Johnny Maddox played with an all-girls' orchestra at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St Louis and later played in vaudeville.
18 Facts About Johnny Maddox
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Johnny Maddox played his first public concert when he was five and began his professional career in 1939 playing with a local dance band, the Rhythmasters, led by J O "Temp" Templeton.
3.
Around 1946, Johnny Maddox started working for his friend Randy Wood at Randy's Record Shop in Gallatin, where Wood founded Dot Records.
4.
Johnny Maddox became the first successful artist on Dot, and his instant success helped build Dot into one of the most popular labels of the 1950s.
5.
Johnny Maddox signed with MCA and began touring nightclubs across the country.
6.
In 1954, Johnny Maddox was declared the Number One Jukebox Artist in America by the MOA.
7.
Johnny Maddox performed The Jack Paar Show in March 1955 and played "The Crazy Otto Medley" on Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theatre on May 31,1955.
8.
Johnny Maddox appeared with two other pianists, Hazel Scott and Joe Loco, on Patti Page's program The Big Record in November 1956.
9.
Johnny Maddox continued to record for Dot Records through 1967, by which time he had earned nine gold singles, and his total sales were over eleven million.
10.
Johnny Maddox toured fairgrounds across the country in the late 1950s and early '60s with Swenson's Thrillcade, playing on a piano placed on the back of a pickup truck that was lifted by a hydraulic lift as high as fifteen feet.
11.
Johnny Maddox befriended many more musicians and performers from the ragtime and vaudeville days in his travels, including Glover Compton, Butterbeans and Susie, Candy Candido, Ted Lewis, Gus Van, Glenn Rowell, and Joe Jordan.
12.
Johnny Maddox began collecting antique sheet music, 78s, cylinders, piano rolls, photographs, and more at a very young age.
13.
Johnny Maddox sold much of his first collection to Brigham Young University when he moved to Bad Ischl, Austria, around 1970.
14.
Johnny Maddox retired in 1992 but was then coaxed to perform at the Historic Strater Hotel's Diamond Belle Saloon in Durango, Colorado, where he played from 1996 to 2012.
15.
Johnny Maddox mentored ragtime pianist Adam Swanson in his later life.
16.
Johnny Maddox owned one of the largest collections of popular sheet music in the world, likely totaling near 100,000 pieces.
17.
Johnny Maddox died on November 27,2018, at the age of 91.
18.
Johnny Maddox is the only ragtime pianist to earn a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which was included when construction on the Walk of Fame began.