The history of music in Canada reflects the
tri-cultural influences that initially shaped our country. First Nations
people, the French, and the British have all made unique contributions
to the musical heritage of our country. The influence of each culture on this
heritage, however, has varied over time with aboriginal music perhaps
being the least understood by most Canadians (reflecting, in part,
systemic discrimination against First Nations people in this country).
With the French being the dominant early culture, French music played
an important early role in Canadian music with British immigrants also
bringing with them to Canada their musical heritage. Before discussing the
adoption of ragtime music from the States in the early 1900's,
it may therefore help to have a basic understanding of the pre-ragtime state of music in Canada
before that time. This is followed by a discussion of the spread of
American musical influences into Canada. Information on this page is
therefore set out below on the following topics:
1.1) Aboriginal
Music
1.2) French Music
1.3) British Music
1.4) Samples of Canadian Pre-Ragtime
Era Music
1.5) African American Immigration to
Canada
1.6) Canadian Reaction to Ragtime
Music
1.7) Ragtime Music and the Gold Rush
1.1) Aboriginal music
[top]
Before European settlers came to what is now
Canada, our region was occupied by a large number of aboriginal
people, including the West Coast Salish and Haida, the centrally
located Iroquois, Blackfoot and Huron, the Inuit people to the North,
and the Mi’kmaq in the East. Each of the aboriginal communities had
(and have) their own unique traditions, including musical traditions.
However, one major
difference between Western music and aboriginal music is that much of
aboriginal music is associated with rituals and religion:
In the native cultures much of the music is
associated with religious ritual and is viewed as an essential part of
life, whereas most European-descended music is secular . . . [O]nly a portion of the traditional music of
the Indians and Inuit is for entertainment. Most of it is embedded in
rituals designed to achieve some purpose such as good health, a
successful hunt, rain, or contact with the spirit world. (McGee 1985:141)
Besides chanting and singing, many First Nations people would use a
variety of musical instruments crafted from available material.
McGee
(1985:145), for example, points out that the Algonquians used
instruments such as rattles, drums and wooden flutes.
Aboriginal music is not widely performed, compared to other styles
of music. For an example
of one style of aboriginal music, see the
Tea Dance of the
Dogrib
or Tli Cho First Nation (of the Northwest Territories).
McGee (1985:142) points
out that some aboriginal musical traditions are being lost but
attempts are being made to preserve this music:
The native people are aware that
their old traditions are in danger of totally disappearing, and
efforts have been made to preserve what is left. In many cases these
have resulted in a cultural "comparmentalization" in which
Euro-American customs are adopted while the old traditions are still
observed. In terms of music this means that the Indians and Inuit
listen to and perform modern popular music as well as their native
music, keeping the two quite separate from one another, with little
observable influence of one style on the other.
McGee's comment that there is little observable influence of
aboriginal music on Western music among aboriginals is significant, due likely in part to
completely different origins of the music, different musical styles
and harmonies, and so on. Ragtime and ragtime-era music, like most
Western music, has not done a lot to integrate aboriginal music.
One notable exception to this was Job Nelson, an native
Indian who wrote The Imperial Native March (below) and
was the conductor of Nelson's Cornet Band and the Metlakatla
Brass Band on the north coast of British Columbia around the
turn of the century (Maloney).
Rather than there being any serious
incorporation of aboriginal music into ragtime (or other
forms of Western music) there was instead a few ragtime composers would incorporate fairly
stereotypical Indian-sounding melodies or drum beats into their
pieces.
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Click on the image to the left to see the first several bars
of Nouhika: Indian Intermezzo Two-Step to see the "drum
beat" in the left hand and the "Indian-style" melody in the
right hand characteristic of this type of stylized ethnic song.
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Two of the many types of this ragtime-era "Indian" music are set
out below, one Canadian (Nouhika: Indian Intermezzo Two-Step)
and one American (Tonkawa, Indian Characteristic Two-Step).
Much of this imitative type of music is not that memorable or
noteworthy; however, in its favour in the examples below, the artwork
is not overly stereotypical or offensive.
1.2) French Music
[top]
The music brought to New France by French
explorers and immigrants has had a lasting effect on the Canadian music legacy.
