Intermediate
Peroxide
3:11
Browse 2 Sheets
Sort:
Song library
Browse piano sheets by C. L. Woolsey on Zen Virtual Piano. Dr. Calvin Lee Woolsey was born on 26 December 1883 and raised in Tinney Grove, Missouri, about three miles south of Braymer, and as of the 1900 census he was recorded as a teacher at age 16. He entered the University of Missouri at Columbia in mid-1902 at age 18, received a medical degree, did post-graduate work at Harvard Medical School and then returned to Braymer. A teenager recorded as a teacher and later a doctor with Harvard post-graduate work show an education pursued in stages. He had a brief flash of success as a ragtime composer, turning out six numbers from late 1909 through 1911. He self-published his works, then sold the copyright for Funny Bones and Medic Rag to the large publisher Jerome H. Remick, and the rest of his works came out under the C.L. Woolsey Music Company in Braymer. Giving up two copyrights to a large publisher while keeping the rest at home suggests a composer weighing reach against control. He gave many of his tunes medical titles such as “Medic Rag” and “Funny Bones,” calling himself thereafter Dr Funny Bone, and while not all the titles were medically related, they all showed some wit and creativity. A doctor who gave his rags medical titles brought his profession into his music. In 1913 he moved west to St. Joseph, Missouri, and went to work as an assistant physician at Missouri State Hospital No. 2. A state hospital and a ragtime publishing house belong to two different worlds that he moved between. He was inducted into the Army Medical Corps on 11 September 1917, and it appears that in the end he did not go to France but ended up at Camp Kearney near San Diego, California, from where he submitted and copyrighted his final composition, a waltz titled Hearts Across the Sea, in February 1918. A composition copyrighted from an army camp can be read as music still being written alongside military duties. After returning to Braymer he spent the rest of his life there as a general practitioner. He had many other interests, including cooking and carpentry, and in the mid-1920s he became fascinated with radio and assembled receivers from components; in 1934 he was elected vice president of the Caldwell-Livingston County Medical Society. Cooking, carpentry and radio receivers suggest a man whose hands were seldom idle. His Missouri folk rags with their wry wit saw a rebirth in the 1970s and are still played more than a century after they were composed. A short ragtime career and a long medical one sit side by side in his story.
Browse piano sheets by C. L. Woolsey on Zen Virtual Piano.
Dr. Calvin Lee Woolsey was born on 26 December 1883 and raised in Tinney Grove, Missouri, about three miles south of Braymer, and as of the 1900 census he was recorded as a teacher at age 16. He entered the University of Missouri at Columbia in mid-1902 at age 18, received a medical degree, did post-graduate work at Harvard Medical School and then returned to Braymer. A teenager recorded as a teacher and later a doctor with Harvard post-graduate work show an education pursued in stages.
He had a brief flash of success as a ragtime composer, turning out six numbers from late 1909 through 1911. He self-published his works, then sold the copyright for Funny Bones and Medic Rag to the large publisher Jerome H. Remick, and the rest of his works came out under the C.L. Woolsey Music Company in Braymer. Giving up two copyrights to a large publisher while keeping the rest at home suggests a composer weighing reach against control. He gave many of his tunes medical titles such as “Medic Rag” and “Funny Bones,” calling himself thereafter Dr Funny Bone, and while not all the titles were medically related, they all showed some wit and creativity. A doctor who gave his rags medical titles brought his profession into his music.
In 1913 he moved west to St. Joseph, Missouri, and went to work as an assistant physician at Missouri State Hospital No. 2. A state hospital and a ragtime publishing house belong to two different worlds that he moved between. He was inducted into the Army Medical Corps on 11 September 1917, and it appears that in the end he did not go to France but ended up at Camp Kearney near San Diego, California, from where he submitted and copyrighted his final composition, a waltz titled Hearts Across the Sea, in February 1918. A composition copyrighted from an army camp can be read as music still being written alongside military duties.
After returning to Braymer he spent the rest of his life there as a general practitioner. He had many other interests, including cooking and carpentry, and in the mid-1920s he became fascinated with radio and assembled receivers from components; in 1934 he was elected vice president of the Caldwell-Livingston County Medical Society. Cooking, carpentry and radio receivers suggest a man whose hands were seldom idle. His Missouri folk rags with their wry wit saw a rebirth in the 1970s and are still played more than a century after they were composed. A short ragtime career and a long medical one sit side by side in his story.
Search the library
Common questions
Dr. Calvin Lee Woolsey (1883–1946), a Missouri physician who had a brief flash of success as a ragtime composer, turning out six numbers from late 1909 through 1911.
Funny Bones and Medic Rag, whose copyright he sold to Jerome H. Remick, along with other tunes with medical titles; he called himself Dr Funny Bone thereafter.
The waltz Hearts Across the Sea, submitted and copyrighted in February 1918 from Camp Kearney near San Diego, California.