of putting his name on the compositions of the artists he managed without actually composing anything himself.
Anyway, he was a very talented manager and he had such artsit like Ellington, Calloway, Fats Waller, Lena Horne, the Mills Brothers, etc...
I say that because I found an interesting 1931 short of YouTube in which Irving Mills presents three of his "talents", Ellington (playing "Sophisticated Lady" whose score has been posted by Frank), Calloway and the Mills Blue Rhythm Band. Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEoTwTYnc6g
To go back to piano syncopation, ragtime and jazz, I also post a 1920 rag entitled "Kitty Wobble".
Enjoy!
Luigi

fhimpsl wrote:One last point on Ellington's "Soda Fountain Rag." i noted that it's in the key of D minor...which was apparently a popular key for early stride ragtime. One example is JPJ's "Steeplechase Rag" and another Lucky Robert's "Pork and Beans" (of course Lucky played it in C# minor!) Either of these pieces could have been inspiration for The Duke.

Dear Frank,
thanks for your comments! You're absolutely right! I also agree with you on "Pork & Beans" (in particular) and "Steeplechase Rag" having been inspirational for Ellington's "Soda Fountain Rag".
By the way, I forgot to post James P. Johnson's "Steeplechase Rag", so I post it here under the title of "Over The Bars" (the score is actually a good transcription of the Johnson recording from 1944).
I also include "Jingles" and excuse me for the scan: I made it some time ago with a shareware pdf creator and I didn't feel like re-scanning it, so please be satisfied of this not very good copy...
Frank, thanks a lot for the great recording by Brooks Kerr! I've enver heard that before and I didn't know about this fine pianist! I searched for details on this artist on wikipedia and found that he had studied with Willie "The Lion" Smith.
I found that was funny, because young Ellington himself was a kind of protege of the Lion.
Luigi

Dear Luigi,

I'm glad you liked the posts! I certainly enjoyed your links to the Calloway and Ellington shorts on YouTube. Fantastic pieces of history! Also glad you liked the Brooks Kerr...that would be a good version of "Soda Fountain Rag" to transcribe some rainy day! He hits a couple of clinkers here and there, but generally his playing is great and captures the excitement of the piece. I guess in those days that piece was the Duke's "cutting contest number." Kerr recorded a number of other Ellington solos (most of which I had the sheet music for and posted here), but apparently Duke never made an attempt to copyright "Soda Fountain Rag." Maybe he thought it was a little TOO much like the James P. and Luckey pieces, who knows!

Thanks for posting the JPJ "Over The Bars" and "Jingles". There are a couple versions that were published and are floating around. Clarence Williams published a version of "Over The Bars" in the late 30s or early 40s which is very scarce, but not as good as the original piano roll. Of course I'm more of a ragtime fan so I'd go with the piano roll arrangement any day. JPJ was only in his early 20s when he made those great rolls for Universal around 1917-18!!

Speaking of piano rolls reminds me of something I've wanted to scan for a long time but have hesitated because of its length. (These things ARE time consuming to scan, folks!) Coming up shortly...

All Best,

Frank

fhimpsl wrote:that would be a good version of "Soda Fountain Rag" to transcribe some rainy day!

Dear Frank,
I agree with you! I wish I was able transcribe music from recordings: I would do that in a rainy day...any rainy days I think, since there are so many recordings I'd like to see in transcription...
I'll have to be content with my piano roll transcriptions I'm going to start writing a new one (I'll post it when it's finished).

fhimpsl wrote: Clarence Williams published a version of "Over The Bars" in the late 30s or early 40s which is very scarce, but not as good as the original piano roll. Of course I'm more of a ragtime fan so I'd go with the piano roll arrangement any day. JPJ was only in his early 20s when he made those great rolls for Universal around 1917-18!!

That's very interesting! And about the Universal piano rolls played by Johnson I also feel the same: they're my favorite! He still was very much a ragtime pianist then.
Speaking of Clarence Williams, a pianist that I respect very much, I post his "Shake 'Em Up", that is actually a re-arranged version of his old "Wildflower Rag".
I also post the Clarence Williams recording of "Wldflower Rag", since it's very close to the "Shake 'Em Up" arrangement, much closer than the original publication!
The first 1916 published score is on the Templeton Sheet Musci Collection. Link:
http://digital.library.msstate.edu/cgi- ... ch=%22wild flower rag%22

fhimpsl wrote: Speaking of piano rolls reminds me of something I've wanted to scan for a long time but have hesitated because of its length. (These things ARE time consuming to scan, folks!) Coming up shortly...

