[ Allen Ford wrote in 150412 MMDigest --

> I am asking if anyone has a phono recording, cassette tape
> or piano roll, etc., of this music that they might share.

Hi, all!  By request, I recorded a little version of Sissle and
Blake's 1919 Witmark publication, "The Baltimore Blues". As it
happens, I worked this up for a meeting of the Orange County Ragtime
Society in February (to commemorate both Blake's birthday on the
7th of February and to memorialize my late Baltimore friend Steve
Sienkiewicz, who passed away unexpectedly last year.)

The song is not one of Blake's all-time greatest, to be sure.
Sissle's lyric is very awkward, indeed; Blake certainly must have
been amazed by the facility of his later lyricists like Andy Razaf
and J. Milton Reddie, by comparison.  Please forgive me for having
a little trouble spitting out the awkward lyrics!

The music is rather interesting.  The chorus is a 12-bar blues, but
not at all the usual harmonic pattern of such strains.  I think the
most remarkable moment in the song is in the 4th bar of the verse,
where Blake writes out a dissonance with the major and minor third
sounding simultaneously to make a bluesy effect.  Lest you think
that it's a typo, in small print the chord is marked "(Blues)",
and a little dynamic mark ('hairpins') indicates that it should be
accentuated.  I don't know of an earlier appearance of that effect
in a printed score.

Best,
Bob Pinsker
San Diego, Calif.

 [
 [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Attachments/15/04/13/150413_213824_Baltimore+Blues+20140413.mp3 

 [ Bob is pianist and co-leader of the Heliotrope Ragtime Orchestra;
 [ visit http://www.sandiegoragtime.com/  -- Robbie