Ford Dabney might have been the first jazz star | Hacker News Reader

Ford Dabney might have been the first jazz star

honest-broker.com

91 pointsKhaine8 comments

I've never heard of him, and I'm glad to see an article that calls someone (or something) "forgotten", where it's not an exaggeration for dramatic effect.

Sure, Ford Dabney does have a Wikipedia article and he appears in various music databases, but otherwise, well, I tried searching the internet and it's a wasteland. His songs get less than 1000 views each on YouTube and there seems to be hardly any mention of him on social media.

Like a few weeks ago there was an article about eden abhez. Most people would have never heard of him.

Always great to heard about those that were two steps ahead of the world.

For anyone interested in the origins of jazz I recommend the book Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development by Schuller. It covers mostly 1920-1930 and a bit of its origins is west Africa.

I'll check it out. Thanks. Also worthy of mention is Gioia's history of jazz. And I haven't read it, but his How to listen to jazz is highly regarded and considered to be not quite so encyclopedic.

Tangential, but I was watching A Capitol Fourth this past Thursday, and near the end of the traditional performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, I was reminded how much I'd like to see Joplin (one of the other fathers of popular American music, and the father of a sadly-abortive branch of "serious" American music) celebrated in the same vein. Whoever decided to use Joplin's "Solace"[1][2] as the loading screen theme for Bioshock: Infinite is a genius, because... wow, what a piece.

Unfortunately, rags have been misrepresented as an almost naive form over the years, instead of the foundational element (ripe for rediscovery, experimentation, and innovation) of American musical composition that it is. Looks like Dabney was another casualty of this oversight.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ms-WVWI9w (B:I's modified version)

[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLNORRrRyMQ (Full version)

Great version of his tune 'Shine' performed by Dick Hyman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1nAPI23iRQ

As a pianist I love the ragtime era. It’s full of low hanging fruit like this that’s just waiting to be reawakened. The coolest thing I’ve noticed is how timeless these pieces can be via live performance. Tbh recorded ragtime can be meh, but there’s something truly captivating about watching the velocity of that left hand stride irl.

This was a pleasant surprise to see on HN, I’m looking forward to adding some of these pieces to my repertoire

Me, thinking "who?"

Getting yelled at by the Tim Heidecker in my brain "FORD DABNEY! DUH! FORD DABNEY! COME ON!"

If only Ford Dabney was on the Colgate Comedy Hour.

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