Ragged but Right
Ragged but Right
Black Traveling Shows, "Coon Songs," and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz
The commercial explosion of ragtime in the early twentieth century created previously unimagined opportunities for black performers. However, every prospect was mitigated by systemic racism. The biggest hits of the ragtime era weren’t Scott Joplin’s stately piano rags. “Coon songs,” with their ugly name, defined ragtime for the masses, and played a transitional role in the commercial ascendancy of blues and jazz.
In Ragged but Right, Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff investigate black musical comedy productions, sideshow bands, and itinerant tented minstrel shows. Ragtime history is crowned by the “big shows,” the stunning musical comedy successes of Williams and Walker, Bob Cole, and Ernest Hogan. Under the big tent of Tolliver’s Smart Set, Ma Rainey, Clara Smith, and others were converted from “coon shouters” to “blues singers.”
Throughout the ragtime era and into the era of blues and jazz, circuses and Wild West shows exploited the popular demand for black music and culture, yet segregated and subordinated black performers to the sideshow tent. Not to be confused with their nineteenth-century white predecessors, black, tented minstrel shows such as the Rabbit’s Foot and Silas Green from New Orleans provided blues and jazz-heavy vernacular entertainment that black southern audiences identified with and took pride in.
In this major work, authors Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff have documented the popular music forms of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With meticulous research, they have illuminated the careers of pioneer jazz musicians and blues singers, and the dissemination of their music by traveling circuses, minstrel and tent shows. An essential study, recommended without reservation.
Lynn Abbott is an independent scholar living in New Orleans. He is coauthor (with Doug Seroff) of Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889–1895; The Original Blues: The Emergence of the Blues in African American Vaudeville; and To Do This, You Must Know How: Music Pedagogy in the Black Gospel Quartet Tradition, all published by University Press of Mississippi. His work has also been published in American Music, 78 Quarterly, American Music Research Center Journal, and The Jazz Archivist. Doug Seroff is an independent scholar living in Greenbrier, TN. He is coauthor (with Lynn Abbott) of Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889–1895; The Original Blues: The Emergence of the Blues in African American Vaudeville; and To Do This, You Must Know How: Music Pedagogy in the Black Gospel Quartet Tradition, all published by University Press of Mississippi. His work has also appeared in American Music, Black Music Research Newsletter, Blues Unlimited, and Record Exchanger, among others.
