{"id":1267,"date":"2016-05-29T07:00:03","date_gmt":"2016-05-29T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=1267"},"modified":"2024-03-09T02:10:35","modified_gmt":"2024-03-09T07:10:35","slug":"ragtime-millionaire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ragtime-millionaire\/","title":{"rendered":"Ragtime Millionaire (William Moore)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4bgzh3k1Bno\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\r\n<p>I spent 1976-7 in New York studying with Dave Van Ronk and listening to Yazoo pre-war blues reissues,\u00a0 but only got up the nerve to attempt a handful of the pieces I heard on the old records. Of the few I managed to work out, my favorite was &#8220;Ragtime Millionaire,&#8221; recorded in 1928\u00a0 by William (Bill) Moore, a barber who was born in Georgia but apparently lived most of his life in coastal Virginia. It was included on <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1268 size-full alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/yazoo-guitar-wizards-e1462841648853.jpg?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/>the <em>Guitar Wizards<\/em> anthology, from which I also eventually picked up a couple of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/crow-jane\/\">Carl Martin<\/a>&#8216;s songs and some of my favorite <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/diddy-wa-diddy\/\">Blind Blake<\/a> numbers &#8212; but that first year, Moore&#8217;s song was the one that caught my attention, in part because of the jaunty lyrics, but also because it had a catchy guitar riff in the chorus that was one of the first guitar licks I managed to pick up off a record without help from tablature.<\/p>\r\n<p>I don&#8217;t think anyone knows where Moore learned to play guitar, but I later became fascinated with his rhythmic quirks &#8212; he mostly stayed in basic ragtime rhythm, but every once in a while he&#8217;d throw in a sort of Latin or Caribbean accent on the bass strings, which caught my attention as I got deeper into African guitar styles. (For example: &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/masanga\/\">Masanga<\/a>,&#8221; &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/iko-iko\/\">Iko Iko<\/a>,&#8221; and Moore&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/one-way-gal\/\">One Way Gal<\/a>.&#8221;)<\/p>\r\n<p>The song itself was Moore&#8217;s reworking of a ragtime hit from 1900 by one of the most popular African American songwriters of that period, Irving Jones. As Paul Oliver noted in <em>Songsters and Saints<\/em> &#8212; a foundational book on<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1270 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Ragtime_Millionaire_Cover.jpg?resize=231%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Ragtime_Millionaire_Cover\" width=\"231\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Ragtime_Millionaire_Cover.jpg?resize=231%2C300&amp;ssl=1 231w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Ragtime_Millionaire_Cover.jpg?w=250&amp;ssl=1 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 231px) 100vw, 231px\" \/> the broad variety of African American singing often subsumed under the catch-all term &#8220;blues&#8221; &#8212; Jones&#8217;s compositions seem to have been particularly popular with early guitarists, or at least the ones whose work was preserved on record. Gus Cannon recorded an earlier Jones hit with the same theme, &#8220;My Money Never Gives Out,&#8221; and it&#8217;s easy to see how both songs would have appealed to a street singer trying to catch some passersby with a fun lyric that included a subliminal suggestion to reach in their pockets and be generous.<\/p>\r\n<p>I couldn&#8217;t understand all of Moore&#8217;s lyrics, so I changed the words around some, but basically do it like he did it, and for a while this was my big showpiece, aside from a bunch of Van Ronk songs. The fact that it was my one big non-Ronk number incidentally led to its being what I played on my radio debut &#8212; Dave was doing a six-show weekend at Passim Coffeehouse in Cambridge and WERS wanted him to do a morning interview, and he hated to sing in the morning, so he brought me along as a (poor) substitute. I obviously wasn&#8217;t going to do one of his songs in a situation where everyone listening would just wish he was doing it, so I played &#8220;Ragtime Millionaire.&#8221;<\/p>\r\n<p>To finish that story, when we got to the club that evening, Dave asked Bob Donlin,<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1507 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/bob-donlin.jpg?resize=120%2C142&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"bob donlin\" width=\"120\" height=\"142\" \/> the owner and booker, if he&#8217;d listened and he said he had, and Dave said, &#8220;So what&#8217;d you think?&#8221; and Bob said, &#8220;He was OK,&#8221; in a voice that clearly conveyed his lack of interest in having me play there anytime soon&#8230; And to finish <em>that<\/em> story, he relented a couple of years later and gave me the chance to open for Norman Blake, and then for Tony Bird and some other people, and a lot of people considered him grumpy, but I liked him and miss him.