Kallmann
(1960:25) estimates that "of the seven to ten
thousand songs that have been collected in the province of Quebec in
recent years, fully nine-tenths are derived from songs brought to
Canada before 1673." He goes on to describe the influence of French
music:
The settlers brought with them a great love
of song, dance and fiddle playing. Often a group from the
same village would settle together, and this homogeneity of traditions
and customs was as much responsible for the preservation of their
songs through the generations, as was the vitality of their
musicianship, their relative isolation in the new country, and their
loyal memory of "la douce France." Song was ever present at work and
at leisure, at home or on a journey. It sped the paddle of the voyageur, it helped to pass hours of loneliness, it preserved the
memory of the homeland, it mirrored the exploits, sufferings and
adventures of the pioneers. In short, song played an infinitely more
vital part in everyday life than it does in our present-day urban
society. (Kallmann 1960:25-26)
McGee (1985:2) describes the contribution of French folk
music in similar terms:
By far the largest
quantity of secular music performed in Canada from its founding until
the mid-nineteenth century was folk music. From the early days of the
country, immigrants of all origins brought their traditional music
with them, but the contribution of the French was especially rich in
this regard. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries most of
the French colonists were farmers and labourers who sang and played
the music they had learned in their homeland - folk songs and dance
tunes that could be performed by amateurs without elaborate planning,
rehearsal, or special facilities.
In fact, music was a daily part of life for
most French settlers:
. . . [M]usic was firmly rooted in New France
from the earliest days. A vast collection of folk songs was brought
over from France, and was the constant companion of most of the
settlers. Portable instruments such as violins, viols, lutes, and
flutes were played at simple dances, fancy balls, and theatre
presentations, and even at church services where they substituted for
or joined with the organ. Both Indian and French children learned to
sing and read sacred music, and adult choirs sang part-music in
church. (McGee 1985:18).
Has French Canadian musical culture influenced Canadian ragtime
music? Likely not. It is difficult to pinpoint actual influences on
ragtime music per se; however, French music has clearly had a
strong influence on folk music more generally (every Canadian knows
the French folk song called "Allouette!",
for example).
In addition, the province of Quebec has played an important role in
Canadian ragtime as being the residence of ragtime composer Jéan-Baptiste LaFrenière
(see my entry for him for more information) and Wilfrid Beaudry (click
here for sheet music of songs
he has composed; however, I have been unable to find out
much about him). The city of Montreal was also the seat of
ragtime and jazz music in Canada with ragtime residents
including Willie
Eckstein, Vera Guilaroff and Harry Thomas (see
Chapter 2 for more information on
them) due in part to lax liquor laws during
Prohibition and the presence of a large black population of musicians
(Gilmore 1988:29-30). For more on the music of Quebec, see any of the
following websites:
Wikipedia, "Music of Quebec"
Lisa Orsntein, "Instrumental
Folk Music of Quebec: An Introduction" (1982) Canadian Journal
for Traditional Music
Conrad Laforte, "Folk-music,
Franco-Canadian,"
Encyclopedia of Music in Canada
1.3) British music
[top]
Various types of folk music from the British
Isles were introduced into Canada by early settlers from that region:
The English-speaking settlers . . . came from
different countries - Scotland, Ireland, and England, and from New
England where their several backgrounds had already been mixed
together, and they brought with them a variety of political, social,
and religious experiences. (McGee 1985:21)
Folk music from the British Isles included jigs and reels and other
dance music that many Canadians are familiar with:
Their music included many
of the same types as that of the French, although of a different flavour,
and with a more extensive regional variety. There was the rich
heritage of Scottish, Irish, and English folk songs and dances,
ballads of various kinds, and instrument playing, much which survives
today in the small villages of most of the provinces. Common musical
traits help to identify all of that music as from the British Isles,
but Scottish reels, Irish jigs, and English folk songs each present
individual regional characteristics. And the several different
traditions of sacred music - Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, and
Roman Catholic - each with its own sacred repertory and practices,
added further variety to the Canadian musical culture. (McGee 1985:21)
The influence of British folk music on Canadian ragtime is not
direct but instead has more generally influenced the broad types of
dance music composed by early settlers to Canada. There were of course
Canadian "classical" composers, such as
Claude Champagne (Quebec, 1891~1965) and
Sir Ernest MacMillan (Ontario, 1893~1973), who drew on influences
from Europe. But closer connections to ragtime are likely found with
the syncopated dance music from the pre-ragtime era, including polkas,
marches and schottisches. It is impossible, for example, to think of
the Canadian fiddle music of
Don Messer without this direct influence of reels and jigs from
the British Isles. To listen to a few samples of this sort of music,
try any of the following links:
Don Messer Orchestra, Operator's Reel
(Lachine,
QC: Compo Company Limited, 1937).
