"Twelfth Street Rag" (alternatively "12th Street Rag") is a

ragtime Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that had its peak from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its Syncopation, syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers ...

musical composition written by Euday L. Bowman in 1914.

Background

A friend of Euday Bowman known as "Raggedy Ed" declared his intention to open a

pawn shop A pawnbroker is an individual that offers secured loans to people, with items of personal property used as collateral. A pawnbrokering business is called a pawnshop, and while many items can be pawned, pawnshops typically accept jewelry, ...

on 12th Street in

Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more t ...

while the two were walking along it. Bowman is rumored to have said "If you get rich on those three balls, I'll write a piece on three notes to make myself rich." It was more than 15 years after Bowman composed the song before he actually wrote the music down in manuscript form. He returned to Texas briefly and tried to sell the piece to a company in Dallas; but he only had an offer of ten dollars for it and was told it really was not worth publishing. Returning to Kansas City, he sold it to Jenkins Music Company in 1913. The Jenkins company felt Bowman's arrangement was far too difficult however, hiring C. E. Wheeler to simplify it. With a big advertising push "12th Street Rag" began to sell better. In 1919, James S. Sumner added lyrics. The song was popular with early Kansas City bands and became a hit after

Bennie Moten Benjamin Moten (November 13, 1893 – April 2, 1935) was an American jazz pianist and band leader born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, United States. He led his Kansas City Orchestra, the most important of the regional, blues-based orchest ...

recorded it for

RCA Victor RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records (its former longtime rival), Arista Records and Epic ...

in 1927, the same year Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven recorded it.

Composition

The piece was written in

E-flat major E-flat major is a major scale based on E, consisting of the pitches E, F, G, A, B, C, and D. Its key signature has three flats. Its relative minor is C minor, and its parallel minor is E minor, (or enharmonically D minor). The E-fla ...

and follows an

AABA form The 32-bar form, also known as the AABA song form, American popular song form and the ballad form, is a song structure commonly found in Tin Pan Alley songs and other American popular music, especially in the first half of the 20th century. Th ...

Other recordings

Bowman recorded and published his own recording of the piece, on Bowman 11748. Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven recorded the song for

Okeh Records OKeh Records () is an American record label founded by the Otto Heinemann Phonograph Corporation, a phonograph supplier established in 1916, which branched out into phonograph records in 1918. The name originally was spelled "OkeH" from the init ...

in Chicago in May 1927.

Krazy Kat ''Krazy Kat'' (also known as ''Krazy & Ignatz'' in some reprints and compilations) is an US, American newspaper comic strip, created by cartoonist George Herriman, which ran from 1913 to 1944. It first appeared in the ''New York Journal-America ...

and his orchestra perform the music in the 1930 cartoon '' The Bandmaster''. A recording by

Pee Wee Hunt Walter Gerhardt "Pee Wee" Hunt (May 10, 1907 – June 22, 1979) was an American jazz trombonist, vocalist, and bandleader. Hunt was born in Mount Healthy, Ohio. He developed a musical interest at an early age, as his mother, Sadie, played the b ...

was the ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...

'' number-one single for 1948, selling more than three million copies. It was released as Capitol Records 15105 in May 1948.

Donald Peers Donald Rhys Hubert Peers (10 July 1908 – 9 August 1973) was a Welsh people, Welsh singer of traditional pop. His best remembered rendition and signature song was "In a Shady Nook by a Babbling Brook". Biography Early life Donald Peers was b ...

recorded the song in London on March 26, 1949. It was released by

EMI EMI Group Limited (formerly EMI Group plc until 2007; originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At t ...

on the

His Master's Voice His Master's Voice is an entertainment trademark featuring a dog named Nipper, curiously peering into the horn of a wind-up gramophone. Painted by Francis Barraud in 1898, the image has since become a global symbol used across consumer elect ...

label as catalogue number B 9763. Other notable performers of the song include

Roy Clark Roy Linwood Clark (April 15, 1933 – November 15, 2018) was an American singer, musician, and television presenter. He is best known for having hosted '' Hee Haw'', a nationally televised country variety show, from 1969 to 1997. Clark wa ...

