By Ross Eric Gibson

In 1903 Santa Cruz didn’t want a boardwalk, for fear it would become low-life amusements, of freak shows, gambling and brothels. But Fred Swanton promised he would make it like a World’s Fair midway of rides mixed with quality attractions and cultural features. The ballroom staged operas, concerts and balls, while the main porch had art galleries, a jewelry store, Dresden China and a musical instrument store. Swanton rebuilt the Casino and Plunge in 1907 after a fire and kept up with all the latest trends and culture, gaining the Boardwalk a good reputation.

Then in 1912, he found himself in an awkward position. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat (Jan. 14, 1912) said that ragtime dancing, called “ragging,” originated in San Francisco’s Barbary Coast neighborhood in 1908, during the visit of Teddy Roosevelt’s “Great White Fleet.” Supposedly some drunken sailors introduced the ragtime “Turkey Trot” dance to the Barbary Coast, and its indecency had spread like a disease throughout California. The scandalous “animal dances” also included the Bunny Hug, the Grizzly Bear, Texas Tommy, the Frisco Flip and the Fresno Flea (satirizing their newspaper “The Fresno Bee”).

A number of towns that visited Santa Cruz were considering ragging bans in their towns, while the youth crowd clamored wildly for ragging dances, seeing Santa Cruz as the leader in modern dance entertainment. And it was, with dancing the top draw among Boardwalk attractions, in its grand ballroom and nickel dance hall.

Swanton was caught in the middle. He was operating the Boardwalk with the approval of the city, he needed the patronage of the youth market, but he didn’t want to lose the family-friendly reputation he had earned as a clean boardwalk. So at the opening of the 1912 season on June 8, he charted a middle course, with only a few samples of ragtime in a dance concert, plus holding ragging events separate from traditional balls, and traditional dances for those reliving their youth.

De Young

The complainers couldn’t name their dread, except that ragging was low and undignified, no less than a moral apocalypse. To show ragtime’s classier side, Swanton arranged for no less a man than Charles De Young to perform ragtime dances at the Casino’s 1912 opening ball. The 31-year-old son of San Francisco Chronicle publisher Michael H. De Young was educated at Exeter, Harvard and Paris, and renowned in San Francisco for high-class rag dancing. As Swanton put it, “when (De Young) executes the Texas Tommy, Bunny Hug or Turkey Trot, it is done with a finish to place it in the realm of art, (without) any offensive features.”

De Young may have seen Vernon and Irene Castle perform in Paris. They did ragtime dances, but when Irene saw what a posh venue they had to impress, she danced in her wedding dress, which slowed down her motions, producing an elegance to their dance. The Castles created the Hesitation Waltz, the Castle Walk, the Fox Trot, and invented the Tea Dance for elegant dance parties. How much influence they had on De Young is unknown, but this was the level of his Society Ragging exhibition, which was courteously received.

But his good example didn’t influence those whose minds were made up. On the 4th of July, Swanton reported 1,400 people in the main ballroom, with the overflow at the Nickel Dance Hall. (July 7, 1912, Sentinel). Members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and representatives of several churches, stationed themselves in the ballroom’s horseshoe balcony, hoping to spot indecency. Of the 16 ballroom dances, only four were rags, but they drew the most enthusiasm and applause. The Nickel Dance Hall was posted “NO RAGGING WITHOUT PERMISSION,” and no ragging was observed. No complaints were filed with Swanton’s office about either dance hall, but instead complaints were directed only to the newspapers.

Vowing that there wouldn’t be another Fourth of July like that one, on July 5, 1912, the WCTU leadership asked the City Council to assist them in stamping out this illicit form of enjoyment within city limits. Every church in town backed the ragging ban. The American Federation of Musicians voted at its Omaha Convention to back ragging bans, although this didn’t represent all the musicians performing in Santa Cruz. A local musician who was once in a bordello band, said the ragging debauchery in Santa Cruz was worse (though adding, not at the beach where he worked)! When asked how Swanton felt about a city ban on ragging, he said, “This certainly would simplify our position.”

So the ordinance was passed, and Swanton was credited for “demanding a ragging ban.” (News, July 8, 1912). Yet it was pointed out that the credit went entirely to the City Council, for Swanton never demanded it, and in fact, still planned to hold society ragging events. (Sentinel, July 10, 1912). For it wasn’t the dances that gave the offense, but dancers who didn’t do them right! A school for polite ragtime was opened in Santa Cruz by San Franciscan Loraine Mongomery, and Swanton scheduled a team of top dancers from San Francisco for another society ragtime exhibition.