MP3
from Library and Archives Canada.
Isidore Soucy, Red River Jig (Montreal, QC: RCA Victor Company Limited,
1936.
MP3
from Library and Archives Canada.
Joseph Allard, Irish Jig (Montreal, QC: RCA Victor Company Limited,
1931.
MP3
from Library and Archives Canada.
1.4) Samples of Canadian Pre-Ragtime Era Music with Likely
British/European Influences [top]
Set out below are three piano compositions by Canadian composers,
pre-ragtime:
1.5) African American Immigration to Canada [top]
As mentioned above, the early musical
influences in Canada were European, primarily as a result of the
musical traditions brought by immigrants
from France and Great Britain. However, with increased settlement in
the American colonies, there was increased north-south movement
between the United States and Canada, and with the American Revolution
came an increased number of American colonists and African-American
slaves:
The first great influx of blacks into the
Canadian colonies did not take place until a century and a half after
the beginning of the slave trade, when the American colonies rebelled
against British rule. The United Empire Loyalists fleeing the American
Revolution brought their slaves with them to Canada and settled mainly
in Nova Scotia. The British authorities in turn enticed American
slaves to desert the rebellious colonies by promising them freedom and
land in Canada. At the same time, black freemen were arriving from the
American colonies in search of land to farm. In all, some five
thousand blacks entered Canada during the American Revolution. While
slavery remained legal in the Canadian colonies until 1834, slavery
had virtually ended by the 1820s . . . . (Gilmore 1988:21)
Mensah (2002:46) puts the total number of
African-Americans during this period at several thousand, with a large
majority of these escaped slaves settling in Nova Scotia:
At the beginning of the American Revolution
in 1776, there were already some five hundred black slaves in Nova
Scotia, and this figure tripled as White Loyalists, who supported the
British, fled during and after the five-year Revolutionary War, taking
their salves with them. Meanwhile some three thousand Blacks,
emancipated in the American colonies in exchange for supporting the
British, entered Canada . . . . Most of these Black Loyalists settled
in Nova Scotia, which became their main centre in Canada.
Canada became famous as the terminus of the "Underground Railroad,"
a metaphor for the "escape routes" that American slaves took to escape
their servitude and to live in relative freedom in Canada:
Another significant wave of Blacks to
enter Canada during the 1800s was comprised of the "fugitives" who
came through the now famous Underground Railroad with its mythical
trains. With the passage of the Abolition Act of 1793 in Upper
Canada, runaway slaves entering the country were considered free;
consequently, Upper Canada became a safe haven for them. (Mensah 2002:49)
Gilmore (1988:21-22) describes the
Underground Railroad in these
terms:
A second wave of blacks entered Canada from
the United States on the 'underground railway,' a legendary escape
route for runaway slaves that has contributed to the erroneous myth
that most blacks in Canada are the descendants of slaves . . .
. By 1890 there were only fifteen thousand blacks living throughout
the Canadian colonies, and it wasn't until West Indians began
immigrating to Canada in large numbers in the 1940s that the country's
black population increased significantly.
Many of the African Americans coming to Canada at this time ended
up in southern Ontario, including, it is believed, the parents of R.
Nathaniel Dett, a Canadian ragtime composer discussed in more detail
in Chapter 2:
Without enough funds, most of the
Black fugitives could not venture deep into Canada and terminated
their run in Ontario communities near the United States border. Soon
Black settlements developed in places such as Amherstburg,
Buxton, St. Catharines, Windsor, London, Chatham and later around
Toronto. While no official data are available on the number of Black
fugitives crossing into Canada during this era, it is estimated that
about ten thousand fugitives were in Canada prior to 1850 and, between
1850 and 1860, perhaps twenty thousand Blacks entered Canada. (Mensah 2002:49-50)
Simpson (1993:1) puts the figures of Blacks in 1840 at 10,000 in Ontario
being the largest
proportion of a total of around 60,000 slaves in Canada at that time.
