Early jazz pianist Charles Luckyth (Luckey) Roberts was born on this day in 1887. Here is more on Roberts from Wikipedia.
AllMusic does a nice job as well. Roberts, according to the site…
…was a transcendentally 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, 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 “Nothin'” demonstrates that there couldn’t have been many players in San Juan Hill expecting to win against Roberts.
I couldn’t find any video of him playing. Instead of just posting a static image, I went from the very old to the very young. The talented kid above is Daniel Souvigny and the tune is “Pork and Beans.”
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