1896 B. Harney You've been Good Old Wagon (sheet music) (cover) Ben Harney... Original introducer to the stage of the now popular ‘rag time’ in Ethiopian song.

1899 Musical Rec. (Boston) Apr. 158/1 I feel safe in predicting that rag-time has come to stay.

1916 A. Huxley Let. 7 Aug. (1969) 109 I have been..spending most of the night in conversation or in singing folk-songs and rag-time to the stars.

1938 Sun (Baltimore) 6 Sept. 8/7 Under their ministrations, the simplest ragtime becomes jazz.

1968 Blues Unlimited Nov. 23 Ragtime one probably loves or loathes.

2007 Acoustic Guitar Feb. 98/3 Mostly, there's Van Ronk's smartly complex, seemingly effortless fingerpicking, steeped in ragtime.

1899 Independent (N.Y.) 1 June 1525/1 It plays sonatas, fugues, rag-times, gavottes, [etc.].

1914 G. B. Shaw Parents & Children in Misalliance p. cviii If they [sc. young people] had learnt what can be done with syncopation from Beethoven's third Leonora overture, they would enjoy the ragtimes all the more.

1937 H. Jennings et al. May 12th Mass-observ. Day-surv. i. ii. 161 Then one of the children started to sing a ragtime: I love you and you love me, etc.

2006 D. M. Flinn Little Musicals for Little Theatres 200 We're onstage and backstage at the Lyric, a theatre..in the pre-Depression heyday of ragtimes, Charlestons, and black bottoms.

1896 Yenowine's Illustr. News (Milwaukee) 15 Aug. 7 The attractive vaudeville bill for the ensuing week includes Ben R. Harney, who is said to be a very clever illustrator of real negro rag-time music.

1900 Musical Courier (N.Y.) 23 May 20/1 (heading) The rag-time rage.

1906 B. L. Taylor & W. C. Gibson Extra Dry 71 Putting a ragtime record in the graphophone he pulls the throttle wide open.

1913 R. Kipling Diversity of Creatures (1917) 282 The boys and girls at the piano played the rag-time tunes of their own land.

1917 E. Wallace Kate, plus Ten (1930) v. 74 A peer of the realm and a ragtime singer.

1922 F. S. Fitzgerald Beautiful & Damned ii. i. 131 Kept telling me she wished this was a ragtime wedding.

1949 R. Blesh Shining Trumpets (new ed.) vii. 156 Buddy Bolden's Ragtime Band of 1893, generally considered the first jazz band.

1974 Times 27 Apr. 9/8 We've ended up with a ragtime sound you might even have heard from the piano accompanying the silent movies.

2003 G. M. Boone in V. Coelho Cambr. Compan. to Guitar v. 71 Its two-beat, boom-chick guitar style resonated with ragtime rhythm.

1913 Flight 12 Apr. 416/1 A pilot who flies unsteadily is a ‘rag-timer’.]

1917 F. T. Nettleingham Tommy's Tunes 42 We are the Ragtime Army, We are the R.F.C. We do not fight, we cannot fly, So what earthly use are we?

1919 H. Crane Let. 17 June (1965) 20 Your remarks ‘about the ladies’ really hurt me with a kind of ragtime vulgarity.

1926 F. M. Ford Man could stand Up ii. 119 A Hun up against a Tommie looked like a Holbein lansknecht fighting a music-hall turn. It made you feel that you were indeed a rag-time army.

1940 R. Graves & A. Hodge Long Week-end iii. 38 ‘Rag-time’ was an adjective of reproach; a rag-time regiment was a disorderly and untrustworthy one.

1948 V. Palmer Golconda ii. 14 But what if some really big concern swallowed up the three ragtime companies and planned to open up the whole mountain?

1987 S. Zulauf Succasunna New Jersey 16 We rode this condemned killer Three weeks before it closed forever, A ragtime relic of rickety wooden girders That bore thousands each summer In a black train clacking to the top of its Play hill.

1901 Galveston (Texas) Daily News 9 Dec. 6/2 Beethoven the Second awoke and looked about him to see if the rag-timer was sitting in his dingy room.

1913 Flight 12 Apr. 416/1 A pilot who flies unsteadily is a ‘rag-timer’.

1950 R. P. Blesh & H. Janis They all played Ragtime (1958) i. 26 Under Joplin he quickly became an adept ragtimer and was soon playing at dances in and around Sedalia.

1995 F. G. Vogel World War I Songs i. vi. 78/2 A similarly rhythmic tribute to the invincibility of ragtimers on the battlefield.

1901 Washington Post 6 Oct. 17/2 ‘Sing something rag-timey,’ said the frivolous girl.

1915 D. O. Barnett Let. 7 Jan. in In Happy Memory 37 Been making out forms of times. Feel rather ragtimy.

1952 B. Ulanov Hist. Jazz in Amer. xxii. 306 They played their ragtimey work..with a finish and polish.

1994 Folk Roots Mar. 47/3 Lucca's Waltz , for instance, is pure Paris musette, Up And Away has a ragtimey flavour, while Maam Turk is distinctly Balkan.

1908 F. Huntley Gay Gnani of Gingalee 83 Sunday morning sermons made him drowsy, and he often slept profoundly when Mrs. V. ragtimed on the piano.

1935 W. Winchell in Port Arthur (Texas) News 22 Apr. 4/1 We get just as excited over J. Durante at a pianner ragtiming ‘I'm sorry Dear’ or ‘Melancholy Baybeee’.

1986 G. Baxt Alfred Hitchcock Murder Case (1987) xiii. 203 When Miss Lockwood started rag-timing, ‘I'll Be Down to Getcha in a Taxi, Honey..’, Hitchcock agreed with Nancy Adair that it was time to go.

1996 Pittsburgh Post-Gaz. (Nexis) 20 Sept. 20 He'll be ragtiming at the Living Room in Bethel Park at 1 p.m.

1912 G. Frankau One of Us x. 92 Where the Rat Mort's rag-timing Ethiope Dins in one's ears.

2001 Chicago Sun-Times (Nexis) 21 Feb. 57 Entries on no-name artists like the ragtiming Elite Syncopators.