Tin Pan Alley Rag: When Mr. Joplin Met Mr. Berlin

It could safely be called ahead of its time. Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha was hailed as a masterpiece when it was finally performed in its entirety. Unfortunately, that was in 1972, well after the death of the composer in 1917. However, a young music publisher named Irving Berlin is astute enough to recognize its greatness, despite the commercial limitations that are all too obvious to the Tin Pan Alley song-plugger. Such contrasting musical sensibilities mark the fictional meeting of the two giants of American song in Mark Saltzman’s Tin Pan Alley Rag, now running at the Laura Pels Theatre.

Whether Joplin ever met Berlin seems to be a matter of speculation, but the composer searched high and low for a publisher willing to handle Treemonisha, so Tin’s premise is certainly plausible enough. (Ironically, a ragtime scholar named Edward Berlin would eventually write Joplin’s biography.) As Saltzman’s play opens, the ailing Joplin’s hopes for his masterwork have been dealt yet another setback following a disastrous run-through staged for a prospective investor. Conversely, though Berlin is already at the top Tin Pan Alley publishing, his best years were well ahead of him.

Still, Saltzman finds common experiences that allow the composer-songwriters to convincingly bond during their brief encounter. Both rose from mean circumstances, attaining significant acclaim with their music. More significantly, both still mourn wives who died shortly after their respective marriages. At this point in his life, Berlin still bitterly grieves for his first wife Dorothy Goetz, who contracted typhoid fever on their honeymoon (though he would eventually marry Ellin Mackay, his second wife of sixty-three years). For Joplin it is Freddie Alexander, wife number two out of three (who died while he was on tour), whom he remembers with deep regret.

Saltzman integrates the two composers’ stories quite well and makes excellent use of their songbooks. Musically, Joplin is clearly better represented in Tin, which includes selections from Treemonisha, as well as his best known rags, like “The Entertainer” and “The Maple Leaf Rag.” By contrast, most of the Berlin songs selected are appropriately the corny Tin Pan Alley novelty tunes he was cutting his teeth on at the time.

Cleverly staged, the formative events of the songwriters’ lives unfold out of Berlin’s publishing office thanks to Beowulf Boritt’s inventive set design. Most of the actual singing is left to the fine supporting cast, which notably includes James Judy, (who also appeared in the Off-Broadway musical adaptation of Frank Gilroy’s The Gig, another book musical with jazz-crossover appeal) whose multiples roles include that of the progressive John Stark, Joplin’s first music publisher.

Though his numbers are often comedic and decidedly dated “ethnic” tuners, Michael Therriault has some nice vocal moments as well. More importantly, he has excellent stage chemistry with Michael Boatman as Joplin. As a result, the respect and friendship that develops between them feels natural and convincing.

While Tin might overstate the ragtime component of Treemonisha, in most respects, it captures the milieu of early Twentieth Century song-plugging quite well. Repeatedly, Saltzman makes the point that it was the work of Joplin and Berlin, the sons of a slave and a Jewish immigrant, who would finally declare America’s musical independence from Europe. Yet Tin never descends into didacticism. Both well conceived and well intentioned, it is a very entertaining tribute to the men who helped influence the distinctive sounds of American music in the Twentieth Century. Tin’s limited run ends September 6th.

The Ragtime Kid

The Ragtime Kid
By Larry Karp
Poisoned Pen Press
1-59058-326-4

Ragtime’s historical and critical stock has risen significantly in the time since it was played by the likes of Scott Joplin and Tom Turpin. As Larry Karp’s novel The Ragtime Kid, makes acutely clear, racial attitudes blinded many to the aesthetic qualities of the music.

Karp has written a mystery around actual events which took place in Sedalia, MO around the turn of the century, featuring the historical figures of Scott Joplin; John Stark, a music store owner who would become the leading music publisher of ragtime; and Brun Campbell, the “Ragtime Kid,” a white ragtime pianist who studied under Joplin. In an informative afterward, Karp explains the historical questions which formed the conceit of his fictional mystery:

“Why did a man nearly sixty years old, proprietor of a successful music store, who’d done no more than dabble in music publishing by printing copies of a few very conventional pieces, decide to bring out the work of an unknown young black composer? Why did that composer, so determined to write “respectable” music, entrust his work to such an inexperienced publisher? And above all, why did John Stark agree to a royalties contract, such a striking exception to common practice of the time?” (p. 343)

What follows is a mystery story that attempts to fill those holes in the historical record. There is no mystery as to who the villains are in Karp’s story, as led by Elmo Freitag, a former Confederate would-be music publisher and abetted by his brutish white trash henchmen. Freitag enters the story as an odious figure, and Karp continues debase his character as the story progresses, to the point of near over-kill. However, more than the crime story, the real strength of Karp’s novel comes through his portrayal of ragtime music and the contemporaneous world of music publishing. His respect for Joplin’s music is evident throughout. At one point the fictional Joplin explains his music to Campbell:

“My ragtime is different from the ragtime you hear in hotels and saloons and parlors. Those tunes develop—usually start from a melody that’s been around forever, then as people play it, they add a little of this, a little of that. Like the songs minstrels sang in Europe, no two singers the same, and the song as it was sung in 1700 was not even recognizable in 1800. But my music is composed. It is high-class music, no different from a song by Schubert, a concerto by Mozart, or a Beethoven symphony.” (p. 80)

Despite the strengths of Ragtime Kid, it would have benefited from some prudent editing. At times it is a little talky, with a few too many conversations recapping other conversations. Once into the novel, Karp does pull readers through the story, effectively using the racial realities of 1899 Missouri to dramatically increase the suspense. The threat of violence to Stark, an abolitionist before serving in the Union army, and to African-Americans like Joplin, as well as whites like Campbell who might befriend them, was all too real in the Sedalia of that time. Ragtime Kid does capture the resulting tension, and conveys some legitimate insight into the music of the ragtime era, in a quite satisfying novel.