Ragtime guitar, both classic and barrelhouse styles, has been around exactly as long as ragtime piano for exactly the same reasons. Entertainers in bars, sporting houses, and private parties, whatever instrument they played, had to play whatever was currently popular. During the early part of the twentieth century it was ragtime music.
We’ve all seen photos and illustrations of (usually young) men or women playing what are now known as parlor (read small) guitars for audiences of friends in their homes. Again their repertoires would have included classic rags.
Those small instruments were the standard size of the time. The larger classical guitar that is now standard came later. My late wife’s parlor guitar that we traded for in 1967 was made in 1900. It is now being played by my granddaughter and still sounds great. You may think that classic piano rags would be very difficult to play on guitar, and, oh boy, do I agree. But then so is classical guitar which goes back another hundred years and was also part of the parlor concert repertoire.
So now let’s get to the revival that began among folk music fans in the fifties and sixties when Max Morath was repopularizing ragtime piano. At that time some of the great players of barrelhouse ragtime guitar were still alive and could be heard a
