A term, used particularly in the 1920s, that was applied to a variety of piano music based on ragtime. Novelty piano music drew on sources as diverse as popular dance music, folk ragtime and the music of the Impressionists (especially in its use of the whole-tone scale and the parallel 4th). Its most recognizable unifying feature was the ‘novelty break’ – a stylized interruption of the melody and texture. This was often based on the motif of a tritone resolving onto a 3rd, although whole-tone passages and various figures used by dance orchestras and jazz bands of the 1920s were also employed. The novelty style was influenced by piano-roll arrangements, and many works demanded considerable pianistic skill; indeed, their composers were among the most adept pianists in the popular field.
The word ‘novelty’ was used in association with various rags including Scott Joplin’s Euphonic Sounds: a Syncopated Novelty (1909), but it was with the release on piano roll of Zez Confrey’s My Pet in 1918 (published in 1921) that the identity of novelty piano was established. In such works as Kitten on the Keys (published in 1921, though released earlier on piano roll), You Tell ’em Ivories (1921), Greenwich Witch (1921), Poor Buttermilk (1921), Coaxing the Piano (1922) and Nickel in the Slot (1923) Confrey explored familiar territory with an inventiveness that places him among America’s most imaginative composers. Another exponent was Roy Bargy, whose Sunshine Caper, Jim Jams and Pianoflage all appeared in 1922. In New York Rube Bloom, Arthur Schutt and Phil Ohman made contributions to the genre. Billy Mayerl adopted the style successfully and wrote novelties which are still played.
With the resurgence of ragtime in the 1950s the novelty style was revived to some degree. But the appearance in 1950 of the influential ragtime history They All Played Ragtime by Blesh and Janis initiated an attitude of dismissing novelty piano as frivolous and ‘inauthentic’. The efforts of David Jasen, however, have fostered a more objective view of the style.
R. Blesh and H. Janis: They All Played Ragtime (New York, 1950, rev. 4/1971)
E.A. Berlin: Ragtime: a Musical and Cultural History (Berkeley, 1980/R)
D.A. Jasen: ‘Zez Confrey: Genius Supreme’, Zez Confrey Ragtime, Novelty and Jazz Piano Solos, ed. R.S. Schiff (New York, 1982)
R. Riddle: ‘Novelty Piano Music’, Ragtime: its History, Composers, and Music, ed. J.E. Hasse (New York, 1985), 285–93
DAVID THOMAS ROBERTS/R