Music Album Review: 'Scott Joplin Piano Rags: Joshua Rifkin, Piano'

(C) 1970, 1987 Nonesuch Records/Warner Communications

“Don t play this piece fast. It is never right to play ragtime fast.” – Scott Joplin

In November 1970, Nonesuch Records released Joshua Rifkin’s Scott Joplin Piano Rags, an album that featured nine compositions written in ragtime by Arkansas-born pianist-composer Scott Joplin (1868-1917). Rifkin’s album – the first of three such records – became an instant best-seller and helped kickstart the early ‘70s revival of ragtime that was epitomized by the use of Joplin’s rags in Marvin Hamlisch’s score for George Roy Hill’s comedy-drama The Sting. 

Official Warner Music Video: Solace - A Mexican Solace

“Because it has such a ragged movement. It suggests something like that.” – Scott Joplin on the derivation of the word "ragtime"

Although the album only contained nine of Joplin’s rags, Rifkin’s spirited performance of the music that inspired the first musical craze in 20^th Century America became Nonesuch Records’ first album to sell one million copies. 

Official Warner Music Video: The Entertainer - A Ragtime Two-Step

Seventeen years later, Nonesuch – now owned by Warner Communications, Inc, a precursor to today’s Time Warner – released Scott Joplin Piano Rags on compact disc, using the original analog recordings, the cover art from the LP edition, and adding eight tracks to the nine from the vinyl record.

Track List for Scott Joplin Rags

1.      Maple Leaf Rag (1899) (3:13)

2.      The Entertainer – A Ragtime Two-Step (1903) (4:58)

3.      The Ragtime Dance (1906) (3:13)

4.      Gladiolus Rag (1907) (4:24)

5.      Fig Leaf Rag (1908) (4:36)

6.      Scott Joplin’s New Rag (1912) (3:07)

7.      Euphonic Sounds – A Syncopated Novelty (1909) (3:53)

8.      Elite Syncopations (1902) (2:56)

9.      Bethena – A Concert Waltz (1905) (5:16)

10.  Paragon Rag (1909) (3:45)

11.  Solace – A Mexican Serenade (1909) (6:40)

12.  Pine Apple Rag (1908) (3:26)

13.  Weeping Willow – A Ragtime Two-Step (1903) (4:19)

14.  The Cascades – A Rag (1904) (3:03)

15.  Country Club – Ragtime Two-Step (1909) (4:54)

16.  Stoptime Rag (1910) (2:52)

17.  Magnetic Rag – Syncopations classiques (1914) (5:11)

Interestingly, before Rifkin – who was already a well-regarded arranger, conductor, and musicologist in 1970 – most performers played Joplin’s rags and syncopations at a rapid pace, despite Joplin’s admonishment that “it is never right to play ragtime fast.” As a result, when Nonesuch released the original nine-track vinyl album, many critics called Rifkin a “ragtime revisionist.”

Official Warner Music Video: Country Club - Ragtime Two-Step

My Take

I first heard Joplin’s music in 1973, when the Paul Newman-Robert Reford “buddy film” The Sting was a big hit in theaters and the ragtime revival was at its zenith. I was 10 and still trying to immerse myself in the culture of the country I’d left seven years earlier.  My mom and I had moved back to Miami from Colombia less than a year before, and since few people in my extended family in Bogota listened to jazz or ragtime, it was all new to me.

And because Marvin Hamlisch’s arrangement of Joplin’s “The Entertainer” got a lot of airplay both on the radio – especially on “beautiful music” station WLYF-FM (Life) – and on TV, that was my favorite rag when I was a kid. Still is, too, though I’ve grown rather fond of others, including the rather melancholic “Solace – A Mexican Serenade.”

I bought this album several months ago after I started watching Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns. I originally planned on getting the soundtrack from that documentary, but I decided to get Scott Joplin Piano Rags instead. The Rifkin recording was cheaper and if I bought it at Amazon I’d also get a digital download copy (Autorip, Amazon calls it) if I was buying it for myself. (Gift purchases, apparently, do not count to get this benefit.) It also didn’t hurt that I was already pre-disposed to like it based on my exposure to ragtime over 40 years ago.

As one of the most knowledgeable experts on Joplin – he also wrote the detailed liner notes to the album – and prime movers of the 1970s ragtime revival, Joshua Rifkin knows how to interpret Joplin’s rags and syncopations.

I’m no expert on jazz, ragtime, or early-1900s American culture, but I can listen to music and tell whether it’s cool, emotionally moving, or beautiful. Happily, this recording happens to be all of those – especially ”The Entertainer -A Ragtime Two-Step” and the somber, even haunting “Solace – A Mexican Serenade.”

Some of you may be familiar with Rifkin’s other work as an arranger – he worked with Judy Collins on her albums In My Life and Wildflowers – or as a conductor for various classical ensembles in the U.S. and other countries. He is also well-known for his humorous Beatles-classical music mashup album from 1965, The Baroque Beatles Book.

If you love ragtime music – which faded as a craze not long after Joplin’s death in 1917 – but have not heard it played properly, Scott Joplin Piano Rags is a great “corrective” recording.

And if you’ve never heard ragtime before, then this album is a good introduction to the musical genre that was “hot” during the period that Europeans call la belle epoque – the Beautiful Epoch.