Max Morath
Encyclopedia
Max Morath is an American
ragtime
pianist, composer
, actor
and author. He is best known for his piano playing, and is referred to as "Mr. Ragtime". He has been a devoted and prolific performer, writing several plays and productions, as well as being variously a recording artist, actor and radio and television presenter. Rudi Blesh
billed Morath as a "one-man ragtime army".
. He studied piano and harmony as a child and was exposed to the rudiments of ragtime piano by his mother, a schooled pianist who had also spent several years playing for silent films. He received a Bachelor's degree
in English
from Colorado College
in 1948, before embarking on a varied career that included jobs in radio and television, jazz, and theatre. His appearances as pianist and musical director with melodrama companies in Cripple Creek and Durango, Colorado triggered his interest in early American popular music and theatre, including a study of its social and economic history, largely inspired by George
and Ira Gershwin
, Irving Berlin
and his ragtime heroes Eubie Blake
and Scott Joplin
. The success of those theatrical endeavors led to Morath's first professional recordings.
During 1959-1961 Morath wrote, performed, and co-produced twenty-six half-hour TV programs for PBS, then NET (National Educational Television
). The programs were produced by Channel Six, Denver, and were fed nationally to the infant public broadcasting network. The Ragtime Era series showcased the development of the music of that period. It was followed by the Turn of the Century series, which dealt with popular music’s interaction with the nation's social history. The productions are now considered genre classics and were in syndication throughout the 1960s. In addition to his landmark television series, Morath made many later contributions to NPR
and PBS. He also appeared on a number of commercial television program
s including The Bell Telephone Hour
, Today and Tonight
.
Further, from 1965 to 1972 he was a regular guest of Arthur Godfrey
on CBS Radio, and he appeared often with Godfrey in television guest appearances.
Moving from Colorado to New York around 1963, Morath was by then performing nationally in college concerts and nightclubs, including New York's Blue Angel and the Village Vanguard
with his Original Rag Quartet. His one-man show Max Morath at the Turn of the Century, was a critical success Off-Broadway
at the Jan Hus Playhouse in 1969, followed by a four-year national tour. Other similar productions followed: The Ragtime Years, Living a Ragtime Life, The Ragtime Man, Ragtime Revisited, Ragtime and Again. These productions also toured nationally following Off-Broadway openings. Morath continued touring until 2007.
Returning to academia, Morath earned a Master's degree
from Columbia University
in 1996 in American Studies. His thesis was based on the life and work of songwriter Carrie Jacobs-Bond
(1862-1946), composer of I Love You Truly
and other popular songs. Morath's extensive research on her and her times later led to his writing a biographical novel about Jacobs-Bond told in her voice (iUniverse, 2008). He also wrote The NPR Curious Listener's Guide To Popular Standards. Among his other published works are the essay “Ragtime Then and Now” in The Oxford Companion to Jazz (Oxford 2000), and various music folios over the years for The Richmond Organization (TRO), Edw. B. Marks Music, G. Schirmer, Mel Bay, and Cherry Lane. Morath co-created a coffee-table photo book of his experiences on the road titled Max Morath: The Road To Ragtime and also wrote a musical play based on the writings of humorist Finley Peter Dunne titled Trust Everybody...But Cut The Cards. He published an academic article on Dunne as well. Another of Morath's theatrical efforts was One For The Road, a serio-comic exploration of America's socio-cultural dealings with drugs and alcohol. His 2005 CD by that name is not the show's score, but does include a single number from it.
His recorded legacy is enviable for its duration and high calibre. After recording a handful of albums in the then-popular "Honky Tonk" style he found his artistic footing in a number of notable albums, primarily for Vanguard
but also for Epic, Solo Art and RCA
. These include solo piano and vocal albums, performances with his highly esteemed Original Rag Quartet (which at one time included Felix Pappalardi
and James Tyler) and orchestral works under such conductor-arrangers as Manny Albam, Ray Wright, and Fred Karlin. He has also recorded much lauded vocal albums with the team of William Bolcom and Joan Morris. Morath's 1969 album At The Turn of the Century encapsulated the essence of his television series and live shows and helped usher in the 1970s ragtime revival. Significant albums followed, including Jonah Man, Ragtime Women, and The Great American Piano Bench, each of which pushed beyond the then-current focus on Scott Joplin. His 1992 album Ragtime Man includes his own composition "Cripple Creek Suite", capturing the moods of the region's gold rush days in a musical tableau. Morath also composed and recorded several of his own rags over the years.
Morath's work in the 1960s helped lay the groundwork for the 1970s ragtime revival and had a huge influence on how it was constituted. Commenting on the significance of ragtime, Morath stated, "Scorned by the establishment as ephemeral at best, trashy at worst, ragtime was the fountainhead of every rhythmic and stylistic upheaval that has followed in a century of ever-evolving American popular music."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
ragtime
Ragtime
Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...
pianist, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
and author. He is best known for his piano playing, and is referred to as "Mr. Ragtime". He has been a devoted and prolific performer, writing several plays and productions, as well as being variously a recording artist, actor and radio and television presenter. Rudi Blesh
Rudi Blesh
Rudi Blesh was an American jazz critic and enthusiast....
billed Morath as a "one-man ragtime army".
