The Smoky Topaz
Grace M. Bolen
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Browse piano sheets by Grace M. Bolen on Zen Virtual Piano. Grace M. Bolen was the oldest of two girls and two boys born in Kansas City, Missouri, to James Addison Bolen and Frances “Fannie” Mary Carter, and by the early 1890s the family was fairly well off, her father running Bolen Coal in Kansas City. The family was notable enough that she made the social pages of the Kansas City Journal and the Saint Louis Republic as early as age 14, often helping to entertain at parties. Society-page appearances and first composition submissions arriving around the same age make her early life public in two ways. Her first march, The Fair, was released by the noted publisher Carl Hoffman when she was 14 or 15, with two more appearing the following year; her march and two-step The Black Diamond is dated 1899. The 1900 census showed her still at school, so she had not declared herself a musician or composer even with compositions in print. Compositions in print while still recorded as a schoolgirl suggest how early the music came and how little it was treated as a profession. Her most famous piece, Smoky Topaz, was published in 1901 by Charles Daniels, also known as Neil Morét, and Albert Russell, two former clerks of the Hoffman publishing house who had set up shop next door to their former boss. When Whitney-Warner bought the Hoffman and Daniels & Russell catalogs in 1903, Smoky Topaz was reprinted under the Jerome H. Remick logo. It is a gentle piece that evokes elements of both cakewalks and ragtime, and it is still frequently played by ragtime artists in the 21st century. A piece with elements of both cakewalks and ragtime can be read as sitting between two styles. A piece reprinted in 1903 and still played by ragtime artists today can be read as a work that outlasted its first appearance. In the early 1950s she moved to Kilgore, Texas, with her daughter, and in 1956 to nearby Longview, Texas, and she taught piano and voice in both places. Those who knew her affectionately called her “Mama Grace,” and she had taught piano and voice in Longview for some twenty years. A composer of teenage marches who later taught piano and voice in Texas shows music running through different stages of her life.
Browse piano sheets by Grace M. Bolen on Zen Virtual Piano.
Grace M. Bolen was the oldest of two girls and two boys born in Kansas City, Missouri, to James Addison Bolen and Frances “Fannie” Mary Carter, and by the early 1890s the family was fairly well off, her father running Bolen Coal in Kansas City. The family was notable enough that she made the social pages of the Kansas City Journal and the Saint Louis Republic as early as age 14, often helping to entertain at parties. Society-page appearances and first composition submissions arriving around the same age make her early life public in two ways.
Her first march, The Fair, was released by the noted publisher Carl Hoffman when she was 14 or 15, with two more appearing the following year; her march and two-step The Black Diamond is dated 1899. The 1900 census showed her still at school, so she had not declared herself a musician or composer even with compositions in print. Compositions in print while still recorded as a schoolgirl suggest how early the music came and how little it was treated as a profession.
Her most famous piece, Smoky Topaz, was published in 1901 by Charles Daniels, also known as Neil Morét, and Albert Russell, two former clerks of the Hoffman publishing house who had set up shop next door to their former boss. When Whitney-Warner bought the Hoffman and Daniels & Russell catalogs in 1903, Smoky Topaz was reprinted under the Jerome H. Remick logo. It is a gentle piece that evokes elements of both cakewalks and ragtime, and it is still frequently played by ragtime artists in the 21st century. A piece with elements of both cakewalks and ragtime can be read as sitting between two styles. A piece reprinted in 1903 and still played by ragtime artists today can be read as a work that outlasted its first appearance.
In the early 1950s she moved to Kilgore, Texas, with her daughter, and in 1956 to nearby Longview, Texas, and she taught piano and voice in both places. Those who knew her affectionately called her “Mama Grace,” and she had taught piano and voice in Longview for some twenty years. A composer of teenage marches who later taught piano and voice in Texas shows music running through different stages of her life.
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Grace M. Bolen
Grace M. Bolen
Common questions
Her first march, The Fair, was released by the noted publisher Carl Hoffman when she was 14 or 15, with two more appearing the following year.
Smoky Topaz, published in 1901 by Charles Daniels and Albert Russell, a gentle piece evoking elements of both cakewalks and ragtime that ragtime artists still frequently play in the 21st century.
She moved to Texas, first to Kilgore and then in 1956 to Longview, where she taught piano and voice and was affectionately known as “Mama Grace.”