As I blow the dust off of the fifty-year-old files of Joplin Ragtime Festival documents, it isn’t just the dust causing my eyes to tear. Holding those old pieces of paper and going through them one by one, brings back so many memories of a very magical time for me and a realization of how time ravages memory as well.
It is such a privilege for me to have had a small part in what has become known as the Ragtime Revival. My personal inspiration came from Joshua Rifkin, William Bolcom, William Albright, Rudi Blesh, Richard Zimmerman, Bob Darch, Wally Rose, Dick Hyman, Eubie Blake, Gunther Schuller’s New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble, and Max Morath as I look back at my early record purchases.
And then, in 1974 and 1975, I looked up and most of them were performing right in front of me at the first Scott Joplin Ragtime Festivals in Sedalia.
For some time now I have been regaling anyone who would listen with my stories of the Festival at the height of that Ragtime Revival. As I am prone to do, I have been aware that my accounts have become a bit embellished in their repetitions but, nothing I fear that has severely altered the course of history.
However, I have been startled by the way my mind has blended events and people and their n
