For the next year I will be blowing the dust off stories of the first Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival held in Sedalia, MO, July 25-27, 1974 during the ragtime revival era. Next year will be the 50th anniversary of that joyous event.
A Major Financial Contribution…
Michael Green would be 55 years old today and that is about all I know about him now. However, he made quite an impression on me 50 years ago.
I am constantly working on the Sedalia Ragtime Archive these days and this week I came across a three-penny memory. It jumped out of my gray cell storage so vividly that I would know Michael by sight today nearly 50 years later (if he is still five years old).
Now, my elder mind is stuffed full after 80 years and it is often difficult to retrieve a memory so obscure. However small this incident was, it had a profound impact on me.
The story is simple. During the first ragtime festival in Sedalia we were constantly raising money. It was an extremely busy time during the actual event but all of us took opportunities to ask for donations amid our many other tasks.
We had done fairly well at fundraising but were always trying to stay out of red ink so some of our short appeals were rather impassioned.
I had just made a hurried plea after a concert in the old Convention Hall as the audience was clearing out and I was visiting with some of the performers who were hanging around.
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