LONG-TERM ROMANCE WITH RAGTIME

Richard Glick’s eight-year romance with ragtime music is a classic love story--with a twist.

It began, as affairs of the heart often do, purely by chance. And it was sparked by the match-making efforts of a third party.

In 1978, Glick was the national sales manager of a Florida television station. He was 30 years old and music was just a hobby.

One day, the featured guest on the evening newscast was Eubie Blake, the late master of the ragtime piano. Blake was 95; music was his life.

Fate brought the two together in an empty television studio. And for two hours, the old musician gave the young musician a compact history lesson in one of the oldest forms of popular music born and raised in the U.S.A.

The rinkle-tinkle melodies and rhythms of ragtime stung Glick with the passionate force of Cupid’s arrow--and the wound never healed.

“As a player, I find ragtime technically challenging and satisfying,” Glick said. “And as a listener, the music either gets me happy or keeps me happy.

“There’s no way you can listen to ragtime and keep still. Your toes start tapping to the beat, the melody is easy to latch onto, and after hearing a particular tune you’ll find yourself whistling it days later.”

Tonight Glick will celebrate the eighth anniversary of his involvement with ragtime--and pay tribute to his late teacher--by performing a solo concert at the Words and Music gallery in Hillcrest.

Included will be all the turn-of-the-century ragtime classics: “The Entertainer” and “Maple Leaf Rag” by Scott Joplin, “The Bowery Buck” by Tom Turpin, “Sensation-A Rag” by Joseph Lamb, “Fizz Water” by Eubie Blake, and “Vistawood Rag,” a song Glick composed three years ago in classic ragtime style.

While Blake, Joplin and the other ragtime pioneers played and wrote their tunes on the piano, Glick’s nimble fingers will chase each other along the guitar strings and dance between the frets. He’s playing the entire concert on the acoustic guitar--a formidable challenge, he says.

“Instead of strumming chords on the guitar, I play with a pianist’s approach: I maintain the bass and melody simultaneously,” Glick said.

“So there are two reasons why I’m giving this concert. I want to open up some ears that may have never heard ragtime before, and at the same time, I want to legitimize ragtime as performed on the acoustic guitar.”

Bill Goldsmith, owner of the Old Time Cafe in Leucadia, said using the guitar to play music originally intended for the piano is not uncommon.

“The early blues pickers, like ‘Blind’ Blake, evolved their styles from the blues piano,” said Goldsmith, whose cafe features a variety of folk, blues and ethnic performers. “And the country-blues style of guitar, in turn, came from the honky-tonk piano.

“As the piano styles changed, ragtime guitar came about as well. And by the 1950s, it had become increasingly sophisticated. Musicians regarded ragtime guitar as a technical challenge: How close could they come to following every note on the piano? Then it got, How close could they come to achieving Scott Joplin-like virtuosity?

“So now, there’s a whole body of ragtime guitar players. Most of them are fairly obscure, since it’s still mostly a technical thing for musicians in need of a challenge. A few, however, are out in the public. Stefan Grossman, who has records out nationally and tours all over the place, is probably the best known.”

Along with the blues, Glick said, ragtime is America’s oldest indigenous music. It was conceived in the late 1800s in the African tribal rhythms brought over by the slaves.

Glick began playing the guitar after hearing his first Chet Atkins record at the age of 13. After college, he said, he spent six years in real estate and eight in television. The year he met Eubie Blake, a plane crash ended his broadcast career and left him financially self-sufficient.

“I broke my back, my neck, and my wrist in that plane crash,” Glick said. “I spent four months in bed, and I still have a lot of pain today.”

Since then he has devoted his life to ragtime, playing a concert a month at places like the Old Time Cafe and Drowsy Maggie’s in North Park.

“Music became my therapy. I felt, damn it, if I have to walk around with this much pain, I’m not going to put up with negative people or situations--or music,” he said. “As corny as that may sound, it’s true. When you’ve been that close to death, you learn to appreciate the experience of living.

“And that’s what ragtime is all about.”