Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are
looking at a story that completely changed how
I view the modern music industry. Oh, yeah. It
really shifts your entire perspective. It does.
And if you are the kind of person who loves to
learn how things actually work behind the scenes,
but maybe you occasionally feel a little overwhelmed
by the sheer mountain of historical information
out there, you are in the exact right place.
Absolutely. We do the heavy lifting for you.
We find those forgotten nuggets of knowledge
and we bring them straight to you. And today
we are working from a single comprehensive encyclopedia
article that details the life of a man named
Percy Wenrich. Percy Wenrich. Yeah. You might
not know his name right off the bat, but his
story is the literal blueprint for the modern
music industry. It really is. Our mission today
is to uncover the fascinating forgotten journey
of the man they called the Joplin Kid. He was
this ragtime pioneer who soundtracked early 20th
century America. He figured out the mechanics
of a hit song long before the radio even existed,
and he lived a deeply moving personal and professional
love story. Okay, let's unpack this. It is a
phenomenal journey. And to really appreciate
it, I want you to imagine the backdrop of our
discussion shifting around you right now. Okay,
paint the picture. Picture an early 1900s music
shop. The walls are lined from floor to ceiling
with these brightly colored sheet music covers.
Like wallpaper almost. Exactly. And picture the
cacophony of a dozen different slightly out of
tune pianos drifting out of office windows onto
the bustling New York streets. Or imagine a vintage
vaudeville stage with the footlights glowing.
warm against heavy velvet curtains. I can see
it. This is the world we are stepping into. And
the reason this matters to you today is that
we tend to think of the pop star or the massive
music hit as a modern invention. Right. We think
of streaming algorithms and viral videos and
arena tours. Right. But Percy Wenrich's life
shows us the original foundational blueprint
for American pop music success. That is the part
that hooked me right away. So let's start at
the beginning. Percy Wenrich was born on January
23, 1880, in Joplin, Missouri. Joplin, Missouri.
Yeah, and his family dynamic is just great. It
wasn't some strict classical conservatory upbringing.
His mother was locally known as the Berry County
Pianist, and she gave him his first organ and
piano lessons. Very grassroots. Totally. Then,
as he got into his teenage years and started
composing his own original tunes, his father
supplied the lyrics. Wow. It was a total in -house
family production. But the landscape of entertainment
back then was so vastly different from today.
It was a completely different paradigm. You have
to remember in the 1880s and 1890s, if you wanted
music in your house, you had to make it yourself.
Right. The parlor piano was the entertainment
center of the American home. It was basically
the equivalent of the living room television
today. That makes sense. And what is so interesting
about Wenrich's early teenage compositions is
where they actually ended up being performed.
The source notes that some of his early songs
were used in the local political scene. Which
is wild. Yeah. His songs eulogize Democratic
stalwarts of the era, specifically Grover Cleveland
and William Jennings Bryan. These songs were
sung at political rallies and conventions by
impromptu glee clubs that were organized right
there on the spot. It's just wild to think about
teenagers. writing campaign songs. And just as
a quick aside for you listening, we're obviously
looking at this purely as a historical artifact.
Absolutely. We're not here to endorse 1890s political
platforms or take any left or right political
side. This was simply how local politics and
music intertwined at the time. We are just impartially
reporting the facts from the source text. Exactly.
It just shows how music was essentially the social
media of that era. That is a really great way
to put it. Before mass media, a political rally
was a a major social event. So a catchy tune
by a local teenager was the perfect vehicle to
spread a message. Yeah. It shows that even at
a young age, Wenrich instinctively understood
how to write a melody that people could easily
latch onto and sing together in a crowd. And
he was actively seeking out those crowds, too.
He joined a local minstrel group. Now, minstrel
shows were a very common, though obviously complex,
stepping stone in entertainment at the time.