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spent 1976-7 in New York studying with Dave Van Ronk and listening to Yazoo pre-war blues reissues,\u00a0 but only got up the nerve to attempt a handful of the pieces I heard on the old records. Of the few I managed to work out, my favorite was &#8220;Ragtime Millionaire,&#8221; recorded in 1928\u00a0 by William &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ragtime-millionaire\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Ragtime Millionaire (William Moore)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ragtime Millionaire (William Moore) - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ragtime-millionaire\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ragtime Millionaire (William Moore) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I spent 1976-7 in New York studying with Dave Van Ronk and listening to Yazoo pre-war blues reissues,\u00a0 but only got up the nerve to attempt a handful of the pieces I heard on the old records. Of the few I managed to work out, my favorite was &#8220;Ragtime Millionaire,&#8221; recorded in 1928\u00a0 by William &hellip; Continue reading Ragtime Millionaire (William Moore) &rarr;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ragtime-millionaire\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-05-29T11:00:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-03-09T07:10:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/yazoo-guitar-wizards-e1462841648853.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elijah Wald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ElijahWald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ElijahWald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elijah Wald\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/ragtime-millionaire\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/ragtime-millionaire\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Elijah Wald\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/20e4f69f2f284ea0ff728a9d1b7720a9\"},\"headline\":\"Ragtime Millionaire (William Moore)\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-05-29T11:00:03+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-03-09T07:10:35+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/ragtime-millionaire\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":602,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/20e4f69f2f284ea0ff728a9d1b7720a9\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/ragtime-millionaire\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2016\\\/05\\\/yazoo-guitar-wizards-e1462841648853.jpg\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/ragtime-millionaire\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/ragtime-millionaire\\\/\",\"name\":\"Ragtime Millionaire (William Moore) - 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Then I began\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/William-Moore-photoshopped.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1272,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/the-pearls\/","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":1},"title":"The Pearls (Jelly Roll Morton\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I arrived on Dave Van Ronk's doorstep just as he reached the high-water mark of his interest in ragtime guitar, so I emerged from my year of study with \"St. Louis Tickle,\" \"Maple Leaf Rag,\" \"The Entertainer\" (which was so overdone that I quickly forgot it), and Jelly Roll Morton's\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Davis-Van-Ronk 11","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Davis-Van-Ronk-11.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1219,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/maple-leaf-rag\/","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":2},"title":"Maple Leaf Rag (Scott Joplin\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Dave Van Ronk was hailed as the pioneering arranger of \"classic\" ragtime for fingerstyle guitar more or less by default. In the early 1960s he did an arrangement of \"St. Louis Tickle\" that was the first recording of a multi-part piano or orchestral ragtime composition on fingerstyle guitar -- but\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"sunday st","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/sunday-st.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2408,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cincinnati-flow-rag\/","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":3},"title":"Cincinnati Flow Rag (Rev. Gary Davis)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"January 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I always loved Gary Davis's guitar playing, but was into blues and ragtime a long time before I got into gospel music -- so for many years my favorite of his albums was The Guitar & Banjo of Reverend Gary Davis.\u00a0 As far as I know, this is the only\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Guitar-and-Banjo-of-Rev-Gary-Davis-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3313,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/georgia-camp-meeting-kerry-mills\/","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":4},"title":"At a Georgia Camp Meeting (Kerry Mills)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 13, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By some measures the first major hit of the ragtime era, \"At a Georgia Camp Meeting\" was played by brass bands, mandolin orchestras, banjo virtuosos, pianists, and everyone else who tried their hand at the ragtime style. It was composed in 1897 by the violinist, music teacher, orchestra leader, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/campmeeting1-227x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3007,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/antelope-rag\/","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":5},"title":"Antelope Rag (Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"August 19, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In the early 1960s, when other people on the folk scene were learning rural string band and blues music, Dave Van Ronk recorded the first fingerstyle guitar arrangement of a formal, multi-part rag, \"St. Louis Tickle.\" As I wrote in the \"Tickle\" installment (and others),\u00a0 that piece spawned a small\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/dave_van_ronk-e1499731736570.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5046,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions\/5046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}