William Krell

The sheet music stated that it was the first rag-time two step ever written and was first played by Krell's Orchestra in Chicago although the structure is in the form of a patrol march.

The cover shows a group of all ages dancing to a banjo player before onlookers sitting on a pile of stacked cotton bales on a dock on the Mississippi River.

William Henry Krell was a Chicago band leader and composer whose other compositions included: Mississippi Rag has been recorded by Claude Bolling in 1966, the Firehouse Five Plus Two, Steve Pistorius, Turk Murphy, Paragon Ragtime Orchestra on "More Candy", Richard Zimmerman, Squeek Steele on "Ragtime Volume One", Harmonic Brass Munich on "There's a Man", Knuckles O'Toole on "Knuckles O'Toole: Plays The Greatest All-Time Ragtime Hits", Terry Waldo on "Ragtime Classics Vol.

1", Evergreen Ragtime Trio on "It's a Rouser", Trebor Jay Tichenor on "Ragtime Reunion", the Eastern Brass Quintet, the Avatar Brass Quintet on "Magnetic Rags: Ragtime for Brass", The Black Swan Classic Jazz Band, Lew Green and Jeff Barnhart on Arbors Records...Lew Green & Joe Muranyi:Together.

Some musicians, for example Bill Edwards,[1] prefer to classify the piece as a cakewalk, that is of a slightly earlier precursor style from which ragtime developed.