Abbott and Seroff are exemplary in this crucial area. Compromises that were necessary for survival may mortify the modern sensibility, but the only way to gain an understanding of the great achievements of the time is to deal with the context. This is not an easy subject to approach, because the overtly racist social structure of the time forced black songwriters, publishers and performers to look for ways to retain their dignity while playing the clown. Their new book applies the same rigorous scholarship to the era that immediately preceded the rise of jazz and blues, with the same excellent results. 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 their previous book, Out of Sight, Abbott and Seroff presented an overview of African-American musical development from 1889 to 1895 that was based on decades of research, primarily in the black newspapers and journals of the day. 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.

Ragtime history is crowned by the ＂big shows,＂ the stunning musical comedy successes of Williams and Walker, Bob Cole, and Ernest Hogan. In Ragged but Right, Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff investigate black musical comedy productions, sideshow bands, and itinerant tented minstrel shows. ＂Coon songs,＂ with their ugly name, defined ragtime for the masses, and played a transitional role in the commercial ascendancy of blues and jazz. The biggest hits of the ragtime era weren’t Scott Joplin’s stately piano rags. However, every prospect was mitigated by systemic racism. The commercial explosion of ragtime in the early twentieth century created previously unimagined opportunities for black performers.

Ragged but Right by Lynn Abbott