Sold Date: May 11, 2019
Start Date: May 4, 2019
Final Price: $20.00 (USD)
Bid Count: 1
Seller Feedback: 506
Buyer Feedback: 8

(This week is HOT PIANO week, with multiple solo offerings by ART TATUM, JELLY ROLL MORTON, FATS WALLER and other titans of the keyboard. Be sure to check out my other listings!)  

MIKE BERNARD was a member of the generation of Virtuoso Ragtime Pianists who came up in the years after 1900, who had one ear tuned to Liszt and Busoni, the other to Scott Joplin and Irving Berlin. Bernard's technique was, like Art Tatum's, inexplicable.  He gives out with a virtual fireworks display on every record.  Actively touring in Vaudeville after 1910, he would challenge any pianist to best him, which they NEVER could, which earned for Mike the title "Ragtime King of the World"!  

Bernard was - unfortunately! - just about the ONLY pianist of his stripe to make records. Perhaps his Vaudeville fame, added to his technique, made him a viable commodity on record.  He was a success in show business with no singing or clowning, using only his unbelievable hands. Legendary virtuosi like Willie "One Leg" Joseph have to be represented by Bernard.   

Mike did most of his recording in 1912-13; This one is the outlier, from 1918 and World War I. He plays his own composition, "BLAZE AWAY" march; and on the flip side, "THEY WERE ALL OUT OF STEP BUT JIM." A very Irving Berlin medley, introducing: "When Alexander Takes his Ragtime Band to France," and "Someone Else May Be There When I'm Gone."  

This original 1918 Columbia A2577 is in respectable EE- condition.  

These records come from my private collection, which I have been accumulating since 1967, and now am downsizing!  My highest priority in these eBay auctions is to give you the best possible idea of a record’s true condition and aesthetic value.  I always post at least four clear images, showing the record fore and aft, a close-up of the label, and the whole disc, warts and all.  If my purple prose won’t cut it, the pictures will!  Shipping is done with expert care. Your record will brave Media Mail in a stout corregated box, between four sheets of cardboard and a couple of “packers.”  I hope you are amused by these descriptions, and by the quality of service being offered.