No two composers have benefited more from the current ragtime revival than those legendary figures Scott Joplin and Eubie Blake. Joplin, who died in 1917, has been championed largely by such "legitimate" pianists as Joshua Rifkin and William Bolcom, as well as Dancer-Stage Director Katherine Dunham, who mounted Joplin's opera Treemonisha in Atlanta last February. Blake's champion? Why, Eubie himself.
Though Blake will be 90 in February, he played in Manhattan's Lincoln Center last week as though he were a youthful 70. Prancing out on only slightly creaky legs, he clasped his hands over...
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