Terry Waldo appeared in an Off-Broadway show, Shake That Thing! that ran for two weeks in January of 1999. The cast, from left, comprised Paul Scavarda, Craig Ventresco, Ruth Brisbane, Terry Waldo, Colleen Hawks, Evan Christopher and Pete Devine. The show was directed by the lengendary director of Hair and Jesus Christ, Superstar, Tom O'Horgan.

Continued: The Ragtime Machine

DR: What sort of things did you find when you were researching?

TW: My book won an award in Ohio in the subject of sociology, believe it or not. I was pointing out that the term ragtime shifted in meaning in different eras, and to different people. It was jazz to some people, and it was classical music in the 1970s.

DR: Until Eubie corrected everybody about it.

TW: Well, he did correct some things, but he wasn't totally honest about it, I think. Some guys have figured out that he was probably not 100 years old when he died. I'd be curious to know why he would shift it, if he did. And the great question I have is where did ragtime come from, the beginning of it, and the first examples of repeating syncopated rhythms.

DR: I think Mad Magazine was on the right track in its history of music. They had an eight-panel cartoon about the beginnings of the orchestra. It progressively showed a cave man dropping a rock to make a sound, then hitting a guy with it, then a guy hitting him with a stick, rocks against sticks, more guys, and finally 50 guys hitting each other with stuff and a conductor standing in front of them. Syncopated rhythms started there. Is that far enough back for you?

TW: All right, I think you've solved that.

DR: But in going back in history, where do you draw the line at a tiny piece of syncopated rhythm, like the cakewalk element, and its use as a long enough viable fragment?

Terry Waldo greeted Skitch Henderson onstage at Carnegie Hall on March 4, 2005, during a performance of the New York Pops. Waldo performed the premiere of the Eubie Blake Concerto.

TW: Seeing a kind of across-the-bar rhythm that is in "Maple Leaf Rag," played over the top of the march left hand, I can't see where that started, who was doing it, where you see that continuous syncopation. And not just the continuous repetition of the cakewalk rhythm. I am looking at the idea of South America and the Caribbean. If you take "The Dream Rag," which is, according to Eubie, the oldest rag that he knew, though it's not really ragtime because the left hand is more of a Caribbean kind of thing. But if you played it with a two-four accompanying rhythm, then you've got ragtime. But it wasn't that. Conversely, if you take "Maple Leaf Rag" and play it with that other kind of left hand, then it's like a piece of music that came out of Haiti or someplace else. In that period, 1880s, say, I want to know what was happening in music before ragtime suddenly appeared on the scene.

DR: And this, unfortunately, is right on the edge of the invention of audio recording.

TW: But they knew how to write. Gottschalk could have notated it; if ragtime was happening someplace, he could have written it. He was certainly doing the two-four left hand. I think it would have appeared if it had existed.

DR: Have you carefully looked through early marches for occasional over-the-bar rhythms?

TW: I haven't found much. When Eubie was talking about it, he would point out about Tchaikovsky or something where you'd see an occasional syncopation. For example, in the "Waltz of the Flowers."

DR: Brahms is filled with that sort of thing.

TW: Right, but these things don't have that continuous rhythm we signify as ragtime. I don't know where that leaves us.

DR: It leaves us with things that it's not.

TW: Right, and these are the things I've become increasingly interested in. I thought I knew everything about ragtime when I wrote the book, but not any more.

DR: You'll have to retitle your book: This Is Not All Ragtime. I remember that one of the first rags that I orchestrated was your piece, "Yellow Rose Rag." That was one of your early ones, right?

TW: That was my very first rag. We played your arrangement a few times with Waldo's Ragtime Orchestra, and I was thrilled that you were interested in it and took the time to do it.

DR: It's a great rag, but I notice it hasn't been recorded much, which is surprising.

TW: It was in a book called The Ragtime Current, but it's not easily available now. That was the same company that put out the Eubie Blake folio, Marks music. Bernie Kalban did that. He has just retired, and he's a terrific guy.

DR: Another piece of yours that I orchestrated was "Ruby Lorraine." You had recorded it as a piano roll, along with a few other pieces. Do you have leftover, recorded material that has yet to be issued? Max put out a CD of pieces in that category, and as a project it worked very nicely.

TW: I have a lot of stuff like that. I've got about 300 cuts, various things, for example, from the ragtime orchestra and the Gutbucket Syncopators. I'm trying to buy back the rights to everything that I've ever put out. Stomp Off Records has put out a lot of it over the years. But it all goes out of print. I would just as soon be reissuing all this stuff myself. It's a pretty good library, and it has a lot of good people, like Howard Alden and other famous jazz musicians.

DR: You manage to get a lot of good players. Being in New York, maybe they're more accessible.

TW: Not like you think. A lot of guys I couldn't get now. Like when I had the Gotham City band, we had a lot of guys who would be very hard to assemble now as a band. We had Vince Giordano, Andy Stein and others.

DR: It's surprising how few people have taken the route you did, playing ragtime, trad jazz and other styles with equal interest and complexity.

TW: Different groups of mine have had a different character. When I did the Gotham City band, we went more in the direction of Bix, a light sound. When I was doing the Gutbucket Syncopators, it was much more of a Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver, funky and blues-based sound. Then with Bo Grumpus, we did novelty stuff, like the Hoosier Hotshots. I guess I have covered a lot of different kinds of stuff.

December 2008 issue | © 2008 The Mississippi Rag

P.O. Box 19068, Minneapolis, MN 55419.