Charles L. Johnson

The white Kansas City ragtimer Charles L. Johnson (1876-1950), an arranger as well as an unusually ebullient composer, wrote in a number of interesting idioms: dreamy waltzes, fiddle tune medleys, and catchy rags, like his early success, Dill Pickles.

Dream Days, a romantic waltz harking back to the sentimental styles of the gay nineties, demonstrates both Johnson's lyric gifts and his ability to appeal commercially to his “parlor-piano” clientele.

Hen Cackle Rag (subtitled "a barnyard disturbance") is a ragtime-era medley of country fiddler tunes, centering around the traditional string-band tune Better Stop Kickin' My Dog Around, and revealing the status of proto-Country-and-Western in 1912.

Melody Rag (1912), an early example of “ragging the classics,” is a clever take-off on Anton Rubinstein's ubiquitous Melody in F, originally composed around 1890.

Notes by Roy Wiseman