Barney Kessel Barney Kessel (October 17, 1923 – May 6, 2004) was an American jazz guitarist. Known in particular for his knowledge of chords and inversions and chord-based melodies, he was a member of many prominent jazz groups as well as a "first call" gu ...

, and

Jack Teagarden Weldon Leo "Jack" Teagarden (August 20, 1905 – January 15, 1964) was an United States, American jazz Trombone, trombonist and singer. He led both of his bands himself and was a sideman for Paul Whiteman's orchestra. From 1946 to 1951, he played ...

Popular culture

Prior to 1985, the song was used as the theme to ''

The Joe Franklin Show Joe Franklin (March 9, 1926 – January 24, 2015), born Joseph Fortgang, was an American radio and television host personality, author and actor from New York City. Franklin is noted for having the first talk show and inventing the format. His te ...

''. A brief excerpt of the song can also be heard about 37 minutes into the 1996 film ''

The English Patient ''The English Patient'' is a 1992 novel by Michael Ondaatje. The book follows four dissimilar people brought together at an Italian villa during the Italian Campaign (World War II), Italian Campaign of the Second World War. The four main charact ...

''. The melody of the song is heard in the Chuck E. Cheese 1999 film '' Chuck E. Cheese in the Galaxy 5000'', serving as the basis for the song, "The Galaxy's For You and Me". The same melody is played during the first scene in the soda shop. The song is sampled in two

"Weird Al" Yankovic Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic ( ; born October 23, 1959) is an American comedy musician, writer, and actor. He is best known for writing and performing Comedy music, comedy songs that often Parody music, parody specific songs by contempo ...

polka medleys: "Hooked on Polkas" and "Polka Power!". Since 1999, a

steel guitar A steel guitar () is any guitar played while moving a steel bar or similar hard object against plucked strings. The bar itself is called a "steel" and is the source of the name "steel guitar". The instrument differs from a conventional guitar i ...

version has been featured as

background music Background music (British English: piped music) is a mode of musical performance in which the music is not intended to be a primary focus of potential listeners, but its content, character, and volume level are deliberately chosen to affect behav ...

on the US television cartoon series by

Nickelodeon Nickelodeon (nicknamed Nick) is an American pay television channel and the flagship property of the Nickelodeon Group, a sub-division of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Launched on April 1, 1979, as the first ca ...

, ''

SpongeBob SquarePants ''SpongeBob SquarePants'' is an American animated television series, animated comedy television series created by marine science educator and animator Stephen Hillenburg for Nickelodeon. It first aired as a sneak peek after the 1999 Kids' C ...

.'' The

Rastrelli Cello Quartet The Rastrelli Cello Quartet was founded in 2002 in Stuttgart, Germany, by three Russian and one Belarusian cello, cellists. It is a string ensemble consisting of four Cello, cellos. The group took their name from the prominent 18th-century arch ...

recorded a version for four cellos in 2006, on the album ''Vol. 1 - Concerto Grosso A LA Russe''. In 2006, a

Huell Howser Huell Burnley Howser (October 18, 1945 – January 7, 2013) was an American television personality, actor, producer, writer, singer, and voice artist, best known for hosting, producing, and writing ''California's Gold'' and his human interest sh ...

episode of

California's Gold ''California's Gold'' was a public television human interest program that explores the natural, cultural, and historical features of California. The series ran for 24 seasons beginning in 1991, and was produced and hosted by Huell Howser in coll ...

began by Huell asking Fotoplayer operator Joe Rinaudo to "hit it Joe", following which Joe launched into a rendition of "Twelfth Street Rag".

References

Citations

Sources

* * * *

External links

* {{Authority control Rags Blackface minstrel songs Compositions for solo piano 1910s jazz standards 1914 compositions Okeh Records singles Jazz standards