Red Pepper Rag
Henry Lodge
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Browse piano sheets by Henry Lodge on Zen Virtual Piano. Thomas Henry Lodge was born in Lymansville, Rhode Island, to a British father, Edward Lodge, and a mother, Joanna Lynch, a Maryland native of Irish descent. In spite of seemingly non-musical parentage, he took well to the piano and found work after high school demonstrating and selling pianos. A job selling pianos kept him close to the instrument. In 1909 his Temptation Rag was published and quickly became a hit in the stores and on the vaudeville circuit, receiving accolades from the trades and the press and from his peers as well. A hit in the stores and on the vaudeville circuit suggests a tune that travelled from sheet music to the stage. By 1910 he was using the name Henry and was recorded as a musical director for a local vaudeville company, and in 1912 he moved his family from Rhode Island to New York City. After stints in bars and cabarets he landed a job as lesson pianist at the dance studio of the famous dancing duo Irene and Vernon Castle, and some of his 1914 dance numbers came out of that experience. He also played for vaudeville outfits and began writing more advanced ragtime, much more harmonically complex than his earlier work; one of his longest-lasting pieces from this period is the ragtime waltz Geraldine, followed two years later by the less successful Eveline: Geraldine’s Sister. A lesson pianist’s daily work and harmonically richer rags in the same years make a quiet contrast of the practical and the ambitious. Bars and cabarets followed by a dance studio mark three different settings for the same keyboard. After working free-lance for many years, usually through M. Witmark & Sons, he finally got a coveted contract with them in 1917, and in the summer of 1918 he worked in Atlantic City. Years of free-lance work before a coveted contract show a long road to a steady position. By 1920 he had incorporated Henry Lodge Photo Plays, shifting from composing toward writing movie scenarios, and in the early 1920s he worked with an orchestra in Palm Beach, Florida. Around 1928, when sound came to the movies, he followed the music and movie business to Hollywood, where the 1930 census recorded him as an author of fiction, and he died unexpectedly in Palm Beach just days after his 49th birthday. Cabarets, dance studios, vaudeville, movies and an orchestra in Palm Beach give his career an unusual number of stages for a composer.
Browse piano sheets by Henry Lodge on Zen Virtual Piano.
Thomas Henry Lodge was born in Lymansville, Rhode Island, to a British father, Edward Lodge, and a mother, Joanna Lynch, a Maryland native of Irish descent. In spite of seemingly non-musical parentage, he took well to the piano and found work after high school demonstrating and selling pianos. A job selling pianos kept him close to the instrument.
In 1909 his Temptation Rag was published and quickly became a hit in the stores and on the vaudeville circuit, receiving accolades from the trades and the press and from his peers as well. A hit in the stores and on the vaudeville circuit suggests a tune that travelled from sheet music to the stage.
By 1910 he was using the name Henry and was recorded as a musical director for a local vaudeville company, and in 1912 he moved his family from Rhode Island to New York City. After stints in bars and cabarets he landed a job as lesson pianist at the dance studio of the famous dancing duo Irene and Vernon Castle, and some of his 1914 dance numbers came out of that experience. He also played for vaudeville outfits and began writing more advanced ragtime, much more harmonically complex than his earlier work; one of his longest-lasting pieces from this period is the ragtime waltz Geraldine, followed two years later by the less successful Eveline: Geraldine’s Sister. A lesson pianist’s daily work and harmonically richer rags in the same years make a quiet contrast of the practical and the ambitious. Bars and cabarets followed by a dance studio mark three different settings for the same keyboard.
After working free-lance for many years, usually through M. Witmark & Sons, he finally got a coveted contract with them in 1917, and in the summer of 1918 he worked in Atlantic City. Years of free-lance work before a coveted contract show a long road to a steady position. By 1920 he had incorporated Henry Lodge Photo Plays, shifting from composing toward writing movie scenarios, and in the early 1920s he worked with an orchestra in Palm Beach, Florida. Around 1928, when sound came to the movies, he followed the music and movie business to Hollywood, where the 1930 census recorded him as an author of fiction, and he died unexpectedly in Palm Beach just days after his 49th birthday. Cabarets, dance studios, vaudeville, movies and an orchestra in Palm Beach give his career an unusual number of stages for a composer.
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Temptation Rag, published in 1909, which quickly became a hit in the stores and on the vaudeville circuit and received accolades from the trades, the press and his peers.
After stints in bars and cabarets, he became lesson pianist for the famous dancing duo Irene and Vernon Castle at their dance studio.
By 1920 he had incorporated Henry Lodge Photo Plays and was working on movie scenarios, and around 1928, when sound came to the movies, he followed the business to Hollywood.