Remembering Max Morath

The pianist, who staged a one-man revival of ragtime music and became a public television pioneer, died two years ago.

Ragtime virtuoso Max Morath was born in Colorado Springs on October 1, 1926. His mother had lugged a piano bench full of music west from the family farm in Iowa; as a youngster, he said, he’d discovered “the beat in my fingers” for ragtime, the tunes that predated jazz as America’s first distinctive music.

Max Morath

“In ragtime piano, two things are combined—chaos and discipline,” Morath explained. “The disciplined left hand provides a steady march-like beat throughout, permitting wholesale chaos in the syncopating right. Ragtime went out of style about the time of World War I. They said ragtime was a scurrilous music, reeking of excessive syncopations.”

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in English from Colorado College, Morath embarked on a varied career. Appearing in melodrama productions in southwest Colorado, Morath studied American popular music and theater. Finding inspiration in his ragtime heroes Eubie Blake and Scott Joplin, he became fascinated with the accompanying fads from the turn of the century. He logged hundreds of appearances in the Gold Bar Room in Cripple Creek during the summers of the 1950s. He also did radio announcing and moved into television, where he wrote, announced, edited, acted and sang at Colorado’s new KKTV in Colorado Springs and Pueblo. Morath’s endeavors led to his first professional recordings. “But when I hit thirty, I thought once a week of quitting the business.”

Then, during 1959 through 1961, Morath wrote, performed and co-produced 26 half-hour television programs for NET—National Educational Television, the precursor to PBS. Produced by KRMA, Channel Six in Denver, they were fed nationally to the nascent public broadcasting network, combining his seemingly offhand, colloquial approach to music, comedy and social history. “I fell for the turn-of-the-century era that spawned ragtime. I could meld music with manners and morals as the dormant history buff in my cluttered persona dug in that particular trove of American treasure.”

The Ragtime Era series, followed by the Turn of the Century series, were in syndication through the ’60s and are considered classics of the genre. Morath also appeared on a number of commercial television programs and was Arthur Godfrey’s regular guest on radio and TV.

Moving from Colorado to New York, Morath performed nationally at colleges and in nightclubs with his Original Rag Quartet. His off-Broadway one-man show Max Morath at the Turn of the Century was a hit—he spent seven weeks rehearsing his performance in Durango, Colorado. Similar productions followed—The Ragtime Years, Living a Ragtime Life, The Ragtime Man and more. His 1969 album, At the Turn of the Century, encapsulated the essence of his musical bits of nostalgia and helped commence the ‘70s ragtime revival. The 1992 album The Ragtime Man included his own composition “Cripple Creek Suite,” which captured the mood of the region’s gold rush days.

Morath earned a Master’s in American Studies from Columbia University and published works including Max Morath: The Road to Ragtime, an illustrated book detailing his traveling experiences. “Mr. Ragtime” retired from touring in 2007 and continued to be active as a lecturer and consultant. He died on June 19, 2024, at age 96.

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Paid subscribers, continue below the fold for a Max Morath mini-documentary from Colorado Music Experience.