The Ragtime Era and the Birth of Public Television

As Max Morath celebrates his 95th birthday on October 1st this year, we are reminded of his career that spanned eight decades and included nearly every entertainment medium. If Scott Joplin was known as “The Entertainer” in his day, then Max deserves the title for his contributions to the entertainment industry in our era. Among the many landmark events of his career is the 1959-1960 television series titled The Ragtime Years. He created it for the Denver Educational Television Station KRMA in Denver Colorado. In the earliest days of educational television, the clever and erudite lectures of Dr. Frank Baxter were featured. They were, as the National Educational Television (NET) network intended, informative. However, in 1960, Max pioneered a new concept for American educational TV illustrating that information can also entertain. That was the essence of his work, that and informing the public about an important era of America’s popular culture. In his PBS Companion: A History of Public Television (TV Books, 1999) author and early PBS executive David Stewart devoted the entire third chapter to Max Morath’s The Ragtime Era, a 12-part NET series. In a 1996 Current Internet article Stewart declared it to be “the most watched noncommercial series up to that time, ru