Maple Leaf Rag. QRS 7308. J. Lawrence Cook. Year: Sept. 1940

The Maple Leaf Rag is probably the most famous ragtime composition of all time. It was first published by Scott Joplin in 1899, the year J. Lawrence Cook was born. Joplin would pass away in 1917, just at the time Cook was becoming an accomplished pianist and musician himself. The player piano was gaining huge momentum at this time. Cook, eager to be part of this industry, bought a small hand operated paper perforator and was making piano roll master copies from his home and sending them to various roll companies as sort of a resume. His determination had to match his skill level, and indeed, it did. In 1921, he was hired by QRS. Previous to that, he had been working at US rolls under an assumed pseudonym. QRS had to find out who he was! They wanted him on staff there. He became the worlds most prolific piano roll artist of all time, spanning over 5 decades. I thought it appropriate to post this most famous ragtime hit by the most famous roll artist as my final of a 5 song tribute to J. Lawrence Cook on this day, which marks his 125 birthday, July 14.

[@lawriefoster5587]

Oh!! You can just send your old piano to me here in Philadelphia!!
Fabulous roll, fabulous piano!!!

[@SevenPlus65]

@@lawriefoster5587 Thank you so very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Hopefully there are other rolls I've posted that will be of interest to you as well.

[@PiotrBarcz]

NAILED THE TEMPO!!! This roll is FANTASTIC.

[@SevenPlus65]

@@PiotrBarcz It oftentimes gets played so fast. I appreciate you mentioning the tempo!!! It was intentional lol.

[@PiotrBarcz]

@@SevenPlus65 This is pretty much perfect for how this roll is arranged.
If this was the Connorized roll by William Arlington that was attributed (falsely) to Joplin then this tempo would probably be a bit too fast or on the higher end of what could be considered NOT rushed xD

[@Skgwgaietto]

Ahhh... J stands for Joplin! 😂

[@PiotrBarcz]

I'm waiting for Rowan to try and play this xD

[@PiotrBarcz]

It's unfortunate that this roll has mastering issues with jittery tempo glitches and right offset punching. I might try to make a recut of this one that gets rid of all those pesky problems QRS was dealing with at the time. It's odd that this roll even has the problems in the first place, the 40's rolls were pretty good and didn't usually miss punches and have tempo problems.
I should start studying the different time periods in which roll "types" emerged with different punching patterns and other stuff like that.

[@BarryMoreno-zx4dc]

Doesn’t sound quite right to me.

[@SevenPlus65]

I appreciate you watching and I'm really interested in why it doesn't quite right?