But for Wenrich, That environment is where he
really began to learn about cakewalks and ragtime
melodies. And for listeners who might not be
deep into music history, it is worth defining
what ragtime actually was. Please do. Ragtime
was the rebellious, highly syncopated pop music
of its day. It broke the rules of traditional
European marches. It was bouncy. It was disruptive.
And teenagers like Wenrich just gravitated toward
it. Because he was this young prodigy playing
these new rhythms in Joblin. earned the nickname
the Joplin Kid. Which sounds like an outlaw.
It sounds exactly like a gunslinger, but he's
armed with a piano. Yeah. At just 17 years old,
he publishes his first musical work titled Van
Conu. Such a fancy name. Right. And in this great
display of self -deprecation, Wenrich himself
described it simply as a two -step with a fancy
title. Ah. A two -step being a popular dance
style at the time, but Missouri could only hold
him for so long. By 1901, the ambition really
kicks in, and he leaves for Chicago to attend
the Chicago Musical College. And the name running
that college gives us a sense of the theatrical
world he was entering. It was run by Florence
Ziegfeld, Sr. Oh, wow. Yeah. He was the father
of the man who would go on to invent the modern
Broadway spectacle with the Ziegfeld Follies.
So Wenrich is studying in this highly theatrical
environment. But he still has to pay his rent.
Exactly. He gets a job working as a melody writer
for the McKinley Music Company. And even more
importantly, he gets a job at Gimbel's department
store. standing at a counter selling sheet music
directly to the public. Wait, I want to pause
on this because I was trying to wrap my head
around it earlier. If the radio didn't exist
yet, how did a customer at Gimble's even know
what a piece of sheet music sounded like before
they bought it? That is the million -dollar quotient
of the era, and it is where the song plugger
comes in. The song plugger. Yeah. At department
stores or music shops, there would literally
be a piano right there on the sales floor. A
customer would walk in, look at the brightly
colored covers, which, by the way, were designed
to be as eye -catching as a YouTube thumbnail
today, and they would say, play this one for
me. The plugger would sit down and play the tune.
If it was catchy, the customer bought the paper.
So Wenrich is the guy playing the piano and just
watching the customer's face. What's fascinating
here is how that job at Gimbels functioned as
the ultimate market research. It is the 1901
equivalent of an artist studying their Spotify
backend analytics to see exactly when listeners
skip a track. That is such a good comparison.
He is standing there day in and day out observing
which covers catch the eye, which melodies prompt
a customer to reach for their wallet, and which
ones just fall flat. He has a frontline, unfiltered
view of consumer demand. And that data collection
totally pays off. In 1903, he starts writing
his own ragtime works, starting with Ashy Africa.
Right. He follows it up with a string of them
over the next few years. And the big breakthrough
comes in 1907 with an instrumental rag titled
The Smiler. The Smiler. It becomes his best -selling
rag without lyrics. He's officially on the map.
But as successful as he is becoming, the story
takes its absolute most important turn when he
meets his other half. Yes, the turning point
of his entire life, both personally and professionally.
In 1905, Wenrich meets a vaudeville performer
named Dolly Connolly. They meet in 1905, and
by July of 1906, they are married. That was fast.
It was. And they don't just settle down. They
become this touring powerhouse duo. They spent
over 15 years on the road together. He wrote
some of his biggest hit songs. specifically for
Dolly to perform. And they were massive hits.
In 1907, he writes a song called Come Be My Rainbow,
and it explodes. It sells over a million copies
of physical sheet music. Let's put that number
into perspective for a second. Selling a million
copies of sheet music means there were a million
pianos in a million parlors across the country
where people were actively taking the time to
sit down and play his music. It is a staggering
amount of effort for the consumer. It represents
a massive cultural footprint, and the financial
windfall from that success allowed Percy and
Dolly to make the ultimate leap. Around 1909,
they pack up and move to the center of the musical
universe, New York City. Tin Pan Alley. Specifically
Tin Pan Alley. Which was basically just a couple
of city blocks where all the music publishers
were crammed together. And New York is where
his pen just catches fire. He writes, put on
your old gray bonnet. He writes that Alamo rag.
