This is intended as a response to "Ragtime Pianist Hughe Woolford on
Telektra Brass" as posted by David Krall in 231207 MMDigest.

Hi David, The name Hughie Woolford sounded familiar to my ear and it
took me awhile to recall where I had heard it. Eubie Blake mentions
him as a competitor on the "Tricky Fingers" track of his album,
"The 86 Years of Eubie Blake". The full album made its way to YouTube
a few years ago and I've included a link for the track below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji8FJrNUi6Q 

In the liner notes for the album Blake states, "I had a rival named
Hughie Wolford. Hughie could play and brag like hell. To compete with
him in speed I wrote Tricky Fingers, which is very hard to play."

There are a few anecdotes about Woolford in the biography on Blake
written by Al Rose (where his last name is spelled Wolford). To quote
one anecdote about the tune "Raggin' the Scale" (attributed to
Ed Claypoole):

"Hughie Wolford and I are workin' in the Middle Section Club, see -
now this is about 1905 or '06 because I ain't in the Goldfield Hotel
yet, see. Now on Sundays there's a lot of church people sneak in there
for a little drink -- women too -- they went on the second floor.

"Hughie's playin', and I hear a lady ask him to play 'Holy City'. Now
he plays it, you see, but he rags it -- and Hughie is a hell of a piano
player. He puts in so many variations that she don't recognize it.

"So when he gets finished, she asks him again to play 'Holy City'. She
ain't bein' smart now. She really doesn't know that was 'Holy City'.
So I say, 'I'll play it for you ma'am,' and I sit down at the piano
and play it straight so she knows what I played, and she gives me
twenty-five cents.

"Now later I say to Hughie, 'Why didn't you play it for the lady?'
He tells me, 'She didn't say how she wanted me to play it.' So I say,
'If somebody asked you to play the scale, you'd rag it too.' Now he
don't say nothin'.

"The next day he comes in and he plays the scale for me, only now it's
a rag, see. He went home and he made a rag out of it. He says, 'You
give me an idea yesterday.'

"Well, now I want to play a joke on him. I go home and put the scale
in five keys, and the next day I come in where Hughie is shootin' pool.
They got a piano in there. So I go and sit at the piano and rag the
scale in five keys. He says, 'Hey, you copped that from me!'

"I say, 'I copped it from you? I didn't have to cop that from nobody.
Don't you understand? That's the scale. Nobody owns the scale.' Then
I show him that I put it in five keys and he only got it in one.

"After that we both played it all the time in five keys. Never thought
to copyright it or anything, but everybody come into the club asked
for it all the time. Still I'd have felt foolish tryin' to copyright
the scale.

"But Ed Claypoole copyrighted it -- in five keys like I had it. An you
know that was a big hit. The scale!"

Per the biography, Wolford also worked with Broadway Jones after
Eubie did.

I was unable to find much mention of him anywhere else. He isn't
mentioned in Rudi Blesh's "They All Played Ragtime" or Willie the Lion
Smith's "Music on My Mind". The only other mention I found of him on
paper was in Terry Waldo's "This is Ragtime", where in another anecdote
Eubie Blake mentions attending an event that Scott Joplin played at.
Wolford was also at the event and was underwhelmed by the playing of
an ailing Scott Joplin shortly before his death.

I am sure there are other Wolford compositions and rolls out there,
but unfortunately none of my other books seem to call him out.
Hopefully the anecdotes paint in a little bit of the picture surrounding
Hughie Wolford.

Thank you,
William Jacobson
Annandale, Minnesota