Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 May 1899 — RAG-TIME ON THE WANE. [ARTICLE]

RAG-TIME ON THE WANE.

Ito Day la About Past, and It Most Make Boom for Something Ktae. “Rag-time music,” said the man who stands behind the counter In a Wabash avenue shop and ladles out harmony by the cord all day long, “rag-time music is about played out It has had its day. Last fall and winter and the fall and winter before that our very beat people were telling each other to take their clothes and go dr announcing that they didn’t like no cheap men. The formula for writing this sort of •tuff is: Two bars of overcoat music and four barber-shop chords. You never heard of ‘overcoat music?’ Well, you will find often in theatrical journals an advertisement which reads; ‘Wanted—One heavy. Must be able to double with brass.’ That means that he must be able to mouth the lines of the tremendous villain and take his part with a tuba in the street parades. “These fellows travel about the country in the winter time, they all wear overcoats on their parades, and the music is jammed into the right-side pocket It is of the simplest kind, of course. You may depend upon it that next winter a different class of songs will catch the public. Sentimentals are about due to come -to the front. We have not bad a ‘Sweet Marie’ season in some years. These things work In cycles. One winter it is love and two winters it is comics, or ‘nigger singing.’ Of course, anything that’s got ‘mother’ in it goes all of the time. The first fellow who comes along with a moan about moonlight and dear eyes and tender tones and a bruised heart is going to stack up like a pile of blues a mile high. Stuff concerning possums and razzers and he sut’nly was good to me isn’t wanted.”—Chicago Chronicle.