They All Played Ragtime: the True Story of an American Music

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950. First edition. Hardcover. Fine in near fine jacket in archival mylar. Age-toning (from chemical reaction of jacket printing inks & coatings to paper stock) to front paste-down and free endpaper); else a very sharp, crisp copy in a gently edge-worn jacket.. xviii, 338, xviii pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates: illustrations, portraits, music; 22 cm. "Musical compositions": pages 283-324. "A selected list of phonograph records": pages 325-332. "A selected list of cylinder phonograph records prior to 1914": pages 333-334. "A list of player-piano rolls": pages 335-338./ Includes index./ Discography: pages 325-338./ Includes "lists of ragtime and other compositions." "Out of the honkytonks, saloons, and bordellos of Sedalia and St. Louis there began to come, in the late 1890's, a new sort of Negro and Negro-white music. Soon to be called ragtime--and under that name to sweep the world--it brought a new spirit and a new rhythm into American popular music. In this yeasty and vibrant book the true story of an American music and the stories of the men who made it what it was have been told by Rudi Blesh (author of the classic history of jazz, Shining Trumpets) and Harriet Janis, well-known writer on modern art. The co-authors obtained their material both on the spot and by library research, but mostly through interviews with the remaining survivors of ragtime days. At once a contribution to American history and a fitting memorial to remarkable men, They All Played Ragtime is also a summons to save, before it is too late, an American expression in danger of being lost. With lists of published ragtime pieces, phonograph records (both cylinder and disk), and player-piano rolls."--Dust jacket ¶ 

Contents: The Sedalia story -- Pioneers under the skin -- Ragtime at the Rosebud -- A guest of honor -- Peregrination for the pastry -- An album of old portraits -- Ragtime in ten-twenty easy lessons -- Pretty baby --Everything in the line of hilarity -- Ring-shouts and rent-shouts -- Cakewalk in the sky -- Treemonisha -- Missouri autumn.

Jazz -- Bibliography. Jazz -- Discography. Jazz Jazz Jazz -- Bibliography Jazz -- Discography Jazz Bibliographies Discographies Jazz. Jazz.Blesh, Rudi, 1899-1985, author. Janis, Harriet, 1898-1963, author.