The 2002 Atlanta JAZZ Party!

In the late 1800s pianos were everywhere...in taverns and saloons, schools, churches and social clubs, and in the parlor of most homes. There were no radios, televisions or phonographs. People made their own music. In 1920 the population was only about a third what it is today, and 370,000 pianos were sold in the U.S. Compare that with 174,000 pianos sold in 1985 and you get the picture.

So, there would be a piano everywhere that people gathered, and saloons and cafes very often had their own players. However, itinerant players often took over the piano and held forth as long as they could entertain the patrons. Sometimes a player possessed more enthusiasm than skill, which would prompt Jelly Roll Morton to say, "Get up from that piano, kid...you're hurting its feelings."

In the early days, the proficiency of the player was more important than the compositions they played. Many players composed their own tunes and were more than willing to teach each other, because if they possessed great playing skill, they would still rule as "king" in their territory.

For example, Pine Top Smith apparently had a premonition that his days were coming to an end because a few days before he died he called Albert Ammons aside and said, "Albert, I want you to learn my Boogie Woogie." (The same tune that Tommy Dorsey turned into a big hit.) Then, sure enough, Pine Top "rambled 'round the town" one time too many and "the butcher cut him down" when he was shot to death in one of his many escapades. And Albert ascended to the piano throne with Pine Top's tune.

The early "rag time" layers gathered in certain spots to show off their skills, and often engaged in "cutting contests" to see who was best. Such a place was Tom Turpin's Rosebud Cafe in St Louis. In 1893, hundreds of the best players went to the World's Fair in Chicago and entertained on the midway and various night life spots in the city.

In 1897, New Orleans City alderman, Sidney Story proposed an ordinance to segregate the prostitution there into a 12-block section bordered by Basin Street. This, of course, became known as Storyville. It contained 200 "houses of pleasure," many of which had piano players. The most famous of all the players in the early days was Tony Jackson. Other great piano men were Alfred Wilson, Sammy Davis, Albert Carroll and Jelly Roll Morton, who began playing in Storyville at age 17, where he could make $15 to $18 a night. Other band players around New orleans were being paid $1.50 to $2 per night, so a top flight "professor" could earn as much as a whole band. As a result, most of the early jazz bands, up until about 1910, did not have a piano player. In 1904, there was another World's Fair...this time in St. Louis. They announced that they would have a ragtime contest (for players, not composers). Jelly Roll heard through the grapevine that Tony Jackson was entered. As always, Jelly was intimidated by Jackson who he said "is the world's greatest entertainer," and declined to enter the contest. Tony did appear and history fails to tell us who won, but it wasn't Jelly Roll.

Meanwhile, the music publishers were well aware of that Negro music called ragtime, and in 1897 when a white Midwestern bandleader, Willaim Krell, wrote a rag called The Mississippi Rag, they finally published a rag tune. It was followed within a few days by Tom Turpin's Harlen Rag. Turpin was black. The floodgates were open! Ragtime spread throughout the nation like wildfire despite the lack of radio, television or phonograph. It was sheet music plus pianos in most homes that made ragtime one of the greatest musical crazes in history. Since there were pianos everywhere, people all over the country could play the published rags themselves and entertain their friends and neighbors.

Then in 1899, an itinerant piano player, Scott Joplin, was entertaining the customers at the Maple Leaf Club in Sedalia, MO, when a white music store owner, John Stark, dropped in for a cold beer and heard Joplin play a tune named after the club, Maple Leaf Rag. Stark paid Joplin $50 for the right to publish the rag, plus a royalty for each copy sold (virtually unheard of at the time). Hundreds of thousands of copies sold and it was only the first of many rags that Joplin and Stark published together. The virtuoso players of the day would challenge Joplin to play his Maple Leaf Rag which Joplin played at a moderate tempo, and then they would play the same tune with their own variations at breakneck speed to embarrass Joplin. Of course, Joplin, even though he was not a great player, was still without peer, the greatest composer of classic rags... and he was also a rather well-to-do man.

In New York, and Eastern form of ragtime was developing, led by James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. These two were the top of the list for Negro rent- raising parties known as skiffles in Chicago, buffet flats in St. Louis, house shouts in New York and house hops in Washington, DC. Willie "The Lion" Smith, another New York player described such a party this way: "a hundred people would crown into one seven-room flat (having paid a small 25-cent fee) until the walls bulged. Food! Hog maws and chittlins. Beer and gin. when we played, the shouts [Eastern ragtime] everyone danced." Bessie Smith sings about a rent party in her recording, Gimme a Pig Foot.

A little later, on the Southside of Chicago, a different kind of piano playing was evolving that later became known as boogie woogie. The player who won most of the "cutting contests" was Jimmy Yancey. His boys were Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons. Those two, plus Pete Johnson, from kansas City, formed a trio that took NYC by storm in 1938 as part of a concert at Carnegie Hall. Other pioneers of this style, sometimes called boogie blues, were Cripple Clarence Lofton and Cow Cow Davenport, who is credited with introducing the walking bass.

James P., Fats, The Lion and Lucky Roberts were the big players in New York. Their style was robust and gutsy (Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum are an entirely different story). Fats Waller, in particular, has been followed by two youngsters, Dick Wellstood and Ralph Sutton. Ralph came to NY from St. Louis. Ralph said his childhood music teacher in Missouri would send him home "with a Bach fugue under one arm and Maple Leaf under the other." Ralph also said, "I've never heard a piano man swing better than Fats."

I can say the same thing about Ralph Sutton. We will miss him, but you can bet he is swinging and holding his own in the big "cutting contest" in the sky.

-- PHIL CARROLL

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