As I was blowing the dust off some unsorted clippings recently, I found a clipping on the contest held at the first Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival. With the 50th anniversary of that event next year, I’ll feature the winner in the adult keyboard competition, this month. Bob, or "Flint" Long is a performer many readers know from his long career.
When we connected recently Flint wrote, “I was living in Hollywood, CA at the time (1974) and was friends with Dick Zimmerman and Dave Bourne. They were my ragtime mentors, and I was an enthusiastic participant in the club they founded called, “The Maple Leaf Club” (named after the club in Sedalia during Joplin’s time there).
“It was through them that I met Max Morath, Eubie Blake, Knocky Parker, Joshua Rifkin and many others. I was single and living alone upstairs above a garage and was practicing about six or eight hours per day and making a living playing mostly ragtime at Shakey’s Pizza down the street. So, after a day of pure practice, I would go play for four hours at Shakey’s five nights per week. I guess you could say with all that playing and practicing my chops were up!
“…It was Dick Zimmerman who informed me that there was going to be a Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia that summer, a
