Pop culture, 125 years ago

[Erato]

I listened to a lot of ragtime when I was a child because my father was a fan and had a large collection - Scott Joplin, Jellyroll Morton, Eubie Blake, etc.  I bet he never knew that he had a second cousin once removed who cakewalked with the best in NYC.

I've been taking another look at my chorus girl/actress ancestor, Bertha E. Martin, stage name Bertha Carlisle.  I haven't gotten much further with her but she got me to thinking about the popular culture of her day.  She went on the stage in 1903ish when she was around 18 years old. It was the height of the ragtime era.  One newspaper article unkindly compared her cakewalk to "a chicken on stilts."

I wonder if this music penetrated to the small villages of Wisconsin, or was it too scandalously urban and risqué?  Did my grandparents bop to the Maple Leaf Rag at their college dances?  Did grandpa take a break from divinity school and nip down to New York to see the shows?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCxLAr_bwpA

[Top-of-the-hill]

  I reckon if your grandparents went the college dances, they bopped along! Or maybe not if that was the grandfather who was at divinity school? Didn't he become a missionary?

[Erato]

Mostly I'm wondering how quickly trends like ragtime music swept the remote rural corners of the country back in the days before mass communication.  People didn't have radios, so they depended on live musicians.  I'm sure most communities had a few people who could play the fiddle or the banjo or some other instrument.  Some even had pianos.  My grandfather came from a very small place (in 1900, the population of the whole township was 562; the village accounted for perhaps half of that number).  His family did have a so-called "parlor organ."  Sometimes they even had two of them. They were friends with a guy who sold parlor organs, and he stored his sample merchandise at their home.  Grandpa's sisters took music lessons and learned to play this instrument.  Did they ever become good enough to handle ragtime?  Did they buy the sheet music and bring the latest craze into their village?

[still_looking]

The digital collection of the University of Wisconson has a few sheet music examples if you search for cakewalk. There's also a female student's scrapbook from c. 1906 that includes the music played at dances and a programme for a multi-ring grand circus show (put on at a cost of $100000!) though no mention of ragtime that I could see.
https://search.library.wisc.edu/search/digital

If you're lucky you may be able to take a sheet music title and look up the Discography of American Historical Recordings and find mention of a recording of it along with a sound file you can play.
https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/

If you do find recordings mentioned but no sound to play back then it's worth trying the title and artist in youtube. There's a couple of library of Congress historic film examples of cakewalks as well.

I appreciate that doesn't answer your query of whether it would have reached the less urban areas or how it was perceived/received. There is someone at the University whose research may be relevant as they refer to it here:
https://ls.wisc.edu/news/the-mad-bad-world-of-ragtime
There's a photo of a cakewalk couple at the bottom.

S_L

[Erato]

Thanks for those links.  I've made a note to remind myself to look for "dance bands" and such the next time there's a free newspaper search.  I'll see what sort of musical entertainment was available in Portage, Wisconsin in around 1900.  Also music stores in Portage.

[still_looking]

I had a quick look for personal accounts of Portage and found this, the first three chapters about the author and her parents may give an idea of what it was like.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4103003&seq=1

S_L

[Erato]

My grandfather's family live about 15 miles north of Portage in neighboring Marquette County.  They went down to Portage occasionally in their buggy to shop.  It was the big town and trips there were an excursion.  I have his comments on the town, though he didn't say much.

To this day, I have relatives in Portage, though I have never met them.