Charles Hunter: Select Works (Ragtime)

Born with a grief-stricken sight impairment into an average low-class family in Columbia, Tennessee, Charles Hunter would come around to be one of the earliest composers of Ragtime to ever pen in the lower South of the US, introducing his distinctive “folk“ style to the genre. Growing up in an area full of talented black musicians, there was certainly no shortage of aural folk influence for Hunter’s keen ears to pick up on as a youth. Unironically, a method Hunter may have learned to exploit for his compositional work later down the years, as he was sent to the Nashville School for the Blind where sight-impaired students were taught trades, and of course how to blend into society as best they could. Despite Tennessee and the lower surrounding states not necessarily having any major drop of Ragtime into their pools of popular music, the state itself had plenty of musical qualities & opportunities to offer to even those who had never picked up a instrument in their lives. With that said, the tall red-headed boy’s natural acuity for the piano made him suitable to learn the trade of tuning, allowing him to leave the school prepared to pursue a career as a piano technician with the Jesse French Piano Company in Nashville. Although he had received little if any formal musical training during this time, Charles spent his free time creating different tunes at the piano, soaking in the influences of Nashville folk music from all races along with some of his own ideas, mainly those aligned with Ragtime. It is conceivable that his blindness helped shield him from some of the racial issues that other white musicians would sometimes encounter due to the genre being deemed as “an impure form of music“ due to it’s roots in the African-American & Black cultures of the US. However, in an area where little Ragtime was being played and virtually none was published, it is a partial mystery as to where he had even learned the style so adeptly in the first place. At the age of 23, Hunter would complete his first rag “Tickled to Death,“ published by Frank G. Fite of Nashville, as his employer through piano tuning was not in the publishing business. Quickly reaching far beyond Tennessee in its overall popularity, the rag would soon find itself frequently featured on phonograph records and piano rolls throughout the Ragtime era. Picking up the interest of Henry A. French, Nashville’s largest publisher of that time, it would be him would would become Charles’ biggest supporter during his lifetime, purchasing most of his future works. In fact, French had enjoyed the great success Hunter had brought with him to his catalog that he had invested well into the advertisement & cover art for his works. For reference, take this 1903 article in the Music Trade Review, where French makes Hunter’s success clear: “To show you how my publishing business is prospering... let me tell you that I recently gave an order for 35,000 copies of three different publications of mine - ’Possum and Taters,’ 25,000, and 5,000 each of ’Tennessee Tantalizer’ and ’Queen of Love’ two-step. All of these numbers are by Charles Hunter. The order I have just placed makes a second edition of 5,000 each of ’Tantalizer’ and ’Queen of Love’ and a total of 40,000 copies of ’Possum and Taters.’ ... This has been one of the best years I have ever known. I am very well satisfied with present conditions, and am sanguine as to the fall trade.“ Now whether not those numbers may have been inflated a bit is left up to historical debate (we all know too well that music historians love to engage with one another,) but it is keen to understand that to any extent, Hunter’s works being printed in such substantial numbers had simply become a phenomenal feat at the time. Especially for a single composer in the deep South where instrumental music distribution was not yet into large scale effect compared to the Midwest. By 1902, with Hunter’s name being known past Tennessee borders by now, he would be sent to St. Louis as a representative of French to bolster the piano operations in the firm’s store there. Listed as a piano tuner but more widely known as a composer, Hunter evidently found himself welcomed in many places as a anomaly of sorts to be a Ragtime pianist. *Biography is continued in the pinned comment below.* ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Timestamps: 00:00 - Tickled to Death (1899) 03:48 - A Tennessee Tantalizer (1900) 07:16 - Possum and Taters (1900) 10:51 - Cotton Bolls (1901) 14:45 - Queen of Love (1901) 19:46 - Just Ask Me (1902) 22:47 - Why We Smile (1903) 25:59 - Back to Life (1904) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Music composed by Charles Hunter & performed by Mark Pedigo & Vincent M. Johnson. This video is solely for the purposes of compiling and sharing the music of Charles Hunter and in no way or means is being used for monetary purposes.