Millie- A Thoroughly Modern Rag by Marc Moore (2022, Ragtime Piano)
5An original rag by Marc Moore (me), 2022, with some parts based on Thoroughly Modern Millie by Jimmy Van Heusen. As with a couple past rags, I found a digital recording was the easiest way to get a piano-roll-like recording true to the way I wanted it to sound. Links to sheet music and MIDI files below (though the key change seems to have made the sheet music a bit wonky...).
"They keep forgetting that this is 2022!" ...what, the line is 1922? Close enough. Thoroughly Modern Millie has always been one of my favorite musicals. It's not without its flaws... there are definitely some racial depictions that could use a solid rewrite. But especially as a ragtime/novelty/swing fan, it was right up my alley.
The musical basically follows a woman who moves to New York in 1922 to be a flapper and marry her boss for money, but who, despite all her attempts to convince herself otherwise, is really a sweet woman at heart who is not about that life and comes to find herself and love in a different way than she expected. In writing the melody for this rag, I tried to represent the back and forth between the dainty and sweet and the modern and flashy. #ragtime
Quite a few big-name ragtime composers had march-like rags named after women. Joplin had Cleopha, Lamb had Patricia, Fred Stone had Belinda. I consider Millie my contribution to this set.
If you enjoyed, check out my channel! I've written a few different ragtime songs, and hopefully there will be more to come.
(A note- in the spirit of most older ragtime being public domain today, Millie- A Thoroughly Modern Rag is released as Creative Commons License, allowing for use, recordings and renditions, etc with attribution. Feel entirely free to make a recording of this song, just please give credit if you do!)
LINK TO SHEET MUSIC:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RNpsPjZJbW1dL3Q2E1p848MnoIsa3Fha/view?usp=sharing (apologies, this one seems especially funky)
LINK TO MIDI FILE:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O76zamOQAB0yh-8XBCr3mQ3MvYgQv_NZ/view?usp=sharing