Biography
Although only marginally connected to jazz, pianist Roy Bargy cut six solo piano sides between 1922 and 1924, most of them cast in the novelty ragtime idiom, that later appeared alongside his eleven piano rolls on a Folkways LP. He had begun twelve years of piano study at the age of five and had initially intended a career as a classical recitalist before shifting instead to popular music. Bargy performed on both piano and organ in neighborhood movie theaters, assembled his own school orchestra, and commenced making piano rolls in 1919. The next year he joined the Benson Orchestra of Chicago as pianist, arranger, and musical director. During the mid-1920s he spent a period with Isham Jones, after which he achieved his widest recognition as a member of Paul Whiteman’s orchestra from 1928 to 1940, where his formally trained technique enabled him to deliver both convincing jazz and classical features, among them “Rhapsody In Blue.” In the early 1940s he collaborated with Lanny Ross on radio broadcasts and then served as Jimmy Durante’s musical director from 1943 to 1963, after which he retired. Bargy’s most familiar composition remains “Pianoflage.”