File:"Foxy Grandpa", by L.E. Colburn (1905).oga

"Foxy Grandpa" was a popular comic strip which started in 1900. The traditional meaning of the word foxy is clever, as in "clever like a fox". A schottische in the American sense is a type of piece played in polite country dancing. I don't transcribe many schottisches unless I find one that's exceptionally nice like this one. And I unwittingly stumbled into pieces of history here that I wasn't expecting.

This score was published in 1907 by Central Music Publishing in Kansas City, Missouri. Leroy Earl Colburn was a Kansas City musician who wrote at least five published compositions. This score was originally published in 1905 by Dwight H. Woolf in Kansas City. But it appears that publishing this piece was not Woolf's only ambition. According to a court ruling from December 1905, Colburn accused Woolf of stealing the rights to this composition. Woolf printed up 3,500 copies of "Foxy Grandpa" and sold them "at a value of 8 cents per copy, one half of which is due and oweing to plaintiff, that is to say the sum of Two Hundred Forty Dollars ($240.00)..." The judge ruled in Colburn's favor and ordered Woolf, who didn't show up to court that day, to pay Colburn $240 plus costs. Colburn had paid Woolf to obtain a copyright for the score, which Woolf did, but Woolf failed to pay Colburn anything from the proceeds of the sale of the sheet music. According to research done by Musescore's erlingl, Woolf continued to refuse to pay up and Colburn sued him a second time, in 1911. There is no record of whether Woolf ever did pay up.

A record of the 1905 court case can be read by downloading this ebook and going to page 661 "Colburn v. Wolf": https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=6dRyHX3c6lcC&rdid=book-6dRyHX3c6lcC&rdot=1.

Dwight H. Woolf made another splash in history. In 1909, described as a "107 pound music publisher" and in ill health, he and his wife started doing long-distance walking, a habit that made both of them somewhat famous. Accompanied by their dog and horse, they hiked thousands of miles to different parts of the United States and had many adventures. They became known as "The Walking Woolfs". They even published a book, "Tramping and Camping" that sold well. Here's a link to some pictures and descriptions by the Kansas Historical Society: https://www.kshs.org/index.php?url=km/items/view/440207

Original score source is normally from the University of Missouri Kansas City Collection but the collection is currently unavailable while they overhaul it, can also be found at this link: https://www.ceder.net/piano/viewsingle.php?Id=2840&SqlId=845746&style=thumb

This is a reproduction of the original score from 1907. I had to add missing accidentals in a number of places.

My YouTube channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/@compukats/featured

1. ragtime #ragtimepiano #schottische