Iowa's Ragtime Mecca on the Mississippi

[David Ales] I've always enjoyed ragtime music. We call it Eagles and Ivories ragtime because we started that way. But now it includes jazz, spirituals, popular music. These performers can play anything that you mention. 

Over the course of the four day event now, there'll be close to 2,000 people. First year, pretty well received, except we had a terrible snowstorm. Second year we had an ice storm, but we've survived for 33 years now.

(Applause)

I took piano lessons all the way through grade school, high school.

My father came from Lost Nation, Iowa. There were two brothers in Lost Nation. The Rugbecks, but one of them was also a member of John Philip Sousa's band.

And when they would come to Muscatine to visit, we had an old upright piano. And it was ragtime that they played, not always, but usually. It was then the basis for jazz, blues and even pop music.

[Jeff Barnhart, Eagles & Ivories Musiscal Director] How many of you have seen us before? How many of you were seeing us for the first time? How many of you were seeing us for the last time?

I want to be a joy spreader. The best way I know how to do that is through music. So I love your two year olds, 92 year olds, everything in between. And we say here, yeah, we start with ragtime. That's our core, because that's the core of American music. And anything kids are listening to today that they think is hip. It was already being done 126 years ago, just with a slightly different language, you know, and done by kids, teens. It's always kids who develop the new thing. So ragtime was it, but then it would morph into other things. And it was a common misconception if you were someone in one of these assisted facilities, this is not music that you grew up with.

If you're an 80 year old, you grew up with Jerry Lee Lewis. It's more, okay, here's something. I have them coming up and saying, my mom used to play that song on the piano when I was a kid, but if you can get kids hooked on something, they're not going to get, they say, wait a minute, that's very cool, we should check in to that.

Everything needs to be presented in a way that's fresh and new, and if you can do that, you can get people to go anywhere you want to.

(Applause)

[Angela Woodhouse, Eagles & Ivories Festival Director] It's really involved. The festival. People are always saying, you know, there's nothing to do in Muscatine or in Iowa. But yet I think music is kind of the universal language, and it speaks to everybody.

You know, when we first started out, it was one person. And, it's grown to basically a whole week now. We start with the artist in residence, and we've been doing that for, I believe, four years.

It's extremely well received by the community and you can see it in the joy and young and old.

(Applause)

[Barnhart]... school, the best school in the world.

[Woodhouse] Well, I love going out to the schools. You know, this is a different genre of music these kids are not familiar with.

[Woodhouse] And it's not just ragtime. We do all kinds of different—we do jazz and spirituals, rock and roll. You know, the boogie woogie music really, really speaks to everybody, actually.

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[Ales] A good director, Jeff Barnhart, one of the best performers you'll find anywhere in the country. We also have Dave Bennett, who's out of Michigan—tremendous clarinetist, but he's also boogie woogie, early rock and roll pianist too.

Each a performer this year is from England.

Neville Dickie is 89 years old and performed for a number of years on BBC Radio in England and in this area, performed for seven schools and 7 or 8 retirement homes.

[Dickie] Okay, this is the ragtime festival so we finally made the whitewash man.

♪ 

My mother used to make me practice by putting an alarm clock on the piano. I had to practice for half an hour. When the alarm clock went off, I was free. Because sheet music was very difficult to get hold of. Sheet music from 1920s and 30s.

And I always remember when I was about 20 years old, I saw this book advertised. It was, 100 ragtime pieces. I sent away to America and got this album. And, so I started to practice those.

[Ales] Reason we call it Eagles and Ivories is because Mississippi River freezes over in Muscatine usually. And so some years we'd have as many as 300, 400 eagles here. Not that many in this year because the river was open earlier.

[Charity Nebbe] We are here for Eagles and Ivories.

These are two things that don't necessarily seem like they go together. How does that work for you?

[Michelle Berns] For us it's the eagles. Yeah, we do the natural part of it and they're the music part of it. We are just down from lock and dam number 16. So the water generally stays open a little bit more at the locks along the river. So they congregate along those locks.

[Nebbe] Well what do you hope people take away from this experience?

[Berns] I really want people to get excited about how cool all these animals are, even if it's, barred owl, if it's an eagle. Because when they get excited about those animals, they're going to want to protect the habitats that those animals live in. And we need that.

[Nebbe] Do eagles like ragtime?

[Berns] I think they do.

[Woodhouse] What I like about it, the variety, we try to mix it up with not only the performers themselves, but with the style of music that they bring.

[Barnhart] What I like to think is that our festival features what Johnny Mercer called the Golden Age of Melody, meeting from about 1890 to 1950. What I love is the people, first of all, welcome you so warmly because they know you're here to spread the joy. You're here to create something that's going to take them away, transport them to someplace really fun and exciting. And I do love this town. I've always said this a small town with a big heart.

[Woodhouse] It makes me happy to have a festival like this, the music talent that we bring in. I would encourage people, if they've never been to come because, I can guarantee you they would have a good time.