Life and career
Max Morath was born October 1, 1926 in Colorado Springs, ColoradoColorado Springs, Colorado
Colorado Springs is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and most populous city of El Paso County, Colorado, United States. Colorado Springs is located in South-Central Colorado, in the southern portion of the state. It is situated on Fountain Creek and is located south of the Colorado...
. He studied piano and harmony as a child and was exposed to the rudiments of ragtime piano by his mother, a schooled pianist who had also spent several years playing for silent films. He received a Bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
from Colorado College
Colorado College
The Colorado College is a private liberal arts college in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It was founded in 1874 by Thomas Nelson Haskell...
in 1948, before embarking on a varied career that included jobs in radio and television, jazz, and theatre. His appearances as pianist and musical director with melodrama companies in Cripple Creek and Durango, Colorado triggered his interest in early American popular music and theatre, including a study of its social and economic history, largely inspired by George
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
and Ira Gershwin
Ira Gershwin
Ira Gershwin was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century....
, Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...
and his ragtime heroes Eubie Blake
Eubie Blake
James Hubert Blake was an American composer, lyricist, and pianist of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, Blake and long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote the Broadway musical Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans...
and Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin was an American composer and pianist. Joplin achieved fame for his ragtime compositions, and was later dubbed "The King of Ragtime". During his brief career, Joplin wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas...
. The success of those theatrical endeavors led to Morath's first professional recordings.
During 1959-1961 Morath wrote, performed, and co-produced twenty-six half-hour TV programs for PBS, then NET (National Educational Television
National Educational Television
National Educational Television was an American non-commercial educational public television network in the United States from May 16, 1954 to October 4, 1970...
). The programs were produced by Channel Six, Denver, and were fed nationally to the infant public broadcasting network. The Ragtime Era series showcased the development of the music of that period. It was followed by the Turn of the Century series, which dealt with popular music’s interaction with the nation's social history. The productions are now considered genre classics and were in syndication throughout the 1960s. In addition to his landmark television series, Morath made many later contributions to NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
and PBS. He also appeared on a number of commercial television program
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
s including The Bell Telephone Hour
The Bell Telephone Hour
The Bell Telephone Hour is a long-run concert series which began April 29, 1940 on NBC Radio and was heard on NBC until June 30, 1958. Sponsored by Bell Telephone, it showcased the best in classical and Broadway music, reaching eight to nine million listeners each week. It continued on television...
, Today and Tonight
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...
.
Further, from 1965 to 1972 he was a regular guest of Arthur Godfrey
Arthur Godfrey
Arthur Morton Godfrey was an American radio and television broadcaster and entertainer who was sometimes introduced by his nickname, The Old Redhead...
on CBS Radio, and he appeared often with Godfrey in television guest appearances.
Moving from Colorado to New York around 1963, Morath was by then performing nationally in college concerts and nightclubs, including New York's Blue Angel and the Village Vanguard
Village Vanguard
The Village Vanguard is a jazz club located at in Greenwich Village, New York City. The club was opened on February 22, 1935, by Max Gordon. At first, it also featured other forms of music such as folk music and beat poetry, but it switched to an all-jazz format in 1957.-History:Over 100 jazz...
with his Original Rag Quartet. His one-man show Max Morath at the Turn of the Century, was a critical success Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
at the Jan Hus Playhouse in 1969, followed by a four-year national tour. Other similar productions followed: The Ragtime Years, Living a Ragtime Life, The Ragtime Man, Ragtime Revisited, Ragtime and Again. These productions also toured nationally following Off-Broadway openings. Morath continued touring until 2007.
Returning to academia, Morath earned a Master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in 1996 in American Studies. His thesis was based on the life and work of songwriter Carrie Jacobs-Bond
Carrie Jacobs-Bond
Carrie Minetta Jacobs-Bond was an American singer, pianist, and songwriter who composed some 175 pieces of popular sheet music from the 1890s through the early 1940s....
(1862-1946), composer of I Love You Truly
I Love You Truly
I Love You Truly, written by Carrie Jacobs Bond, is a parlor song. The song has been used at weddings since its release. It was the first song written by a woman to sell one million copies of sheet music...
and other popular songs. Morath's extensive research on her and her times later led to his writing a biographical novel about Jacobs-Bond told in her voice (iUniverse, 2008). He also wrote The NPR Curious Listener's Guide To Popular Standards. Among his other published works are the essay “Ragtime Then and Now” in The Oxford Companion to Jazz (Oxford 2000), and various music folios over the years for The Richmond Organization (TRO), Edw. B. Marks Music, G. Schirmer, Mel Bay, and Cherry Lane. Morath co-created a coffee-table photo book of his experiences on the road titled Max Morath: The Road To Ragtime and also wrote a musical play based on the writings of humorist Finley Peter Dunne titled Trust Everybody...But Cut The Cards. He published an academic article on Dunne as well. Another of Morath's theatrical efforts was One For The Road, a serio-comic exploration of America's socio-cultural dealings with drugs and alcohol. His 2005 CD by that name is not the show's score, but does include a single number from it.