And then we get to this incredible anecdote.
Oh, this is my favorite part. It is the origin
story of the classic standard Moonlight Bay.
I want to read how Wenrich described this happening
in Atlantic City, New Jersey because it is legendary.
Go for it. He says it was a swell night with
the moon streaming over the ocean. Just as I
ordered another beer, I thought I heard some
guy ask the orchestra to play a piece called
Moonlight Bay. I was mistaken. They hadn't requested
it for the reason there was no such song, but
I got to thinking what a swell title it would
make and went home to work it. He essentially
misheard a guy while drinking a beer, realized
the song didn't exist, and just willed an American
classic into existence. Exactly. He just made
it up on the spot. And if we connect this back
to his time at Gimbels, it demonstrates his finely
tuned instinct for popular culture. He didn't
agonize over a complex classical theme. Moonlight
Bay is evocative. It paints a picture instantly.
All right, it tells a story before you even hear
the notes. He knew that a swell title, as he
called it, was half the battle in selling a piece
of sheet music on a crowded shelf. He took a
phantom request and turned it into a standard
that would be sung for decades. And he had a
habit of doing that. In 1911, he wrote Red Rose
Rag for Dolly with lyrics by Edward Madden. That
song became so iconic that the legendary actor
and comedian George Burns used it in his routine
throughout his entire career. Then around 1914,
while working at Leo Feist Publishing, he writes,
When you wore a tulip and I wore a big red rose,
that one sold over two million copies. Two million.
Two million. They were the defining power couple
of the vaudeville circuit. But what did that
life actually look like on a day -to -day basis?
Vaudeville was grueling. It was a network of
theaters across the country offering variety
entertainment. For a duo like Percy and Dolly,
it meant living out of trunks, taking long train
rides between cities, staying in theatrical boarding
houses, and often performing three or four shows
a single day. That is exhausting just thinking
about it. A 1916 review from the Toronto World
talks about how the audience absolutely insisted
upon encores from them. You can imagine the exhaustion,
but also the thrill of having that kind of direct,
immediate connection with an audience. As they
moved into the 1920s, they embedded themselves
deeper into the New York theatrical scene. They
moved to the Lambs Club in Manhattan, which is
a very prestigious theatrical club. It's very
prestigious. When Rich started shifting his focus
slightly toward writing full musicals. There
is a great example of this with a show he wrote
with Raymond Peck initially called Made to Love.
It didn't do very well at first. Right, it flopped.
But rather than give up, they completely retooled
it. They wrote a new story, kept the best songs
cast Dolly as the star, and renamed it... The
Right Girl. Which is a real testament to his
work ethic. In the theater business, you either
adapt or you disappear. And the adaptation totally
worked. The New York Times reviewed it in March
of 1921, noting that his score had several high
spots. The reviewers specifically pointed out
that one of the songs, Love's Little Journey,
earned half a dozen encores in a single night.
Six encores. Think about the physical stamina
that requires from Dolly on stage singing the
same number six times in a row because the crowd
simply won't stop clapping. It is incredible.
But as we know, the roaring 20s eventually gave
way to the 30s and the entertainment landscape
shifted again. Rapidly. Vaudeville was dying
out as talking motion pictures and household
radios took over. People didn't need to go to
a local theater to hear a new song anymore. It
was broadcast right into their living room. So
what does this all mean for a guy who made his
living on sheet music and live theater? It meant
he had to pivot again. When the traditional vaudeville
circuits faded, he and several colleagues formed
a touring review called Songwriters on Parade.
