Trebor Jay Tichenor A Genuine Ragtimer

To have known Trebor Jay Tichenor is to have known a ragtime legend. In fact, this St. Louisan might have been a ragtime original had he been born two generations earlier. Trebor could play and compose in the Mississippi Valley folk ragtime style and but for the color of his skin, he would have fit right in with Tom Turpin’s Chestnut Valley friends at Tom’s St. Louis Rosebud Saloon in the first decade of the twentieth century. I first met Trebor in the late 1960s on the Goldenrod Showboat during a Riverfront Ragtime Festival. His career was already well established, and his legendary collecting had already reached near definitive status. My wife and I were in St. Louis on the riverfront and we saw the St. Louis Ragtimers were playing. Al Stricker was introducing the next number, and I was fascinated by the large gentleman with a pleasant smile on the tiny round piano stool. I had a chance to meet Trebor when they took a break and it was a propitious meeting for only a few years later I called on him for help as plans were being made for a classic ragtime festival in Sedalia to honor Scott Joplin. Trebor told the story of his induction into the community of ragtime musicians many times. His mother had a pop music band in the early 1930s, “Lettie’s Collegiate Syncopators.” They played novelty rags and popular music so Trebor grew up with syncopation in his home. Early at