Deuces Wild

$15.00

Featuring the world premiere recording of
the rediscovered overture to GEORGE GERSHWIN’S first Broadway show! 

More than 76 minutes of delightful music

Deluxe album with 12 page color booklet

Available ONLY in physical album format –  no streams or downloads

Category:

DEUCES WILD
(Rialto Records 6006):

Performed by the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, Rick Benjamin conductor & piano soloist;
featuring Rebecca Ciabattari, trombone; Corey Schutzer, double bass; Leslie Cullen, piccolo.

From Rick Benjamin, curator and conductor:

“It recently dawned on me that the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra and I have now been performing and preserving the music of the Ragtime Era for longer than the duration of the actual era itself. Yet clearly the late 19th and early 20th centuries in America inspired such a vast reservoir of beautiful, important music that our work, happily, is nowhere near done. Thus continuing onward, we are proud to present this, PRO’s nineteenth album. In planning, I did not have a particular theme or composer in mind, as has been the case with all of our recordings since 2003. However, when musing about that with our producer, Judith Sherman, she said, “Well actually your theme is FUN.” And so it is.

More precisely, what we have here is a collection of some of our favorite pieces from the last twenty years of concerts. However, as there are several hundred of these and album space for only about twenty-five, I suppose Deuces Wild could be considered the first installment in a new “PRO Favorites” series. Many of these are dance related – rags, two-steps, blues, trots, one-steps, and a pair of waltzes. Others are concert pieces – novelties and a “Morceau Characteristic.” We also have very choice assortment of period theater music, ranging from the familiar to the recently discovered. The vital connection between all of it is of course, syncopation.”

 

Produced by Judith Sherman,
2022 Grammy Award winning “Producer of the Year – Classical”

“Deuces Wild Rag” (1922), Hubert T. Bauersachs.

“At the Mississippi Cabaret” (one-step, 1914), Albert Gumble.
“Beale Street” (1917), W.C. Handy.

“Bone-Head Blues: Jazz Fox-Trot” (1917), George L. Cobb.
“Kitten on the Keys” (novelty, 1921/22), Zez Confrey.

“Ragging the Waves” (fox-trot, 1917), Joe Rosey.
“Lady of the Lake” (waltz-intermezzo, 1912), George L. Cobb.

“The Yellow Dog Rag” (Blues, 1914), W.C. Handy.

“The Ragtime Bassplayer” (characteristic novelty, 1913), Adolf Lotter.

“Alabama Jubilee” (one-step, 1915), George L. Cobb.
“Look for the Silver Lining & Whip-Poor-Will” (from Sally, 1920), Jerome Kern.

“Panamericana: Morceau Characteristique” (1901), Victor Herbert.

“Peaches and Cream: A Delectable Rag” (1906), Percy Wenrich.
“Paderewski Rag: Travesty on Paderewski’s ‘Minuet’” (1920), F. Henri Klickmann.
“Step With Pep” (one-step, 1916), Mel. B. Kaufman.

“The Siren’s Song” (from Leave It to Jane, 1917), Jerome Kern.
“Slim Trombone” (one-step, 1918), Henry Fillmore.
“Echoes from the Snowball Club: Original Rag Time Waltz” (1898), Harry P. Guy.

“Hilarity Rag” (1910), James S. Scott.
“Whistling Rufus” (cakewalk, 1899), Kerry Mills.
“The Victor Talking Machine March” (1904), Arthur W. Pryor.
“Syncopation” (c.1920/1926), Fritz Kreisler.

“The Cascades” (descriptive rag, 1904), Scott Joplin.

“Georgia Sunset: A Southern Tone-Poem” (1906), Albert W. Brown.
“Overture to La-La Lucille!” (1919), George Gershwin.

“Through more than three decades of recordings, we’ve come to expect excellence from  Rick Benjamin’s Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. Even with that history in mind, this new CD is breathtaking.” – Edward A. Berlin, author of King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era