Gilmore (1988:20) describes a third wave of
African-American immigration into Canada when "between 1916 and 1918,
one of every twenty blacks in the South - a total of more than 400,000
people- migrated northward in search of work and a better life" where
"[a] few
of them spilled across the border into Canada . . . ." He notes
the (positive) impact this had on the introduction of musical
influence:
One side effect of this mass movement of
blacks in search of work was the flow of black music, and especially
the blues, from south to north - a musical migration that would, in a
relatively short time, profoundly alter the character of music played
around the world. (Gilmore 1988:20)
One important area that spawned ragtime in Canada was the city of
Montreal where it is estimated that there were between 500 to 1,000
blacks living in the late 1800's (Gilmore 1988:22). The development of the Grand Trunk Railway
and the Canadian Pacific Railway created employment for some blacks as
porters and "sporting clubs" began to spring up in St. Antoine district
of Montreal in the late 1800's where music became an important part of
the community:
Music was an important ingredient in the
social life of the black community, and there was certain to have been
a contingent of local black musicians to play for dances, weddings,
parades, and picnics. (Gilmore 1988:23)
As mentioned above, Montreal was where
Canadian ragtime composer Jéan-Baptiste LaFrenière spent his youth and
where he later worked as the pianist for the Eldorado Café-Concert
Orchestra from 1899 to 1901.
1.6) Canadian Reaction to Ragtime Music
[top]
It would seem that ragtime music was received with mixed
reactions in Canada, as it was in the United States (see, for example, Neil
Leonard, "The Reactions to Ragtime" in
Hasse (1985:102) for
American reactions to ragtime). In Canada, there was a strong
conservative, Puritan attitude held by many in authority that led,
among other things, to until only quite recently
laws that closed stores for
Sunday shopping in Canada in most provinces.
This Puritan attitude is reflected in the following article from the August
15, 1902, edition of The Globe in which a teacher
comments that "evil" ragtime music should play no part of
the kindergarten curriculum:
[Mrs. Jenkins] advocated laying the
foundation of the musical education in the home, and said: "If a boy
or girl does not take to the piano or organ, teach them the violin or
some other instrument." Thus would be created in the home an orchestra
which would elevate the environments and cultivate home life. Mrs.
Jenkins strongly denounced the "rag-time" music so commonly heard now,
and said it was not musical, and it was vitiating and vulgar to permit
such a thing.
Likewise, a few months later in the December
23, 1902, edition of The Globe, in the "Music and the
Drama" section, a review of an operetta by Sir Arthur Sullivan
talks of the "tyranny" of ragtime and two-steps:
It was a veritable pleasure to hear once more
a specimen of a genuine comic operetta, and to escape the monotonous
tyranny of ragtime and "two-steps" which have formed the basis of so
many of the comic opera productions which have of late years been
presented in Toronto.
However, the same newspaper on October 17, 1903, page 19, printed
the following praise of ragtime music by none other than John Philip
Sousa:
Recently the New York Sun published an
interview with John Philip Sousa in Chicago, in which he re-asserted
that ragtime will last as long as the great operas. "Ragtime," says
the famous bandmaster, "is an established feature of American music:
It will never die . . . . King Edward VII liked it so well that he
asked us to play more of it . . . .
In addition, ragtime was popular enough to be used, in part, by Heintzman and Company
to promote their pianos in
the following advertisement from the December 6, 2005 edition of The Globe:
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Left: Heintzman Piano ad in December 6, 2005
edition of The Globe (now the
Globe & Mail)
which states in part: "The man of the house, when he comes home
at night, tired with the business cares of the day and longing
for the restful enjoyment of music, can sit down at THIS piano
and play it himself, play just the kind of music he likes best,
whether it be some catchy air from one of the operas or a
bit of ragtime . . . . [emphasis added]
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Like it or not, ragtime music was clearly
part of the Canadian musical landscape in the early 1900's. However,
it would seem that ragtime was only one of several styles of
instrumental music being played at this time in addition to any number
of saccharine waltzes or patriotic songs and marches.
