Ragtime / Stride / Early Piano Jazz

History

Ragtime crystallized in the 1890s Midwest, its syncopations rising from African American folk music, cakewalks, and marches. Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899) touched off a national mania and made him the "King of Ragtime"; publishers in St. Louis and Sedalia churned out rags, and the piano roll spread them into millions of parlors. As ragtime formalized, younger East Coast pianists loosened it. In Harlem, James P. Johnson — the "Father of Stride" — codified the striding left hand and cut his landmark solos around 1921, mentoring Fats Waller and dueling Willie "The Lion" Smith at rent parties and cutting contests. Meanwhile New Orleans gave jazz Jelly Roll Morton, who folded blues, stomps and "Spanish tinge" into ragtime, while Earl Hines invented single-line "trumpet-style" piano behind Louis Armstrong. In the Southern and Chicago barrelhouses, boogie-woogie's rolling bass turned up; Pinetop Smith cut the first hit in 1928, and the 1938 "From Spirituals to Swing" Carnegie concert launched a boogie craze. Stride and boogie fed directly into swing. Ragtime itself faded, then roared back: Joshua Rifkin's 1970 Joplin album and 1973's "The Sting" sparked a full revival.

The sub-genre landscape

The defining lanes are the ones that actually invented something. Classic Ragtime and its parent Ragtime are the bedrock — Joplin's notated, march-form syncopation that everything else grows from. Stride Piano and its epicenter Harlem Stride are the pivot into jazz proper, where Johnson and Waller turned rags into swinging, improvised keyboard orchestras. Early Piano Jazz is the umbrella lane holding Morton and Hines, the moment the solo piano genuinely becomes jazz rather than dressed-up ragtime. Boogie-Woogie Piano and its rougher root, Barrelhouse Piano, are the fourth pillar: the blues-based, eight-to-the-bar strain that stormed out of the juke joints and later fed rock and roll.

Around those pillars sit the peripheral spin-offs. Novelty Piano is ragtime's flashy, notated cousin — Zez Confrey's "Kitten on the Keys" showmanship, a commercial offshoot more than a movement. Ragtime Jazz, Piano Roll Jazz, and Tin Pan Alley Jazz are useful crossover tags marking where these idioms met the recording industry, the mechanical piano, and the pop-song trade. Early Swing Piano and New Orleans Piano Jazz are transitional labels pointing outward — the former toward the swing era, the latter toward a regional lineage that runs on to Professor Longhair.

The family's arc reads cleanly through them: ragtime formalizes (Classic Ragtime), jazzes up and struts north (Stride, Harlem Stride), goes bluesy and rolling (Barrelhouse, Boogie-Woogie), then gets rediscovered wholesale by the Ragtime Revival of the 1970s.

Sub-genres in this family

14 sub-genres

Defining artists

• Scott JoplinSpotifyYouTube
• James P. JohnsonSpotifyYouTube
• Fats WallerSpotifyYouTube
• Jelly Roll MortonSpotifyYouTube
• Earl HinesSpotifyYouTube
• Willie "The Lion" SmithSpotifyYouTube

Essential listening

• Maple Leaf Rag(1899) — Scott JoplinSpotifyYouTube
• Carolina Shout(1921) — James P. JohnsonSpotifyYouTube
• Ain't Misbehavin'(1929) — Fats WallerSpotifyYouTube
• King Porter Stomp(1926) — Jelly Roll MortonSpotifyYouTube
• Pinetop's Boogie Woogie(1928) — Pinetop SmithSpotifyYouTube
• Weather Bird(1928) — Earl HinesSpotifyYouTube

Sources

• Wikipedia articles on Maple Leaf Rag, The Entertainer, Carolina Shout, James P. Johnson, Zez Confrey, Eubie Blake, and Joshua Rifkin
• Carnegie Hall Timeline of African American Music entries for Stride Piano and Boogie-Woogie
• The Syncopated Times features on the Boogie Woogie Trio and the 1970s ragtime revival
• Riverwalk Jazz (Stanford) programs on the Harlem stride 'big three' and the Boogie Woogie Trio
• Encyclopedia of Alabama entry on Clarence 'Pine Top' Smith; All About Jazz biographies of Jelly Roll Morton and Meade Lux Lewis
• Library of Congress blog on Scott Joplin and Britannica biography of James P. Johnson