The 88 Club is a group of pianists based in Milan, Italy, dedicated to ragtime, stride and jazz piano. (NB at the bottom of this page, there are links to web pages for the pianists, albums by The 88 Club, and the composers). We play ragtime whenever and wherever we can, in bars, clubs, at private parties, for special events, at concerts, and on all occasions we try to communicate the essence of the music. Ragtime is bright, sparkling, optimistic, with that incessant, pulsating rhythm that reveals its origins.

Ragtime is an early example of fusion music. It is basically an African music, with its characteristic elements – the complex rhythms and the off-beat, syncopated melodies – adapted to a Western instrument, the piano. The early black ragtime musicians adopted other traits of the Western-style music that they heard all around in late 19th century America, such as a structure based on the quadrille dances and the harmonies of hymns and band music.

The result was piano ragtime. It was played as far back as the 1860s in many parts of America, but it was Scott Joplin and his 1899 Maple Leaf Rag that really launched the ragtime craze. It was perhaps the first hit in musical history, with sales that exceeded a million of the space of a decade – even though the sales were of the sheet music, not records.

But America is a big country, and, alongside Scott Joplin and other composers working in the Mississippi area, there were several different expressions of the same style. Eubie Blake wrote his Classical Rag in 1899, when he was just 16. He was one of the Atlantic seaboard pianists who, with James P. Johnson, Luckey Roberts, Willie The Lion Smith, and, a little later, Fats Waller, forged the exciting ragtime style known as stride. Complex left hand patterns, catchy melodies and that continuous, pulsating, crunching rhythm: the elements that from the start had hallmarked the black American pianists were brought to their dazzling extremes by these gifted musicians. They were able to enjoy years of success, but they were eventually eclipsed by the advent of new styles in jazz, from big band to bebop.

This is the story of ragtime. A music that for decades was America’s popular music, and that was both assisted and damaged by advancing technology. The piano roll has preserved some early ragtime, but, as a form of home entertainment, it was rapidly ousted by the phonograph. And for the first decades of phonograph waxings, the piano was virtually the only unrecordable instrument. Ragtime’s prime medium was therefore sheet music, but the greatest pianists continually saw their compositions refused publication because they were too hard to play. The demand for simpler ragtime was quickly embraced by white pianists and Tin Pan Alley, which published thousands of scores. Some good, even innovative, but many imitative or second-rate.

There’s a lot of great music in ragtime, and this is the music that the 88 Club play. Our objective is simply to present ragtime to anyone who wants to listen, in the hope of transmitting its irrepressible spirit, its generous brilliance, its flashes of humour, and its expression of a united society, black and white, African and European. In these pages you’ll find more about us, and above all, more about ragtime, its history and composers. Drop us a line if you want us to play for you somewhere, whether in a concert hall or the café next door. Best wishes to all readers – and long live ragtime!