Kallmann (1960:260) describes the type of music being produced in Canada during this
time in these terms:
. . . . [F]or a young and immature
country Canada had produced an impressive number of compositions by
the time of World War I. The music written by these composers did not
compare in quality with the masterworks of European literature or in
modernism with European avant garde music of the turn of the
century. But it did cover a wide range of types, from church anthems,
parlous songs, and pieces for piano students to choral-orchestral
works of considerable proportions, and it also included a sprinkling
of serious instrumental music. Much of it was the workaday product of
more or less competent craftsmen; some revealed the imagination of
sensitive and erudite artists.
Kallmann (1960:160)
also provides a nice description of how important the demand
for pianos was to support this type of music and the efforts
that were necessary to transport them across the country as
settlers moved westward. He describes a piano being
delivered to the Red River Academy military station on the
site of modern Winnipeg as early as 1833 and further
westward:
While a violin, clarinet, or
concertina added only little weight to a pioneer's baggage, it was a
problem of a different sort to transport pianos around Cape Horn or on
carts across the prairie plains and rivers and over mountains passes
to satisfy the musical desires of pioneer settlers. Yet this is what
was done . . . . Pianos were packed on mules at a rate of a dollar a
pound from Quesnel to Barkerville, the centre of the Cariboo gold
region. Dancehalls and saloons had grown up there overnight, and the hurdy-gurdy girls charged ten dollars or more a dance . . . .
(Kallmann 1960:161)
According to Kallmann (1960:162) several dates for early pianos in
Western Canada are: Victoria ca. 1851; Prince Albert 1880;
Lethbridge 1887; and Vancouver 1860. Kallmann suggests that part of
the demand for pianos was due to the desire of pioneer women
to have a civilized form of entertainment:
The vogue for pianos was due largely
to the pioneer women, for many prospective brides from England and
eastern Canada made it a condition that they be provided with a piano
in their homes. Women associated these instruments with the dignity
and conventionality of the older communities they had left. The fiddle
would encourage rowdy reels but the piano soothed the savage breast
and the accounts of early pianos doing duty reveal them chiefly as
instruments of sentimentality and remembrance - sometimes even in the
Yukon dancehalls - and tears ran through many a bold moustache as
bachelors sang to the gentle tones of favourites such as the
saccharine "Molly Darling." (Kallmann 1960:162)
1.7) Ragtime Music and the Gold Rush
[top]
The
Caribou Gold Rush in British Columbia in the 1860s and the
Klondike Gold Rush of 1896 to 1899 in
Dawson City,
Yukon Territories, in the Canadian North brought tens
of thousands of fortune-seekers to these areas. The immediate wealth (or
sense of wealth) that was created by these Gold Rushes resulted in a
roaring entertainment district with fancy hotels and saloons and
gambling joints, perhaps not unlike the "sporting districts" of Joplin's
Missouri (albeit with a slightly different clientele).
In Downrigh Upright: A History of the
Canadian Piano Industry (Kelly 1991:15), author Wayne Kelly
describes how the gold rush in the Caribou and the Klondike spurred a
demand for pianos as a form of entertainment:
By the mid-1850s
number of pianos had arrived in Victoria and Vancouver by way of Cape
Horn. And while "musical and social evenings" occasionally brightened
the lives of the locals, it was the Fraser valley gold rush of 1858
that created a demand for the instrument in the Canadian west. Many
years later, with the beginning of the Klondike goldrush, dozens of
instruments were ordered by saloon owners and travelling musical
groups. Arriving in Vancouver by train, crated pianos were hoisted
into the salty holds of ferrys bound for Skagway, Alaska.
Kelly (1991:15) describes a sister singing
group, the Sunny
Samson Sisters, who arranged to have their piano carried to the top of the
1,200 ft. elevation Chilkoot Pass on their way to Dawson but who were denied entry
by the RCMP and had to return to Skagway where Kelly writes was a town "lousy
with pianos" at the time.
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Left: 1860's Piano in Kelly's Hotel, Barkerville,
B.C. (photo circa 188-?). Source:
B.C. Archives.
