Black Manhattan, Vol. 3

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The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra

Rick Benjamin, director

Janai Brugger, soprano*; Andrea Jones, soprano;

Chauncey Packer, tenor**; Edward Pleasant, baritone***


This is the third volume of Paragon Ragtime Orchestra recordings documenting the music of important African-American composers from late 19th- and early 20th-century New York City. The inspiration for this effort came about twenty-five years ago, when I read James Weldon Johnson’s (1930), a fascinating chronicle of the city’s black artistic life from the Victorian era to the Harlem Renaissance. I came to Johnson’s volume after finishing Eileen Southern’s (1971), a wider-ranging academic work, but a no less revealing one. After reading these books I was excited to listen to the music they had described. But this was problematic: I discovered remarkably few available recordings of historic African-American music, and even fewer to represent New York’s pioneering black composers. This inability to actually experience a considerable span of our musical heritage was a void that needed to be filled. Clearly it was time for a carefully curated new recording of first-rate performances played from authentic scores.

Fifteen years and three volumes later [the first was issued in 2003], we have recorded three and a half hours of this previously neglected music: sixty pieces by thirty-two outstanding African-American composers, spanning the seminal years of the 1870s to the early 1920s. It is our hope that these efforts have started to close this gap in America’s cultural memory. Our even greater hope is that these recordings will enable the world to rediscover this is magnificent music and the gifted, spirited, and persevering people who gave it to us. —

(1913) (C. Luckeyth “Luckey” Roberts), (one-step from Shuffle Along, 1922) (Eubie Blake), (1915) (Frederick M. Bryan), * (song from the Harlem Lafayette Theatre musical Baby Blues, 1919) (C. Luckeyth “Luckey” Roberts), (cakewalk, 1904) (Sidney Perrin), (Op. 12, 1919) (Clarence Cameron White), (from the black Broadway musical Strut, Miss Lizzie, 1921) (J. Turner Layton), (1909) (Scott Joplin), ***(minstrel song, 1879) (James Bland), ** (ballad, 1896) (Augustus L. Davis), * (song from , 1921) (Eubie Blake), Overture to (from the Harlem Lafayette Theatre production, 1913) (J. Leubrie Hill), (fox trot, 1919) (Clarence Williams & Spencer Williams), (one-step, 1914) (C. Luckeyth “Luckey” Roberts), ** (ballad, 1905) (Tom Lemonier), (one step, 1918) (J. Turner Layton), (1914) (Will H. Dixon), (dance from the Smart Set Co. production , 1916) (Clarence G. Wilson), [arr. William Grant Still] (1919) (Q. Roscoe Snowden), (1902) (Al. Johns), (spiritual setting, 1921) (Clarence Cameron White), (original 1900 score) [vocal quartet] (James Weldon Johnson & J. Rosamond Johnson)

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Duration
69:32
Tracks
22
Format
m4a (ALAC)
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Black Manhattan, Vol. 3

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