I'm very curious about that...what piano roll are you willing to scan? Oh yes, I heard that the scanning process takes a lot of time. Thanks so much again for the great roll you scanned and posted here! The pieces were great!!
Speaking of piano rolls, I post here a famous song, just because I don't think it has been posted before, "The Old Piano Roll Blues", recorded many (maybe too many?) times on piano roll...
Then, on the piano roll subject, I always liked Silverman & Ward's "That Hand Played Rag" (1914), from the great "Ragtime Rarities" folio, because it was an interesting rag and beautifully scored, also including fill-in effects that could be heard on piano rolls.
So I looked for the other rag composed by Ward & Silverman, "Missouri Rag" from 1919, hoping to find a similar work....well, it was a bit too similar...just the very same rag, with just a different title.
Oh well...I post this "Missouri Rag" here: those who didn't have "That Hand Played Rag" will enjoy it
Robert Perry's website of scanned piano rolls ( http://www.pianola.co.nz/index.asp ) includes a great hand-played roll of the piece, played by the composer David Silverman. Here's the link to the midi file:
http://www.pianola.co.nz/rollscans/midi ... verman.mid
I hope that's interesting.
Luigi

Hi Frank, Luigi, Toby and all other active members at this website,

Thank you very much for all great and rare music uploads !!!!!
"PIANOPHILIA" is more and more one of the greatest paradise in the web for collectors of rare "Ragtime and Novelty" music files.

Here's the version of JPJ "Over The Bars", published by "Clarence Williams Music Publishing Co., Inc. New York, 1939".
Sorry for the poor scan, but my original copy is in same poor quality. Hope you will like this rare version. Cheers...

Dear Luigi,

Thanks so much for the Clarence Williams score "Shake 'Em Up!" I never saw the piece published under this title, and agreed it does sound a lot more like Williams' 78rpm recording than the original score from the late 'teens. Still I like the first version the best; again because it's truest to the ragtime form!

Speaking of Williams, I imagine you are familiar with his "Barrel House Rag" written with Fate Marable (or as the cover shows "Fate Marble!"). How do you feel about the first strain as being very similar to "Tiger Rag?" I'd have to check the copyright dates for "Barrel House" against the ODJB sheet for "Tiger Rag" and see which one came first. It's very possible that "Barrel House Rag" wasn't even copyrighted. There are so many examples of fine rags which were published and not copyrighted (hence the scores are not available at the Library of Congress). Even John Stark was guilty of not spending the five dollars and 2 copies of the sheet music need to copyright some of the classic rags. I remember definitely that some of the later James Scott rags were not copyrighted.

On James Scott, are you aware that the exact melody of his "Prosperity Rag" was stolen outright with the publication of the pop song "Nothin' But" in the early 1920s..."composed" by Ferde Grofe and Adam Carroll? The verse of "Nothin' But" is note-for-note identical to the trio section of "Prosperity;" and the chorus is note-for-note identical to the second theme of "Prosperity." One of the most outrageous examples of musical piracy I've ever come across. And, btw, "Prosperity Rag" WAS copyrighted!!!

Anyway..gettting to my surprise from the last email. I wasn't referring to a piano roll scan, but rather a folio which was issued in the early 1920s containing original compositions by Pete Wendling and Max Kortlander. I got the scan completed tonight and am posting it here. There were actually two very different published versions of this folio! What I've posted here is the first one, which is complete and contains the score for F.Paolo Tosti's famous "Goodbye", followed by a terrific ragtime arrangement of the song by Pete Wendling. In the alternate (later) version of this folio, for some reason these two pieces were removed. If you look at the table of contents, you'll see "Goodbye" is not listed; but it does appear in this first edition. Wendling made a roll of the piece for QRS which he titled "Syncopated Good-Bye." It's a large folio and contains some priceless ragtime. (Max Kortlander's "Buck Shots" is almost the same as his roll of "Hunting The Ball Rag.") Enjoy!

All Best,

Frank

Here's from my collection for all "Eric Plessow" fans a rare big german song medley, which can not be found in internet :
"Plessow, Eric - Von Erfolg zu Erfolg - Grosses Schlager-Potpourri (Big Song Medley)(1938)".

This song medley is written in 13 parts and in every part the music style changes :
(Intro) Tango, (1) Paso Doble, (2) Tango, (3) Fox-Trot, (4) Slow-Waltz, (5) Fox-Trot, (6) Tango Bolero, (7) March Fox-Trot, (8) Waltz, (9) Slow Fox-Trot, (10) Fox-Trot, (11) Tango, (12) Fox-Trot, (13) Paso-Doble.

Hope you will enjoy this rare song medley by Eric Plessow.
All the best,
Martin

P.S.
Soon i will upload the music folio "Plessow, Eric - Rhythm & Melody - 5 Novelty Piano Solos - Vol.2 (1936)"

And speaking of Max Kortlander...here are two of his published novelty piano solos. While the cover advertising lists a total of four in this series, "Blue Clover" was in fact never published in sheet music form. It exists as a manuscript at the Library Of Congress, and Kortlander made a piano roll of the tune. Apparently the melody proved popular enough, because it was later released in a song roll version with lyrics by J.Russel Robinson, entitled "Blue Clover Man." I've previously posted my piano roll transcription of "Deuces Wild," and also have the published score to post but it will take some searching to find it. All four of these Kortlander rags were issued as played by the composer on QRS piano rolls.

.... and here a couple of novelty piano solos by Joe Keden; a prolific piano roll artist for the Connorized Music Roll Co. who was billed as "Keden On The Keys"....