1New World Records

Ragtime is essentially a late nineteenth- early twen-tieth-century American musical phenomenon that has inf luenced virtually every popular idiom in American music. Ragtime's unique syncopation has developed far beyond mere piano solos, and its range extends vividly and spectacularly from country blues to jazz, from white and black string-bands and novelty players to vaudeville and opera. The Larousse Encyclopedia of Music (1971) offers the following definition: "Ragtime is an early type of classical jazz, often for the piano, a rag being a piece of music in this idiom. " A rather terse oversimpli-fication, the definition hardly even suggests the breadth of the idiom, let alone the varied approaches that have emanated from the basic style. The famed nonagenarian ragtime pianist and com