On March 1, Andrew Greene, director of the Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra, announced the acquisition of the Johnny Maddox Orchestra Collection. The orchestra, based in Annapolis, Maryland, has been hailed by The Washington Post as “the premier American ragtime ensemble.”
The Maddox collection is made up of more than 1,200 pieces of historic American popular music from the 1880s through the 1920s, and includes rare original compositions and arrangements of major American composers, among them Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Joe Jordan, and Jelly Roll Morton.
Johnny Maddox, born in 1927, is one of the most famous ragtime piano players of all time: over a nearly 70-year career he has sold more than 11 million records, with 9 gold singles. Mr. Maddox collected the orchestrations throughout his lifetime and preserved these in his own immense collection of American popular music.
The acquisition adds to the Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra’s 10,000 piece collection of orchestrated ragtime, theater, and dance selections. These historic orchestrations represent an often-overlooked portion of America’s musical past and will be immediately preserved and incorporated into Peacherine’s musical performances.
Peacherine director Andrew Greene has been interviewed by Bill Hoffman for The Syncopated Times; that interview will appear in the May issue of this paper.
