Dulcimer Rag: A Song History

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"Dulcimer Rag" is credited to Shelley Stevens herself in the song list of her Baker's Dozen #10: Ragtime And Honky Tonk, where it is set in DAD tuning.[1] Her original shares the book with rags and popular songs by Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin, Hughie Cannon and others; Fingers Of Steel publishes the collection of thirteen arrangements, each written out in both standard notation and dulcimer tablature.[1] A player of the instrument since 1984, Stevens has written many dulcimer books, made several albums both solo and with the band Sweetwater, and led festival workshops across the country.[2]

Ornate dark rosewood upright piano with carved legs and a sunburst fabric panel above the keyboard

Loud & Brothers, Upright Piano, rosewood veneer, bird's eye maple veneer and other materials, 1831. A piano from well before the ragtime era, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.

The sources consulted here do not say when she composed the tune or how it got its name.[1] According to Britannica, ragtime, the style named in the tune's title, led American popular music from about 1899 to 1917 and was most characteristically written for piano, setting a lively, off-beat right-hand melody against a steady left-hand pulse.[3]

Our book that contains the song "Dulcimer Rag"

Sources

  1. Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Baker's Dozen #10: Ragtime And Honky Tonk".
  2. DulcimerDownloads: "Shelley Stevens".
  3. Britannica: "Ragtime".
  4. Image: Loud & Brothers, Upright Piano, rosewood veneer, bird's eye maple veneer and other materials, 1831. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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