There may be recordings out there that you have and might share with me! Much of Reno and Virginia City’s ragtime/tradjazz/honkytonk past has been lost. Email me at: Nevadamusic.com@me.com Thanks! CW
This incomplete collection of audio helps to illustrate my book, “Reno’s Jazz Hysteria.” You can now read that book free by clicking here. I comment below, however the book will make it even clearer why these recordings of are interest.
THE DEIRO RAG, composed by San Francisco accordionist Guido Deiro during the early 20th century. My book, Reno’s Jazz Hysteria, discusses the most important jazz musician in Reno during the first half of the 20th century, accordionist Tony Pecetti. Pecetti probably learned from the Deiro brothers. This record illustrates adaptation of the accordion to ragtime and early jazz.
GIOVINEZZA. An Italian standard from the 1920s, this recording from that period illustrates the kind of Italian tune that Tony Pecetti would have played for the large Italian ranching community in northern Nevada in which he had been raised.
CHELSEA BRIDGE by Duke Ellington. Pecetti brought the Ellington orchestra to his El Patio ballroom during February of 1941. They had recently recorded this tune.
IF YOU KNEW SUSY. Recorded by Freddy Nagel’s orchestra during the late 1940s. Virginia City’s first honky tonk piano player appears to have been Harry Bruce, arriving there in 1948 and playing into the mid 1960s. He was on the recording session with Nagel’s orchestra for this piece. Recordings of Bruce in Virginia City will be emerging soon.
HATTIE JESSUP, recorded live at the Red Dog Saloon in Juneau Alaska. Jessup was the second important honky tonk pianist to arrive in Virginia City, during 1953. Her style provides a look at pre World War I style honky tonk. She left Virginia City after 1955 and played in Alaska for many years.
ACE IN THE HOLE–MORRIE ARNOLD. From his 78 rpm record on the Capitol Saloon label, apparently recorded to be sold to tourists during 1958 as he pounded out honky tonk piano. This is “Ace In The Hole”, a signature piece for West Coast dixieland revivalist Clancey Hayes during this same period.
THE OPERA HOUSE RAG–BOB DARCH. A classic, multi-part ragtime composition by Bob Darch and Joseph Lamb, 1960, recorded in 1962 with a ragtime orchestra. Written for Piper’s Opera House, this was intended to be the first of many classic ragtime compositions by Darch for Virgnia City. Darch arrived in Virginia City in 1956, having played Juneau’s Red Dog Saloon the year before. He hoped to get a yearly ragtime festival going in the City. However, due to lack of local support, he left town.
HELLO HELLO–PETER KRAEMER and SOPWITH CAMEL. Kraemer grew up in Virginia City during the 1950s. In 1965, he wrote this ragtime song remembering how he helped promote Darch’s festivals–as a boy holding a sign on C St.. The song became the first national hit tune from the San Francisco Haight Ashbury scene and put Kraemer’s group SOPWITH CAMEL on the road performing as a headliner for a year.
THE CHARLATANS. For two months in the summer of 1965, another Haight Ashbury group attempted to join Virginia City’s vibrant honky tonk scene, playing at the Red Dog Saloon. The musicians and audience dropped acid and the scene became more than Virginia City could allow.
COFFEE CUP by The Wildflowers–from a 1967 recording, attributed to 1966
SILENT MOVIES DAYS by THE 49ers. Norm Jackson on piano and Smiley Washburn on a washboard complete with horns, sirens, whistles, hooters and bells. Part of an album recorded by the 49ers at The Bucket Of Blood saloon where they played through 1960s.
THE SILVER STOPE STOMP by Merle Koch who played at Michelle’s Silver Stope, a world famous jazz club in Virginia City from the early 1970s into the 1980s.