Poetry Xtras » "Interview" by Jared Carter

In 1979 I had a summer job traveling around central Indiana and tape-recording interviews with elderly persons who claimed they could remember the Ragtime Era—the period right before World War I. When they were teenagers, they had been as excited by the music of Scott Joplin and Joseph Lamb as today's teenagers are excited by the music of Snoop Dog and Eminem. They could remember ragtime music well, and many of them could still play it. All had stories to tell.