Glenn Jenks was a favorite at ragtime events, both as a pianist and for his compositions. Though he had a significant following in the ragtime crowd, he did not restrict himself to that style. In his early professional days, he played guitar, sang, toured with folk singer/composer Jud Strunk, worked in vaudeville, accompanied dancers, played piano bars, etc. In his hometown of Camden, Maine, he was an admired musician and teacher, and in the 1990s he began an annual ragtime event at Camden’s vintage opera house (built in 1894, a time when any theater might be called an “opera house”).
In 2016, Jenks’s admirers were shocked to learn of his unexpected and untimely passing. We lost our dear friend, but his legacy lived on in his compositions, his recordings, and his students. Aaron Robinson, one such student, joined with Faith Getchell (Glenn’s widow) in compiling Jenks’s Complete Ragtime Works for Piano – thirty-four piano rags, plus one collaborative piano rag and two for guitar (reviewed in TST, July 2020).
In 2019, Aaron Robinson and the members of the Camden area Ragtime Revue Board revived Jenks’s annual ragtime event, only to have COVID-19 force a pause in 2020–21. Resuming in 2022, the concert was held not in Camden, but at the nearby Rockport Opera House,
