Search - Ian Whitcomb :: Ragtime America

Tin Pan Alley Gold

Brent R. Swanson | Crooper, Illinois | 11/04/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As Ian Whitcomb states in his liner notes, "I have recorded these songs not merely as historical documents but as sounds that delight and move me." If you pick up this album expecting the classical Ragtime music of Scott Joplin and his contemporaries, you need to move along to the classical albums. This collection consists of the jaunty show, vaudeville, and saloon tunes of Tin Pan Alley that flourished in the Ragtime era.



This is not a "museum" album. The liner notes provide the cold, hard facts for each song; Whitcomb and his ensemble provide the entertainment, bringing life to undeservedly forgotten songs such as "Settle Down in a One Horse Town" by Irving Berlin, "I'm Crying Just for You" by James Monaco, "Rose Room" by Art Hickman (best remembered as Phil Harris's theme song), and the classic "At the Ball, That's All" by J. Leubrie Hill for a show called "Darktown Follies" but known to all Laurel & Hardy fans as the slide-dance song in "Way Out West." Ian's own Ragtime compositions are here as well, from the classic-style "Les Temps Du Chiffon" to that risque' number unearthed from the notes of "Nat D. Ayer": "You've Got to Show it to Mother."



Whitcomb's instrumental arrangements won't always please the purists, and he occasionally updates a lyric here and there where old lines and allusions fail the test of time, but the Tin Pan Alley spirit here is 100 percent authentic. If you love this genre, you can't be without this album."