Plays Scott Joplin

I guess I was a weird kid. While other adolescents were listening to Pop music of the late-60s and early-70s, I was captivated by Scott Joplin, George Gershwin, Spike Jones, the Korn Kobblers and anything on a 78 that I could scrabble from the neighbors. Anyhow, I launched into puberty with a penchant for ragtime music and science fiction books that distracted me somewhat from the other stuff that puberty does to one.

If you are familiar with these Joplin tunes you might notice this set might sound a little different. There are different schools of thought on how Ragtime should be played. There is one school that it should be played strictly to the format of the sheet music, just as you are supposed to do with Beethoven, Mozart & others.... but I think I stated it best on the CD liner notes:

It must have been an interestng conversation between Scott Joplin and his publisher: “No, Scott, too many notes, We are selling these to housewives not concert pianists!” or “My God, it’s going to cost a fortune to set that up for print! I’ll just edit it a bit.”

There are those who think straying from the printed notes of Mr. Joplin is somehow wrong & causes him great discomfort in his eternal rest. Yet a strict reading can easily yeild a monotonous onslaught of redundant phrases that can quickly bore the modern listener.

The goal here is simply to offend the opinionated, tittleate the curious and reward the initiated. With luck we may find there is still a little life in the corpse that is Ragtime..

This is another collection of songs that I had to release twice... The original version was my first CD & I was still hunting around for a good sounding digital piano model... By the time I had got to the Debussy set, I had found the model that had the breadth of sound I expect from a real piano and could replicate the soft tones I wanted to be producing. Once I was able to get the tone quality I wanted, I slowed the tempo down to fit it. Ah.. now it was right.
Additionally, since I was going for streaming only release, I added the additional three songs I had that wouldn't fit on the CD.