Reginald R. Robinson
Euphonic Sounds (Delmark 718)

I will just go ahead and declare this to be the greatest ragtime CD ever recorded, even though I have heard perhaps only three others in my life, and know exceptionally little about the form beyond "The Entertainer."

But I assume that most people are in the same boat, vaguely liking ragtime but considering it to be music best left to amusement parks and saloon-style bars. (Of course I'm just writing for effect, so please don't email me to ask for the names and locations of any such "saloon-style bars," because I don't actually know of any.)

Until I heard Euphonic Sounds, I never considered it a priority to buy a CD of rags, but this one is so thoroughly well done it made it suddenly important that I own one pronto. And this is the one. For anyone interested in ragtime as a solid listening experience rather than a historical appreciation, Euphonic Sounds is, finally, a ragtime disc worth owning.

The first thing that distinguishes this CD from every other ragtime disc out there is the sheer variety of styles represented. A little ragtime goes a long way, for sure, but Robinson does a great job of mixing the familiar ("The Entertainer" is here – but of course there would be zero point in getting a ragtime disc without it) with wonderful gems like "Raggy Rag" by Floyd Willis and "Frog Legs Rag" by James S. Scott, as well as striking originals with anachronistic titles like "Space Coaster Ride."

What emerges is a portrait of ragtime as something much broader and deeper than the average sports blooper show would have you think. Fortunately there are no clippity-clop sound effects or ahooogah horns punctuating the solo piano performances here. Probably a good thing they didn't get me to produce it; I'd have probably put a slide whistle on most of the tracks.

The tunes are all characterized by the syncopations and mathematical melodicism associated with ragtime songwriting, but Robinson plays in a variety of styles, including some stride, some cocktail bar, and even some tango, while always staying within the lines drawn by traditional ragtime.

About two-thirds of the disc consists of rags from the early 1900s, with one dating from 1964 (Joseph F. Lamb's "Ragtime Bobolink") and seven of Robinson's own, including the beautiful "Incognito," the album's only vocal track (vocal by Sondra Davis), something of a cross between "The Entertainer" and "Lean on Me."

It lends the album an unexpected weight, and comes right at the point where the average listener will be reaching to change the disc, thinking, "Okay, that's about enough ragtime for today." It occurs to me that I've now used the word "ragtime" 13 times (including that one) and it remains amusing each time. I'm sure Mr. Robinson would be pleased with my undefined condescension, too.

Robinson's original compositions are arguably better than most of the other rags on the disc, which are by no means unsatisfying. "Still Water Blues" in particular is a total gem, and without conjuring images of a masked villain tying a damsel to the train tracks.

For ragtime enthusiasts the disc boasts a previously unrecorded "Joplin Song Fragment," discovered bizarrely in an old photograph showing sheet music of a work in progress on Joplin's piano, and meticulously rescued with computer enhancement of the photo. This thirty-one second snippet opens the disc and will have any fan of ragtime creaming in their jeans, as Scott Joplin used to say of his fans.

Overall, an excellent CD that will make you revise your opinion of ragtime as a genre, and anyone caught using Euphonic Sounds to dub homemade blooper videos is asking for a fat punch in the fat face.

Loud Bassoon rating scale

Review by Boomer Lee