Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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MORATH, Max

(b Max Edward Morath, 1 October 1926, Colorado Springs CO; d 19 June 2023) Pianist, a ragtime revivalist years before a Scott Joplin rag was used in the film The Sting '73. His mother played piano in silent cinemas. He obtained a degree in English from Colorado College, studied piano and composition and worked in summer stock theatre; in 1959 he played piano for dramas in Cripple Creek.

He wrote and performed in two National Educational Television series: The Ragtime Era '59-60 and Turn Of The Century '61-2, for total of aound 25 half-hour programs. NET was the predecessor of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The programs were produced at KRMA-TV in Denver, the first public TV station to have its own studio, while others made their programs in rented facilities. NET programs were required to have educational value; the budget for Morath's programs included a consultant from Colorado College. Morath showed that educational TV could be fun, covering the culture of the time, including musical comedy and Tin Pan Alley. He credited Joplin, whose father had been born a slave, as the most successful composer in ragtime. The series were so successful that commercial stations purchased the right to broadcast them. They were good televison, Morath said years later, 'And that was new to educational broadcasting.' 

He toured the USA with shows Ragtime Revisited '64-7, Max Morath At The Turn Of The Century (after a four-month off-Broadway run), etc; another touring show Living A Ragtime Life in the late '80s was 'the nearest thing to a high-class vaudeville show that exists in this country' according to UPI (there was a recording on Solo Art). A complete scholar of the music and its times, Morath edited six collections of ragtime music for publication, and made more than 30 albums, recording for Epic, New World Records, and Vanguard, albums including The Great American Piano Bench, two-disc sets Plays Ragtime and Best Of Scott Joplin And Others, and on RCA with These Charming People and with William Bolcom and Joan Morris in More Rodgers And Hart, with Morris on Till The Clouds Roll By (songs with words by P. G. Wodehouse).