The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-10-13

BoiIers-EngIand's Great Composer.
 Time was when 'coon songs," whether of the old plantation variety or the modern ragtime kind, were written by white men, but a great change has come about in the last few years. The negro composer has now almost monopoly of ragtime and is reaching out into more classical work, and there has hardly been a musical play in the last two or three years which hasn't contained one or more songs by negroes.
 Some of this work is done by negro sketch teams, who write their own songs on the road, make them popular and collect the royalties when they are published. But most Of it comes from the negro quarter of New York, where dozen composers make their head quarters. :..-.@
 Most of these men are musicians of education and high musical ideals. If pinned down to it, they admit that they write ragtime not so much for the love of the thing as because 1t pays.
 Take Cole and the Johnson brothers, for example. They have on their list a long string of ragtime successes. Yet, of the three authors two are universi- ty men-one of them a master of arts
 and the third is a finished student of music.
 The Johnson brothers come from Florida. Sons of Baptist minister, they entered Atlanta university to work their way through. Rosamond Johnson had the musical bee in his. bonnet, so he cut loose after a time and entered the New England Conser- vatory of Music, where he studied for three years.
 James Johnson stayed with his books and was graduated with honors. He became principal of the CoIored High school at Jacksonville, Fla, and in his odd moments he wrote for vari- ous publications, and has had poems and short stories in the big magazines.
 Cole was also at Atlanta university, where in the college glee club he learned that he had talent for the stage He drifted into a minstrel show, and from there into the Black Patti Troubadours All that time he had been struggling with composition, but he was handi- capped by lack of technical knowledge.
 One day in Boston he ran against Rosamond Johnson, who had decided that he had had about enough of the Conservatory. Together they patched up a song or two, threw an act together, and played the vaudeville circuit for two or three years. Then, one summer, Rosamond Johnson went south for va cation and found his brother James working on the libretto of comic op- era.
 Rosamond liked the idea and set mu- sic to it. James became so enthusiastic that he threw up his job and came to New York with the manuscript under his arm.
 We didn't sell it. says James John son. at least not then; we have been selling it in stove lengths ever since. We've got the libretto yet, and we're thinking of putting in a new set of songs and trying again"
 Now Cole and the Johnson brothers have bank account of which wonder ful stories are told in the negro quar- ter. They are taking care of their pa- rents, and two Johnson sisters are in college now, all on the proceeds of rag time.
 At its commencement last June, Att lanta university conferred upon James Johnson the honorary degree of Master of Arts. This was not in recognition of his achievement in ragtime, but of his articles in the negro publications. Last year he entered Columbia university, where he is working for Ph. D. degree in comparative literature.
 Another negro composer is Will Mari on Cook, who has been in London with ''In Dahomey," for which he wrote most of the songs. He comes from Washington. His father was a prosper ous man. The boy showed an early bent for music and was given a thor ough education in it. He studied the violin and harmony under Dvorak, and finished off with course under Joa- cllin.
 Then, one day, his father went broke. Thrown on his own resources, the youngster began to write ragtime. He has gone in for whole scores rather than single songs. The scores Of 'The Southerners, most of the songs in The Casino Girl'' and aChIorinda, or the Or igin of the Cakewalk,' ? are his. He is another composer who has made it pay.
 On the other extreme is Al Johns, who hasn't any musical education at all, but a wonderful memory and ear. He composes his songs, gets them fixed in his head, and then plays them off to some other musician, who puts the score on paper While RosamonG John son, the scholarly musician, writes rag time, Johns, the natural musician, goes in for the classical. His reputation rests mostly on ballads, like s'The Af- terwhile'' and "The Darling of My Dreams" Once, needing the money, he burst into ragtime and made more mon- ey than he ever got from all his ballads with "Go Way Back and Sit Down."
 Williams and Walker are better known as actors and managers than as composers, but they write part of the music for their own songs. Tn that same class of actor-composers is Ernest Hogan, who set the whole country sing ing his "All Coons Look Alike to Me" He is also responsible for "The Phre- nologist Coon"
 Irving Jones, in the same class, wrote aGet Your Moneys Worth and "I'm Livin' Easy" and Shepard Ed nlonds is responsible for I'm Goin' to Tdx,a A AnUhovr Till Die" Smith and