CD Review: Magnetic Rags

I snapped up Magnetic Rags: Ragtime for Brass (2000), from the Avatar Brass Quintet, years and years and years ago, but I had never made much use of it in dancing.  But this spring I've found myself needing ragtime music much more frequently than usual for classes and workshops, so I've been digging deep into my playlists for something other than Spare Parts and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra.  Magnetic Rags was not intended for dancing, and it's certainly a dandy listening album, but it has enough tracks usable for dancing to make it a worthwhile purchase for dancers as well.  The exclusively brass instrumentation (trumpet, flügelhorn, horn, trombone, and tuba) gives it a pleasantly different sound from most ragtime recordings.  

The arrangements and one of the pieces are by noted modern ragtime composer William Ryden, who also provided the extensive liner notes, including an explanation of his selections for the album:

Ragtime is not easy to define.  Perhaps the closest I can come in a musicological sense is to call it a dance-based American folk music that features a syncopated melody against a regular accompaniment.  In another sense it is a melding of African and Western musical cultures.  These definitions apply, however, to all the ragtime songs, dances and even some marches written from the middle 1890s to about 1920.  What we think of today as classic ragtime are the more formal instrumental compositions, mostly for piano, written during that period.

The album program is all "classic rags", including works by a cornucopia of well-known composers as Scott Joplin (of course), George Gershwin, James Reese Europe, Eubie Blake, Irving Berlin, as well as a few by more obscure artists.  

Many of the pieces were originally published with dance suggestions on the cover, but the historical blurriness of the lines between the one-step, two-step, trot (turkey trot), and foxtrot mean that the dance each track is suited for depends heavily on how it's played.  Here's how I'd classify them, with cross-listings for the ones I think work for multiple dances:


One-Step
"Pork and Beans" (Roberts, 1913, 87 bpm)
"Castle House Rag" (Europe, 1914, 98 bpm)
"Bohemia Rag" (Lamb, 1918, 100 bpm)
"Mississipi Rag" (Krell, 1897, 104 bpm)
"Creole Belles" (Lampe, 1914, 113 bpm)
"Fizz Water" (Blake, 1914, 121 bpm)

"Fizz Water" was originally published as suitable for one-step and trot, while the even more flexible "Pork and Beans" offered itself for one-step, two-step, and trot.  The list above gives a nice range of one-step tempos from quite slow up to reasonably brisk, though not quite Castle walk speed.  Several of these tunes feel workable to me for other dances as well, as noted below.

Two-Step
"Pork and Beans" (Roberts, 1913, 87 bpm)
"Creole Belles" (Lampe, 1914, 113 bpm)
"Fizz Water" (Blake, 1914, 121 bpm)

Ryden notes that "Creole Belle" is "more of a cakewalk than a rag", and it would certainly work for that as well.

Foxtrot
"Alexander's Ragtime Band (Berlin, 1911, 78 bpm)
"Magnetic Rag" (Joplin, 1914, 81 bpm)
"The Chevy Chase" (Blake, 1914, 84 bpm)
"Rialto Ripples" (Gershwin, 1917, 85 bpm)
"Pork and Beans" (Roberts, 1913, 87 bpm)
"Castle House Rag" (Europe, 1914, 98 bpm)
"Bohemia Rag" (Lamb, 1918, 100 bpm)

"Chevy Chase" was actually published as a foxtrot.  "Alexander's Ragtime Band" and "Pork and Beans" definitely predate the 1914 foxtrot craze, but they still work nicely for it.  "Castle House Rag" and "Bohemia Rag" are quite brisk as foxtrots go, even given my taste for up-tempo foxtrot.

Bluesy One-Step
"Eugenia" (Joplin, 1905, 61 bpm)
"Slippery Elm Rag" (Woods, 1912, 64 bpm)

These work nicely for one-step done as a slow dance.

Listening only
Bethena (Joplin, 1905)
The Ragtime Dance (Joplin, 1906)
A Real Slow Drag (Joplin, 1911)
Pastime Rag No. 2 (Mathews, 1913)
Frogmore Stew (Ryden, ???)

"Bethena" is a waltz, but it was published as a "concert waltz" and has pauses and tempo changes that make it awkward for social dancing.  "The Ragtime Dance" starts out as a workable foxtrot, two-step, cakewalk, but it's actually a trimmed-down version of a performance suite, and in the last third Joplin goes wild enough with flourishes to make it just not feel quite right for any of them.  "A Real Slow Drag" is the finale of Joplin's opera "Treemonisha" and, as you'd expect, it's slow.  "Pastime Rag No. 2" and "Frogmore Stew" show the composers having a lot of fun, but don't give the steady beat and tempo one wants in a social dance.

I highly recommend Magnetic Rags for both ragtime dancers and anyone who enjoys listening to ragtime music.  It is still in print and can be easily purchased online or streamed from various sites.  And given the boundary-blurring in the music and dance of this era, dancers should not feel inescapably bound by my recommendations above -- play the music and find out what dance it "says" to you!