Ban mania

Meanwhile, Watsonville, Lodi and Stockton praised Santa Cruz’s 1912 ragging ban, and wanted ones of their own. That year, they were joined by Sacramento, Oakland, Petaluma, San Jose, Santa Rosa, Fulton, Chico and Los Angeles, to name a few. Watsonville’s Pajaronian newspaper said at first ragging “was thought funny by many, but the funny part has worn off, and beneath the veneer yawns the open door of the house of shame and the life that kills.” Superior Judge Gray of Butte County said ragging caused female delinquency and “more white slavery than anything else.” In Oregon, the firebrand Gov. Oswald West, declared martial law in a resort that wouldn’t ban ragging. This was part of West’s advocacy, which gave Oregon women the right to vote in 1912, backed state prohibition, wildlife conservation and eugenics, seeking forced sterilization of gay men. (Wikipedia).

Swanton was appalled when he entered his ballroom, and discovered police stationed there, waiting to make arrests. Swanton told them to leave the room. Meanwhile, people started to learn that there were Black clubs in town where the real ragging was performed by Black musicians adept at syncopation. These clubs were like “dance easies,” never listed in business directories, even though they were downtown. Ben Lomond village took down the “No Ragging” sign at Park Hall and opened a bus shuttle to syphon dispossessed ragtime dancers out of prudish Santa Cruz. The racetrack near Capitola advertised horses dancing to ragtime music, which violated no laws.

The editor of the Redding Daily Searchlight, Herbert C. Moody, tried to make a constructive point. (Aug. 8, 1912, Surf). He said: “I don’t know your city councilmen, but imagine they are fossilized and pretzelized, or else unduly influenced by a small and unrepresentative part of an otherwise progressive community. While anything can be made offensive, I have never yet seen ragging abused in a single ballroom. What Santa Cruz has abolished is popular music!” He continued: “At the Casino ballroom I saw sweet girls accompanied by their mothers, modestly dancing ragtime steps with parental approval, which the following evening policemen waited to arrest them for. And under what criteria? The ragging ban makes every dance a crime, on the basis that parts bear similarity to most other dances.”

And this whole hysteria was based on a fear of Black music, which in fact had introduced a sophisticated “syncopation” style, which instead of accenting the beat, as in a march, it accented the off-beat. Scott Joplin, the Ragtime King, may have begun as a brothel pianist. But he learned his writing style imitating player piano music, not realizing piano rolls were designed to sound like a full orchestra, in a manner unplayable by a solo pianist. Joplin created rich and complex compositions in a wide range of expression, leading to his ragtime opera. The Big Three ragtime composers were two Black men, Scott Joplin and James Scott, and an Irishman, Joseph Lamb. The ragtime fad overtook New York’s “Tin Pan Alley” (sheet music row) with rags by a number of composers of all nationalities, including Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (which is not a true rag).

Arrest

An incident finally occurred at the Santa Cruz Casino at midnight Aug. 22, 1912. The ballroom’s floor manager, Rady Caspers, had asked the band to play a rag, to which raggers danced. When he was arrested “fleeing” over the Spanish Arches to the Casa Del Rey, the Boardwalk fired him. Although freed on $10 bail and charged a small fine, Caspers refused to leave jail, and demanded a jury trial to clear his name. At his hearing the following morning, Caspers told a packed courtroom it was not illegal to play a rag, only to dance to it, which he hadn’t. The prosecution couldn’t produce a single witness who could say they saw him dancing.

And whose complaint brought the arrest? A pro-ragging member of the band, Dan Schmidt, who did it as a joke. The case was dismissed, Santa Cruz was embarrassed in the national press, and the ragging ban was never used again. Santa Cruz had learned its lesson. Then March 4, 1913, Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated, but canceled his inaugural ball, for fear guests might introduce ragtime dancing at a state function, which was carrying democracy too far!

In 1913, Swanton brought the Art Hickman Orchestra from the high-class St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Art Hickman was known for leading the nation’s first modern dance band, making ragtime respectable, and one of the first to have a saxophone section. The Boardwalk’s Casino Dance Orchestra produced its own rags and Fox Trots, such as “The Boulder Creek Fox Trot” and “Never a Dull Moment.” Swanton’s influential friend Charles De Young was named publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle in July 1913 and appeared at the Del Monte Golf Tournament. He came down with typhoid from drinking an unfiltered glass of water there, which turned into typhoid fever and peritonitis, from which he died on Sept. 15, at age 32. But De Young was a successfully influential soldier in the Ragtime Apocalypse.