Biography

[roviLink="MN0000303166"]Charles Luckeyth "Luckey" Roberts was a transcendently gifted pianist of the "San Juan Hill" ragtime school and a composer of both popular and classical material. Born in Philadelphia and a lifelong Quaker and teetotaler, [roviLink="MN0000303166"]Roberts began to play the rent parties in Harlem around 1908 and was often the man to beat in cutting contests; the astounding virtuosity of his 1908 rag [roviLink="MC"]Nothin' demonstrates that there couldn't have been many players in San Juan Hill expecting to win against [roviLink="MN0000303166"]Roberts. He began to publish his rags in 1909, starting with [roviLink="MC"]The African 400 (An Educated Rag), recorded that year by [roviLink="MN0000932442"]Arthur Pryor; [roviLink="MN0000303166"]Roberts' most famous rag, [roviLink="MC"]Pork and Beans, appeared in 1913. [roviLink="MN0000303166"]Luckey Roberts made his first recordings for Columbia in 1916, including his well-known blues-styled rag [roviLink="MC"]Railroad Man, but the records were never released. In the 1920s, he can be heard leading the orchestra on records by comic [roviLink="MN0001636149"]Charles Hunter and backing up the radio comedy team of Moran and Mack, "The Two Black Crows"; [roviLink="MN0000303166"]Roberts also performed on their network radio show as accompanist. On such records, [roviLink="MN0000303166"]Roberts sometimes employed a theme he developed for vaudeville shows around 1923 called "Complainin'"; altogether, [roviLink="MN0000303166"]Roberts contributed numbers to some 23 musicals in the 1910s and '20s. [roviLink="MN0000303166"]Roberts also recorded piano rolls during this period, mostly for Ampico. In the early '30s, [roviLink="MN0000303166"]Roberts relocated to Washington, D.C., opened a restaurant, and led a society band there. It was a successful and relatively upscale operation, and during this time he took up classical composition; by 1941 he had produced a piano concerto that was heard in New York's Town Hall. That same year, [roviLink="MC"]"Moonlight Cocktail," a popular song developed out of his 1916 [roviLink="MC"]"Ripples of the Nile" with lyrics by [roviLink="MN0000151529"]Kim Gannon, became a hit for [roviLink="MN0000661172"]Glenn Miller. In 1946, [roviLink="MN0000303166"]Roberts recorded a series of solos for Solo Art that became his first issued solo recordings. He continued to record sporadically through 1959, and [roviLink="MN0000303166"]Roberts' best recordings were made for [roviLink="MN0000271788"]Lester Koenig's Good Time Jazz label in 1958 on [roviLink="MW"]Luckey and the Lion, an album split with another veteran of San Juan Hill, Willie "The Lion" Smith. Unlike his contemporaries [roviLink="MN0000207904"]Eubie Blake and [roviLink="MN0000142860"]James P. Johnson, [roviLink="MN0000303166"]Roberts never made a full transition to playing jazz and did not consider himself a jazz pianist; he considered himself one of the last ragtime pianists, a composer of popular songs and serious music. His final session was for Everest Records in 1959, consisting of an unremarkable set of commercial, honky-tonk-styled piano solos with clarinetist Garvin Bushell. [roviLink="MN0000303166"]Roberts was a player of unbelievable dexterity even into his late years; [roviLink="MW"]Luckey and the Lion was recorded when [roviLink="MN0000303166"]Roberts was 70 and had survived three auto accidents, one of which had shattered his enormous hands -- you would never know it from the way he was capable of playing.

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Discography

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• Harlem Piano Solos

  Good Time Jazz

  1958

• Happy Go Lucky

  Period

  1958