Kitten on the Keys

In my misspent youth, I considered a career as a ragtime guitar player.  Two of my idols were David Laibman and Eric Schoenberg who transcribed Scott Joplin for guitar. I sold all my vinyl many years ago (big mistake) and have slowly been replacing it with Amazon digital downloads.

Laibman and Schoenberg have only one album of note, the New Ragtime Guitar. But what an album! One of my favorite pieces is Kitten on the Keys and at one point, I learned how to play the Laibman-Schoenberg transcription of Dill Pickles Rag

Why, I hear you ask, would I post this on an economics blog. Because, in googling Laibman and Schoenberg to find out what had happened to them, I learned for the first time, that David Laibman is an economist who retired a few years ago from CUNY in New York. Here is a  link to his page. 

Eric Schoenberg turns out to be his cousin and he sells high end guitars in Tiburon, near San Francisco. Next time I'm in the Bay Area I plan to check out the store. Who knows, maybe I'll get a discount on the $76,000 1938 Martin in exchange for the publicity. 😎