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Mar. 6th, 2008
New genres in 2008: Ragtime
Mar. 6th, 2008 12:23 pmRagtime week hasn't been the hugest success. Most of the notable ragtime recordings are incredibly old, and thus a little hard to track down. I managed to find a couple of good compilations, but that's it. It's already been over a week, and I'm not making much progress, so I've decided to move onto the next genre. Anyway, here's the ragtime albums I listened to:
Scott Joplin's Piano Rags Compilation (released 1990) - Scott Joplin is basically the most famous ragtime pianist who ever lived. He wrote "The Entertainer", along with a whole bunch of other recognisable tunes. This seems like the best available overview of his work. Thoroughly enjoyable, but most people probably won't discover anything revelatory about it. It's just fun, catchy ragtime music, pure and simple.
Blind Blake's Ragtime Guitar's Foremost Fingerpicker Compilation (released 1990) - Given that I only managed to listen to two albums in this genre, I suppose it's a good thing that they turned out to be quite different. I always thought of piano when I thought of ragtime, so it was really interesting to hear it applied to acoustic guitar with a distinct bluesy edge. Overall, I found this to be lively and fun in a similar way to Scott Joplin's work, but to me personally, it was also a very fascinating listen.
I also own Marvin Hamlisch's soundtrack to The Sting on vinyl, which features Hamlisch covering the songs of Scott Joplin. It's a great record, which I picked up for $1 at a book sale!
I had some other albums I was intending to check out, such as Jelly Roll Morton's The Pearls, Dave Van Ronk's Dave Van Ronk And The Ragtime Jug Stompers and the more recent Paragon Ragtime Orchestra's On the Level You're a Little Devil, but unfortunately they proved too hard to track down. I'll keep trying to find them though, and I'm considering also tracking down some "various artists" ragtime collections. Perhaps I'll revisit this post if and when I manage to hear a bit more.
The next two genres should be really fun and interesting: first up is Delta Blues, followed by Stoner Metal. I've already got a decent-sized list of albums for each, but any suggestions are very welcome :)
Scott Joplin's Piano Rags Compilation (released 1990) - Scott Joplin is basically the most famous ragtime pianist who ever lived. He wrote "The Entertainer", along with a whole bunch of other recognisable tunes. This seems like the best available overview of his work. Thoroughly enjoyable, but most people probably won't discover anything revelatory about it. It's just fun, catchy ragtime music, pure and simple.
Blind Blake's Ragtime Guitar's Foremost Fingerpicker Compilation (released 1990) - Given that I only managed to listen to two albums in this genre, I suppose it's a good thing that they turned out to be quite different. I always thought of piano when I thought of ragtime, so it was really interesting to hear it applied to acoustic guitar with a distinct bluesy edge. Overall, I found this to be lively and fun in a similar way to Scott Joplin's work, but to me personally, it was also a very fascinating listen.
I also own Marvin Hamlisch's soundtrack to The Sting on vinyl, which features Hamlisch covering the songs of Scott Joplin. It's a great record, which I picked up for $1 at a book sale!
I had some other albums I was intending to check out, such as Jelly Roll Morton's The Pearls, Dave Van Ronk's Dave Van Ronk And The Ragtime Jug Stompers and the more recent Paragon Ragtime Orchestra's On the Level You're a Little Devil, but unfortunately they proved too hard to track down. I'll keep trying to find them though, and I'm considering also tracking down some "various artists" ragtime collections. Perhaps I'll revisit this post if and when I manage to hear a bit more.
The next two genres should be really fun and interesting: first up is Delta Blues, followed by Stoner Metal. I've already got a decent-sized list of albums for each, but any suggestions are very welcome :)