His recorded legacy is enviable for its duration and high calibre. After recording a handful of albums in the then-popular "Honky Tonk" style he found his artistic footing in a number of notable albums, primarily for Vanguard
Vanguard Records
Vanguard Records is a record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York. It started as a classical label, but is perhaps best known for its catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal folk and blues artists from the 1960s; the Bach Guild was a subsidiary...
but also for Epic, Solo Art and RCA
RCA Records
RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label...
. These include solo piano and vocal albums, performances with his highly esteemed Original Rag Quartet (which at one time included Felix Pappalardi
Felix Pappalardi
Felix A. Pappalardi Jr. was an American music producer, songwriter, vocalist, and bass guitarist.- Early life :Pappalardi was born in the Bronx, New York...
and James Tyler) and orchestral works under such conductor-arrangers as Manny Albam, Ray Wright, and Fred Karlin. He has also recorded much lauded vocal albums with the team of William Bolcom and Joan Morris. Morath's 1969 album At The Turn of the Century encapsulated the essence of his television series and live shows and helped usher in the 1970s ragtime revival. Significant albums followed, including Jonah Man, Ragtime Women, and The Great American Piano Bench, each of which pushed beyond the then-current focus on Scott Joplin. His 1992 album Ragtime Man includes his own composition "Cripple Creek Suite", capturing the moods of the region's gold rush days in a musical tableau. Morath also composed and recorded several of his own rags over the years.
Morath's work in the 1960s helped lay the groundwork for the 1970s ragtime revival and had a huge influence on how it was constituted. Commenting on the significance of ragtime, Morath stated, "Scorned by the establishment as ephemeral at best, trashy at worst, ragtime was the fountainhead of every rhythmic and stylistic upheaval that has followed in a century of ever-evolving American popular music."
Albums
| Year | Title | Record label |
|---|---|---|
| 1957 | Max Morath At The Mighty Gold Bar Piano | Gold Camp |
| 1959 | Honky Tonk In Hi-Fi | Gold Camp |
| 1960 | Music For Moochers, Gold Diggers, and Cattle Rustlers | Barbary Coast |
| 1963 | Presenting That Celebrated Maestro | Epic Epic Records Epic Records is an American record label, owned by Sony Music Entertainment. Though it was originally conceived as a jazz imprint, it has since expanded to represent various genres. L.A... |
| 1964 | Oh, Play That Thing: The Ragtime Era | Epic |
| 1969 | Max Morath At The Turn of The Century | RCA-Victor |
| 1972 | Max Morath Plays the Best of Scott Joplin & Other Rag Classics | Vanguard Vanguard Records Vanguard Records is a record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York. It started as a classical label, but is perhaps best known for its catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal folk and blues artists from the 1960s; the Bach Guild was a subsidiary... |
| 1973 | The World of Scott Joplin | Vanguard |
| 1974 | Irving Berlin: The Ragtime Years | Vanguard |
| 1975 | Max Morath Plays Ragtime | Vanguard |
| 1975 | Good Friends Are for Keeps (with other performers) | Bell System/United Artists |
| 1976 | The World of Scott Joplin, Volume 2 | Vanguard |
| 1976 | Jonah Man: A Tribute To Bert Williams (1996 CD release adds 4 tracks from Morath's 1981 album) | Vanguard |
| 1977 | Living The Ragtime Life (Not to be confused with similarly titled later release) | Vanguard |
| 1977 | The Ragtime Women | Vanguard |
| 1978 | These Charming People (with Bolcom & Morris) | RCA-Red Seal |
| 1978 | Don't Give the Name A Bad Place (with other performers) | New World Records |
| 1979 | Max Morath In Jazz Country | Vanguard |
| 1979 | The Great American Piano Bench | Vanguard |
| 1981 | Max Morath & His Ragtime Stompers | Vanguard |
| 1983 | More Rodgers and Hart (with Bolcom & Morris) | RCA |
| 1987 | Living A Ragtime Life (1990 SoloArt CD version contains additional tracks and is resequenced) | Normacks |
| 1991 | The Ragtime Century | PianoMania Music Publishing |
| 1992 | The Ragtime Man | Omega Music |
| 1994 | Fountain Favorites From the World of Coca-Cola (with Bolcom & Morris) | Coke |
| 1995 | Drugstore Cabaret (Prepared in 1991) | Premier |
| 1995 | Real American Folk Songs | Solo Art |
| 2003 | Sing Yip Harburg (with Bolcom & Morris) | Original Cast |
| 2004 | Sing Gus Kahn (with Bolcom & Morris) | Original Cast |
| 2005 | One For The Road | Skomax |