Mike Schwimmer

Mike Schwimmer, a performer, broadcaster, collector, presenter, and historian whose work reached across the traditional jazz and ragtime community for more than half a century, died in April 2026. He was 94. To many readers he was not simply a name in a festival program, but a familiar presence: the genial emcee, the rhythm man behind the band, and a friend who seemed to know every record, roll, rag, player, and story worth remembering.

Schwimmer graduated from Indiana University in 1954, where he played drums in a fraternity Dixieland band. After serving in the U.S. Army, he became fascinated by the washboard sound of early South Side Chicago jazz groups and began building instruments of his own. That work eventually led to his customized “Rhythmboard,” a personal refinement of the washboard tradition that became one of his signatures. His collection of jazz and ragtime records, tapes, and books was later donated to Indiana University’s Archives of Traditional Music.

His service to the music was as much curatorial as musical. In the 1960s and ’70s he hosted radio programs devoted to traditional jazz and big band music, and was among the early broadcasters to present ragtime historically, tracing its development and playing both classic rags and newer compositions. In later years he continued that work through The Yesterday Shop on WOMR-FM in Provincetown, a three-hour program heard on the second and fourth Sundays of the month. He also spent 25 years collecting and selling player piano rolls, making hard-to-find jazz and ragtime titles available to other collectors.

In 1981, Schwimmer co-founded the Red Rose Ragtime Jazz Band with pianist Joan Reynolds. The band became his principal musical vehicle, appearing at major American traditional jazz and ragtime festivals, including Sacramento, Bix Beiderbecke, Scott Joplin, San Diego, and Milwaukee, and touring abroad to Jazz at Marciac and festivals in England and the Netherlands. Its recordings included Hot Jazz, Blues & Ragtime, A Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose, Chicago Buzz, and Horse Feathers.

Schwimmer was also percussionist and emcee with the Elite Syncopators, and his later recording work included the Holland Rhythm Company, where his Rhythmboard was prominently featured. He accompanied such artists as Jeff Barnhart, Scott Kirby, Sue Keller, Brian Holland, and Trebor Tichenor, and served as emcee or presenter at the Scott Joplin, Classic Ragtime, Tom Turpin, and West Coast ragtime festivals. In 2003 he received the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival Lifetime Achievement Award. Brian Holland once called him a “Musical Dad,” which may be the best summation of the place he held in the music.