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Berton in Klondike: The Last Great Gold
Rush (1896-1899) (Berton 1972:354) describes Dawson from July 1898 to
July 1899 (at the peak of the gold rush) as the "San Francisco of the
North" with many amenities not available in other North American
cities:
Although it lay in the shadow of the Arctic Circle, more than four
thousand miles from civilization, and although it was the only
settlement of any size in a wilderness area that occupied hundreds of
thousands of square miles. Dawson was livelier, richer, and better
equipped than many larger Canadian and American communities. It had a
telephone service, running water, steam heat, and electricity. It had
dozens of hotels, many of them better appointed than those on the
Pacific coast. It had motion-picture theatres operating at a time when
the projected motion-picture was just three years old. It had
restaurants where strong orchestras played the Largo from Cavalleria Rusticana for men in tailcoats who ate
pâté de foie
gras and drank vintage wines. It had fashions from Paris. It had
dramatic societies, church choirs, glee clubs, and vaudeville
companies.
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Left: Main Street, Dawson City, N.W.T.,
Photographer: Hegg, E.A. (1898). Source:
B.C. Archives.
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Berton further suggests that many of these saloons and dance halls
were sources of great revenue for their owners and the dance girls who
worked there when he states that "Dawson's entertainments, although
they brought thousands into the dance halls, were only a means to an
end, and that end was to extract as much gold as possible from the
audience when the entertainment was done" (1972:365). From the photo
immediately below of a Klondike "ballroom" we can imagine how
relatively "rough and tumble" some of these ballrooms likely were.
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Left:
Scene in a Klondike ballroom; a roadhouse
dance, Photographer: Unknown (21 May 1902).
Source:
B.C. Archives.
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The poet Robert W. Service (1875-1958), a British citizen, but more
famous as a bank clerk resident in the Yukon who wrote poems about
life in the North, in fact mentions ragtime in one of his most famous
poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" from The Spell of the Yukon and
Other Verses. In the opening stanza, he sets the scene of the poem
in the Malamute saloon were a "kid" is playing ragtime on the piano
(emphasis added):
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known
as Lou.
In walks a stranger, crazed with "hooch" who eventually sits down at
the piano to belt out a tune while the ragtime kid has a drink:
His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of
daze,
Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the
stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a
fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him
sway;
Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands –
my God! but that man
could play.
The poem ends in a shootout between this stranger and Dangerous Dan
McGrew apparently over the lady that's known as Lou (you'll have to
read the
poem to see how it ends).
Berton (1972:361) describes the Rag Time Kid from the Dominion
Saloon, a possible model for Service's jag-time kid. According to Berton, the Rag Time Kid was challenged to a piano contest by
entertainer Wilson Mizner who thought, in error, that he could
outperform the Rag Time Kid:
Mizner fancied himself as a singer and as a piano-player during his
year in Dawson. The most famous pianist in town was the Rag Time Kid
at the Dominion Saloon, said to be the model for Service's subsequent
Jag Time Kid in the famous poem about Dan McGrew. The Kid's mother was
a Chicago music teacher, and it was his boast that he could play
anything that was requested. Mizner, who came from a good family, was
sceptical of the Kid's musical knowledge and rashly bet that he could
play something the Kid could not copy. The Kid accepted, whereupon
Mizner sat down and played "The Holy City." "Move over," said the Kid
contemptuously, and before Mizner had finished the final notes he was
rendering the grand old song in ragtime.
The gold rush was a popular theme for sheet music during the
ragtime era. Two examples of American pieces from the era are the
The Klondike March of the Gold Miners
(1897) and the Klondike Rag (1908) (there
are plenty more). In addition, the ftwo Canadian pieces
listed below unfortunately appear to only be available in print, and if I am able
to obtain copies, I will digitize them and put them online (note: the
first piece below is written by the father of Canada's 14th prime
minister, John G. Diefenbaker):
- Diefenbaker, William Thomas. Rush to
the Klondike: Song (Toronto, ON: W.H. Billing, 1897)
- Shanks, A.L. I've Got the Klondike
Fever (words by Lance Grill) (Toronto, ON: Anglo-Canadian
Music Publishers' Association, 1898).
Another ragtime era song dealing with
mining is When the Major Plays Those Miner Melodies
by Will Wilander and Harry DeCosta:
In the next chapter, I discuss some of the
more important early ragtime composers and personalities in
Canada, including Ivor (Jack) Ayre, R. Nathaniel Dett,
Willie Eckstein, Vera Guilaroff, May Irwin, Jéan-Baptiste
LaFrenière, Joseph F. Lamb, Geoffrey O'Hara, Fred S.
Stone, Harry Thomas and Charles E. Wellinger.
[return
to Table of Contents] [move to Chapter 2] [top]
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