ROOSTER RAG

I wanted to post some music associated with turkeys, in honor of Thanksgiving - but turkey music seems to be nearly non-existent.
The once-popular Turkey Trot dance (over 100 years ago) isn't foremost in my piano repertoire.

So I searched through my music files and extracted an old recording I made of the Rooster Rag. 
Heck, roosters are sort of similar to turkeys - - and if you're drunk enough you can't even tell the difference.

Last night I made a video to accompany the music. I threw it together in less than half an hour - which explains the shabby quality.

I'll readily confess that it isn't easy to do anything creative with a rooster theme.

 The Rooster Rag was composed by Muriel Pollack (1895-1971) and published in 1917.

Pollack was a composer/lyricist who started out as a piano player for silent movies. She studied at the New York Institute of Musical Art (which later became Julliard) and eventually had a fairly successful musical career.


Her full name was Mary Muriel Pollock Groll Donaldson (she was married twice). Born in New York, died in Hollywood, California.

I heard that Muriel initially wrote The Rooster Rag when she was about seventeen, but it wasn't published until several years later.
It's a brilliant piece and fun to play. 

If you listen to this recording carefully, you'll probably hear the music manuscript fall off the piano (around 1:12) while I was in the middle of the performance.
Fortunately I kept valiantly playing without missing much of a beat......

                                 Jon

 This was originally posted two years ago

ANGEL FOOD

 

 

 Every once in a rare while I'm pleasantly surprised. The other night I found some piano tapes that I didn't remember recording. I had completely forgotten about the Angel Food Rag and was delighted to hear it again.

So (of course) I decided to make it into a video. The BIG problem was - what the heck kind of visuals can I use for the subject of angel food?

I initially tried an angel theme, but it bombed Big Time. Angels and heavenly vestals don't exactly go with ragtime music - so I incorporated the tried-and-true theme of cartoon animals. I think it worked out reasonably well.

The Angel Food Rag was written by Al Marzian. Biographical information about this composer is very scarce, but I found out a few things.

Al Marzian

Albert Frederick Marzian (1875 - 1947) was born in Russia but his parents were German. The family moved to America when he was thirteen.

Albert and his brother Alfred (a professional cellist) were involved with the Louisville Symphony Orchestra in Kentucky, and Albert eventually became conductor there.

Albert later ran a music store in Albany, Indiana, was part-owner of a music publishing company in Louisville, and was also a conductor and arranger in local musical theater.

Since Al Marzian didn't particularly want to be associated with ragtime music, he used the pseudonym Mark Janza on some of his compositions (such as the Lion Tamer Rag). He also supposedly made some piano rolls under the name Silvio Marzini.

Anyway, I think the Angel Food Rag is a great ragtime composition and it's fun to perform.

Change of subject -

there was a HUGE windstorm here last night, which toppled some nearby trees - - but thankfully none on my property.

video best viewed full screen

GOOD GRAVY

A cool, rainy weekend - much more like autumn than spring. 

I scrapped my Mother's Day post, since my intuition told me it was too saccharine and sentimental. My most popular blog posts are always the inane, mindless, embarrassingly bad ones (like the previous atrocity).

SO -
I sifted through my old piano recordings and found some benign, (non-classical!) ragtime music.

I also found some nonsensical vintage photographs to haphazardly accompany the music.

I slapped the video together in less than twenty minutes and breathed a satisfied sigh of relief - - until I discovered (with horror) that

1. I misspelled a word on the title
and
2. MovieMaker (as usual) messed up
my mp3 music file - so I had to convert the damn thing to a WAVE file......and start all over again.

ANYWAY

here is the Good Gravy Rag, written in 1913 by Harry Barnard Belding (1882 - 1931)
performed by moi.



As always, video is best viewed full-screen