Purchasing information Notice for leaders/bass players
Length: approx. 3¼ mins.
A Black Smoke was originally published by Johnson not only as a piano work for two hands but also for orchestra, band. mandolin and guitar combinations as well as mandolin and piano combinations. The editor therefore has no compunctions in bringing out this recorder adaptation. An early rag employing both stop-time and cross-bar syncopation, devices being imitated and utilised throughout the ragtime era, was certainly one for nimble fingers - here was Johnson at his best. It is a very lively and exacting piece and in this recorder adaptation, a tenor's delight.
The cover of the original sheet music is an amusing graphical pun depicting a young Negro child, perhaps only 4-years old, having a quiet drag exhibiting sophistication and defiance - something definitely politically and socially not acceptable in these days some hundred years after the rag's first publication.
A Black Smoke was published by
Whitney-Warner Publishing Co., Detroit, Michigan, USA.
A tempo of 108 crotchets/min. is suggested.