That is clever. Between 1931 and 1940, they toured
the eastern seaboard. It was a brilliant marketing
move to package the writers behind the hits as
the stars themselves. He and Dolly also adapted
to the new technology, appearing briefly on Weef
Radio in New York. He really surfed the waves
of changing technology for decades. He did. But
eventually, the road life comes to an end. In
the early 1930s, Percy and Dolly retired from
touring, moving to California in 1934. He still
had some magic left, though, publishing his last
truly memorable song, Sail Along Silvery Moon,
in 1937. A great track. It is. But as we look
at the final chapters of this source text, the
tone softens considerably and the story takes
a tragic turn. It does. Behind the bright lights
and the million -selling upbeat rags, there was
a profound personal struggle. Yeah. The article
notes that in 1947, due to severe mental health
deterioration, Wenrich had to commit his beloved
Dolly to a sanatorium. A 1950 census lists her
as a patient in the Central Islet Mental Hospital
in New York. That is so tough. She remained in
care for the rest of her life, outliving Percy
and eventually passing away in 1965. It is a
stark contrast to their vibrant public life on
stage and a deeply heartbreaking end to a decades
-long romance. It is heartbreaking. Yeah. But
even amidst that personal sadness in his later
years, Percy did get to see a massive revival
of his life's work. He did. In 1951, his popularity
exploded all over again because Warner Brothers
released a major Hollywood film starring Doris
Day and the title of the film, On Moonlight Bay.
The irony is just wonderful. The song, born from
a misheard beer order in New Jersey, becomes
the title of a Doris Day Hollywood film. Right.
The studio treated this as a massive tribute
to Wenrich. They premiered the film in his hometown
of Joplin, Missouri, in July of 1951. The mayor
even issued a proclamation making his old hit,
Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet, the official city
song. Unfortunately, Wenrich was too ill to attend
the premiere himself. But his community back
in New York made sure he knew his legacy was
secure. Oh, the Lamb's Club letter. Yes. I have
to read this quote from the 1951 Lamb's Club
newsletter. They wrote, This bebop reefer happy
dust era? Such a phrase. That phrasing paints
such a vivid picture of how the older generation
of Tin Pan Alley writers viewed the jazz and
early rock and roll scenes of the 1950s, they
were clearly a little mystified by it. Very much
so. But beneath that colorful language, the core
message is deep respect. They recognize that
he had maintained his humanity and his humility
through massive shifts in the industry. Wenrich
passed away in New York City the very next year
in 1952 at the age of 72. He was brought back
home and buried in Joplin, Missouri. What a full
circle. From playing parlor pianos in Missouri
to selling millions of physical records in New
York and finally resting back where it all started.
The Journey of the Joplin Kid perfectly encapsulates
the evolution of American entertainment. It really
does. And to bring this directly back to you
listening, the incredible takeaway here is about
the endurance of a great idea. Yes. The mediums
of music consumption will always change. Wenrich
watched it go from sheet music to radio to film.
Today, you are watching it go from physical media
to digital downloads to streaming platforms.
And who knows what is next? Exactly. The technology
is just the delivery system. The power of a catchy
melody, the emotional resonance of a lyric, and
the sheer hook of a swell title remains absolute.
That is the exact same human response that connected
a customer buying the Smiler at Gimble's department
store over a century ago to you listening to
your favorite playlist today. The technology
changes, but the human ear doesn't. Spot on.
Now, as we wrap up, we always like to leave you
with a little something extra to think about
on your own. This raises an important question
based on a tiny, easily missed detail right at
the very end of our source text. The article
mentions that Percy Wenrich was a founding member
of the American Society of Composers, Authors
and Publishers, better known today as ASCAP.
Right. Think about how vastly different the music
industry was back when an artist's main revenue
was selling physical pieces of paper. How does
the protection of artists' rights, their intellectual
property and their royalties, which Wenrich championed
by helping found ASCAP, continue to shape the
very music you listen to today? That is a great
question. What would modern music even look like
if pioneers like Wenrich hadn't fought to organize
those legal protections when the industry was
still in its infancy? The guy didn't just write
the hits. He helped build the legal architecture
that protects the people writing the hits today.
Thank you so much for joining us for this deep
dive into the life of the Joplin kid. Keep asking
questions, keep looking for the stories behind
the songs, and most importantly, stay curious.
We will see you next time.