Peacherine Rag/March/Waltz/Tango (Joplin); Swanson & Hodges

Having some rhythmic fun with one of Scott Joplin's early rags, Peacherine Rag from 1901, are 15-year-old Adam Swanson (foreground) and Frederick Hodges (background).

This performance is in response to one that Hodges did with Tom Brier a few years earlier, which you can hear here in a bad tape recording:
http://users.california.com/~keeper/m...

Before you cry sacrilege, remember that ragtime was born from changing the rhythms of existing music -- playing waltzes or tangos as syncopated two-steps (Eubie Blake does this to one of his own waltz songs in his famous Saturday Night Live appearance) -- so taking something composed as a rag and playing it in different rhythmic styles is very much in the true spirit of ragtime. This is particularly true with such an early rag as this; you wouldn't expect anyone to do this to an advanced "classic rag" like Magnetic Rag or Wall Street Rag, certainly.

Swanson lives in Iowa and is in increasing demand as a ragtime, stride and novelty pianist.

Hodges lives in the San Francisco Bay area and performs regularly as a soloist or with others, and as a silent-movie accompanist. See http://www.frederickhodges.com for his schedule and information about his CDs and DVDs.

Recorded Saturday, 17 November 2007 during the 21st annual West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento, California.