THE LADY FROM REIMS

Vocals: Colin Meloy
Piano: Michael Johnson
Drums: Derrick Trost
Bass: Nate Halloran
Trumpet: Cory Gray

Recorded in 2002 at Type Foundry in Portland, OR. Engineered and mixed by Adam Selzer. Mastered by Michael Johnson and Chad Crouch.

We now direct you to turn-of-the-century America, where in the climate of great hits like “After The Ball,” an unstoppable movement in the black world led by performer-writers like Scott Joplin, Ben Harney, Tony Jackson, James Scott, and countless nameless and forgotten “men of color” was taking hold. You will find the exciting drive of ragtime in “The Lady From Riems.” At the start of World War I, a young performer-writer named Albus White and several other American blacks were called to the Allied cause and stationed in Marseille, France. There, in the smoky cafes of that coastal town, White finished his ambitious ragtime operetta Le Danse Oblique. Set in the Toulons district of the Ville De Bollinger in Montmarte, not far from Riems, Danse is the story of Percy De Gaston, a tailor who falls madly in love with a fascinating and mysterious lady. The scene in which “Lady” appears finds Gaston in a pub in Marseille, where a group of rowdy soldiers are entertaining each other with stories and songs. One soldier stands up and relates the legend of a prostitute who, throughout the most privileged upper class circles was known only as the Lady From Riems. She would travel all over France to perform her services for high-class gentlemen, who would summon her through the most secretive of means. Gaston, resolved to summon her, makes for her a lovely maudlin gown with his address stitched secretly into the lapel. Probably on racial grounds, but also because White’s French was deplorable, every major opera house rejected Danse and it was never performed in France. In 1919, however, a publisher friend of White’s back in the States included “The Lady From Riems” in a volume of ragtime classics, where it enjoyed a place among such classics as "Tweedle Dee Rag."