KEEPING RAGTIME’S HERITAGE ALIVE

Vague memories of the honky-tonk music that wafted through the San Francisco amusement parks of his 1950s childhood; the visits of a favorite baby sitter who would occasionally knock out a few rags on the family piano--these are Frank French’s earliest recollections of ragtime.

These days, French can be counted on to come out swinging in support of the music that has become his passion. First as a pianist and now as a disc jockey--he hosts the weekly show “From Ragtime to No Time” on radio station KSBR (88.5 FM) in Mission Viejo--French takes seriously his self-appointed role as a defender of America’s musical heritage.

Ask him the goals of his radio show, and he’s likely to recite a lengthy list: “To reach as many people as possible. To broaden the audience for this music, to broaden the appreciation, to bring a more enlightened attitude about our American musical tradition,” he begins. “Bringing more rag-timers up and playing more ragtime. Having more festivals and more concerts--more live music, especially in Orange County.”

French’s show, which airs Sundays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., blends recordings by such seminal figures in American popular music as Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton with contemporary recordings of old standards. He also regularly features new compositions, including some by such Southern California-based artists as Dick Zimmerman and Ian Whitcomb. Occasional touches of Dixieland and early blues are added to the musical mixture.

Giving exposure to contemporary artists is French’s way of showing that ragtime is a viable form of music, not just a distant and dusty piece of the musical past.

“It’s a living music, and it spans at least a hundred years. Now what do you think people in Europe think about their music that spans that kind of history? They put it on a pedestal,” French said in an interview after a recent show.

“I’m not saying that we need to do that here, but we should start looking at our music from the New World--that includes both North and South America--in a different light, not as being secondary or below European classics,” he said. “We in the New World have our own style of music, so I think we should be proud of it.”

French himself was trained in the classical style. His was a musical household (his father was a singer and a voice teacher), and he asked for piano lessons at age 7; he was trained at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. French stayed with the classics exclusively until 1973, when the hit movie “The Sting” came along and gave ragtime a popularity boost with a score dominated by Joplin’s music.

“I was a teen-ager at that time,” French, 35, said. “I’d heard ragtime before that, but this was the first time it came to my attention as a viable playing style.” He first turned to ragtime “as a way to make a buck,” he said but continued his classical studies.

In 1978, he went to Vienna to further his piano training but was disappointed in the quality of the teaching. Ragtime was his savior. “I turned to ragtime because it was something I could do to be completely individual and apart from anyone else that was playing over there,” French explained. “I didn’t receive a lot of fame, fortune and recognition, but I had a fair number of followers and friends and people who appreciated what I was doing, so I stayed for five years.”

In addition to playing nightclubs and the odd concert, French recorded an album called “Stride and Slide” with blues singer and guitarist Slow Jim. He occasionally plays cuts from the album during his radio show, and last Sunday the album’s producer, Ursula Schaetz, was a guest on the program.

French came back to the States in 1983. “I had no prospects, nobody knew who I was, so I started from scratch.” He enrolled in some business classes at Saddleback College, started a piano tuning and repair business and began giving private music lessons--and lined up live concerts whenever he could. He heard about KSBR, the college-based public radio station, and began taking broadcasting classes. He started “From Ragtime to No Time” last October.

Since starting the show, French’s concert schedule has been busier. “I had been doing concerts every few months up until that time, but now I’m getting a lot more opportunities to play,” he said. “I’ll be going to Sedalia (Missouri) this summer to play in the Scott Joplin Festival.” During Sunday’s radio program, he will perform live 11 turn-of-the-century tangos by composer Ernesto Nazareth, whom French considers the Brazilian equivalent to Joplin.

His interest in everything from ragtime to classical music to rarely performed Brazilian tangos indicates an eclectic taste, but that taste doesn’t extend to commercial pop music. In fact, French thinks many people are getting fed up with pop, and he hopes to benefit from this predicted trend.

“Many people--I’m not saying everybody--but many people are fed up with pop music, and they’re looking for something new,” French said. “They are the people this show is looking for, and they are looking for this show.”

BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN: The owner of Night Moves in Huntington Beach said this week that the city has approved a new entertainment permit for the club. The permit request had been in question because police cited owner Ezra Joseph for violating the city’s adult entertainment codes over female oil wrestling events staged last summer. Joseph subsequently discontinued the oil wrestling shows and paid a fine on the violation. The new permit allows Joseph to continue booking local and regional original bands. Sgt. Luis Ochoa of the Huntington Beach Police Department confirmed that the permit was approved and said, “They appear to be complying, and we hope there will be no more problems. But only time will tell.” Among the groups that will be playing the club in coming weeks are T.S.O.L., the Unforgiven, Jamie James & the Kingbees and Witch.

LIVE ACTION: Wang Chung will play UC Irvine’s Crawford Hall on Feb. 28. Tickets go on sale today. . . . Larry Carlton’s Feb. 21 performance at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano has been postponed. Jerry Lee Lewis will perform on that date instead. . . . On Feb. 13, the Untouchables and the Rebel Rockers will be the first musical acts to play the new Bren Events Center at UC Irvine. . . . The Joneses will perform at Night Moves on Feb. 14.