One of the finest ragtime ensembles around today, the Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra was founded by Andrew Greene in 2010. The group has a gigantic repertoire with over 15,000 scores in their library. For That Eccentric Rag, their sixth recording, Greene put together a well-rounded program of some of the band’s most popular numbers, many of which are otherwise quite obscure.
The 11-piece orchestra consists of two cornets, trombone, clarinet, flute/piccolo, a string quartet, bass, and drums/percussion. Andrew Greene takes two Scott Joplin pieces (“The Crush Collision March” and “Peacherine Rag”) as piano solos and whistles on two other numbers. In addition, Karen Vincent takes three vocals and William Edwards has four including a duet with Vincent on “Mister Moon-Man Turn Off Your Light.” The singing is a bit of an acquired taste but does have a period charm with the vocalists shouting over the band as if microphones had not yet been invented.
With the exception of “Paramount March” which is from 1927, all of the music on this program dates from 1896-1922 with the orchestra sounding very much as if they were putting on a variety show from circa 1918. In addition to the Joplin pieces (which also include the orchestra on “The Easy Winners” and “Euphonic Sounds”), highlights include a spooky “The Ghost Walk,” a spirited “Some Of These Days,” “Pretty Baby,” Luckey Roberts’ “Railroad Blues,” “Take Me To The Land Of Jazz,” and the novelty “Slidus Trombonus: A Trombone Comedy.”
Finding musicians who have a real feel for the orchestrated ragtime music of 110 years ago could not have been easy but Andrew Greene has done an admirable job since the start of his ensemble in presenting consistently rewarding performances. Anyone interested in ragtime will want to pick up all of the Peacherine’s recordings including That Eccentric Rag.
Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra • That Eccentric Rag
Rivermont BSW-2269
www.rivermonrecords.com
Since 1975 Scott Yanow has been a regular reviewer of albums in many jazz styles. He has written for many jazz and arts magazines, including JazzTimes, Jazziz, Down Beat, Cadence, CODA, and the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, and was the jazz editor for Record Review. He has written an in-depth biography on Dizzy Gillespie for AllMusic.com. He has authored 11 books on jazz, over 900 liner notes for CDs and over 20,000 reviews of jazz recordings.
Yanow was a contributor to and co-editor of the third edition of the All Music Guide to Jazz. He continues to write for Downbeat, Jazziz, the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, the Jazz Rag, the New York City Jazz Record and other publications.
