The record changer (Mar 1945-Feb 1946)

collaborator were actually composed by him and how many of them were mere transcriptions of rags originally improvised by such men as Chauvin, Otis Saunders, Scott Hayden and Arthur Marshall. Mr. W. P. Stark of the Stark Publishing company remembers that Scott, unlike Chauvin, was a rather mediocre pianist and that he composed "on paper" rather than "at the piano" as all the real ragtime virtuosos did. This became a real problem when Scott had to play one of his own compositions and found that he had to rehearse it carefully before he could play it convincingly. Mr. Stark remembers that Scott came to St. Louis in the middle of 1901 and that the first rag he composed in St. Louis, Elite Syncoptiona, definitely bore the mark of the St. Louis school of ragtime as opposed to the Sedalia school of Saunders, Hayden and Marshall. The fact that Scott's major compositions were worked out on paper rather than at the piano made them still more difficult for laymen to play than Tom Turpin's, and Mr. Stark tells a story which sums this problem up very neatly and also shows how Scott got around it when he had to find a publisher. Like Harry von Tilzer when he heard Turpin's first rag, so Mr. Stark, when Scott first played Maple Leaf Rag for him, shook his head and said: "It's too difficult. Nobody will be able to play it." So Scott said: "If I find someone right outside your house in the street who can play it, will you then publish it?" Mr. Stark said he would. Scott went out and came back with a little Negro boy of about fourteen or so who settled down at the piano and played Maple Leaf Rag right off the sheet and without a flaw. Mr. Stark slapped his thigh and said : "I'll publish it." What Mr. Stark did not know at the time was that the little boy could not even read music and that Scott had brought him all the way from Kansas City to Sedalia after coaching him for months in the intricacies of the Maple Leaf Rag. Of the other major ragmen of St. Louis, mention should be made of Tom Turpin's second protegee, Sam Patterson, who is now with the Handy Publishing Company, and of Scott Hayden who came to St. Louis from Kansas City around the turn of the century to join Joplin at World Fair engagements and parties. He composed Sun Flower Slow Drag in 1899, Sun Flower Rag in 1903, Felicity Rag in 1911 and numerous others in between. Some of the above were credited to Joplin as collaborator or arranger. OCTOBER, 1945 Thomas H. Toliver, who had the first band on any river boat in St. Louis, was responsible for many of the New Orleans musicians' migration to St. Louis. As the senior union musician in town, he used his influence to get these men into the union local after they had arrived and to look after their welfare and their interests while they were in town. He played piano at Turpin's place in about 1907, and in 1914 composed one of the best rags, Sweet Refrain, which was published by Stark. Other Negro composers of the period were Willie Toosweets who wrote Fm So Glad My Mama Don't Know Where I'm At in 1910; Paul "Concon" Cedric, father of Eugene Cedric, who in 1912 composed the Lily Rag, published by Stark ; Robert Hampton, who wrote the Cataract Rag, published by Stark in 1910; Lucian Gibson, who composed Cactus Rag and Jinx Rag, both published by Stark ; Artie Matthews, who composed the Pastime Rag Nr. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 between 1912 and 1915 and who was the first to introduce blues and walking bass effects into ragtime ; James Scott, who wrote Frog Legs in 1906, Hilarity Rag in 1910, Grace and Beauty in 1909, Climax Rag in 1914, and Broadway Rag, his last composition, in 1922 ; Otis Saunders, who collaborated with Joplin on Maple Leaf Rag; Arthur 5