Johnny Maddox

Johnny Maddox is one of the most well-known ragtime pianists of all time. His first piano teacher in his hometown of Gallatin, Tennessee, was his great aunt Zula Cothron, who had played ragtime with an all girls’ orchestra at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Johnny made his first recording for Dot Records on May 19, 1950, featuring “St. Louis Tickle” and Charles L. Johnson’s “Crazy Bone Rag.” Shortly afterwards, he received a nice letter from Johnson thanking him for making the record. In 1954 Johnny was voted “America’s No. 1 Jukebox Artist” and he eventually earned nine gold singles. His record sales totaled over eleven million, including the first all-piano record in history to sell over a million copies, “The Crazy Otto Medley.” Thanks to these hits, Johnny appeared on such television programs as The Milton Berle Show, Patti Page’s The Big Record, The Jack Paar Show, and The Soupy Sales Show. He appeared twice on TV at the famed Stork Club in New York with Teresa Brewer. Johnny even earned his own star on Hollywood Boulevard right next to Will Rogers. He knew and worked with many luminaries as diverse as W. C. Handy, Sophie Tucker, Ted Lewis, Joe Jordan, Patsy Cline, Eddy Arnold, and Lawrence Welk. Johnny is one of the last living links to the creator’s of America’s ragtime age. A noted musicologist, he knows several thousand pieces of music by heart and has a collection of about 30,000 cylinder and 78 records as well as over 200,000 pieces of antique sheet music.