who was the most famous ragtime composer

#Who was the most famous ragtime composer full

Roberts apparently got into a fight over a woman and was slashed with a razor as a result. Not only were there many rag songs about ragtime men and women getting into razor fights over their lovers, but these sort of stories happened in real life to the composers who wrote them.

#Who was the most famous ragtime composer full

Even famous singers such as Clarice Vance and Helen Trix performed many songs onstage in full men’s attire.Īn important aspect of the ragtime life was free love. Being that the folks who became ragtimers were most often theater people, it wouldn’t come as much of a surprise that many of them were queer. It might not be the first thing that people would think of, but if you have observed closely in the handful of cake-walk silent films that survive, there is at least one or two people crossdressing in the dance. George Walker in drag (1903) after his death in 1911 his wife Ada Overton Walker would play his male parts on stage.Īnother important aspect to ragtime fashion was crossdressing. Often the costumes that ragtime women were dressed in onstage included lots of stripes, dots, and shorter skirts to more comfortably cake-walk in. As early as 1894, women were depicted on sheet music in loudly printed gowns cake-walking with their equally fashionable partners. Loud printed silks and cottons soon became a signature to ragtime style for women. With the emergence of the Art Nouveau style, lots of stripes and swirls became fashionable. “My Gal is a High-Born Lady,” a popular syncopated song recorded by Len Spencer in 1897. The style covered the ears and was curled into a mess, coping rather well with the wide silhouette that was popular for women in the middle 1890s. In the 1890s, a style that looks somewhat like a flapper bob emerged among the most nouveau of young women. Most women tied up their hair and left a bunch of fringe at the forehead, but some famous actresses like Lillian Russell and May Irwin cut it all off. In the early 1890s, the fashionable hairstyle for women was what would look to us like a modified pixie cut. Some women did indeed cut their hair short. Women took on a few similar characteristics that would be more familiar to us in 1920s history. It wasn’t just the men who took on a new style. This could have been done to imitate the illustrations of fashionable African American men that had been popular for decades by the 1890s. Some men put their hair in curlers and used irons to achieve this look. Some of the styles were very curly, and others very straight. Men often wore graceful hairstyles with slightly curled ends. Pianists such as Fred Hylands often wore this style as well. A band was placed at the edge of the collar, and the detached knot would have clips or pins to secure it in place. What some may not know about these broad ties is that they were actually clip-ons. Photos such as the one of “Mississippi Rag” composer William Krell provide a great example of this tie style. Bright colored ties with a very broad knot came in around the early 1890s, and by the mid to late 1890s, most ragtime men could be seen with these types of ties.