Ragtime pianist Bill Edwards will begin a three-week stint at the Strater Hotel’s Diamond Belle Saloon beginning Monday. Edwards, who lives in Ashburn, Virginia, first started playing in Durango in the 1980s.
“Coming to the Diamond Belle is always like a homecoming,” he said. “The bar hasn’t really changed, except for (now) it’s nonsmoking.”
Edwards, who has earned the nickname Perfessor,first discovered ragtime in 1964 when he was living in San Fernando Valley, California. At the time, his parents were going through a divorce and a stack of worn vinyl records became his solace.
“I was 5½ or 6 years old and my dad had left these records. I just listened to them, it was happy music,” he said. “And the joy in there: I just wanted to learn it.”
Edwards’ earliest concerts were performed on a harmonium in his mother’s bedroom. By his early teens, he began learning hits like B.J. Thomas’ “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head,” and familiarizing himself with the playing styles of ragtime legends like Scott Joplin.
In 1975, Edwards began performing at his high school and, in 1979, began playing shows at Disneyland.
When his mother and stepfather moved to Durango in 1979, Edwards remained in California, bouncing between two states to spend time with family and to scout out Durango’s music scene.
After two years, he decided to make the move to Durango.
“I did not like Los Angeles very much anymore, it was the land of shake and bake and fruits and nuts. I was lonely,” he said. “So I moved to Durango knowing that my skill set as a piano technician and musician might be useful.”
In 1981, Edwards was invited to play at the Strater's Diamond Belle Saloon, where he played the cocktail hour for the next six years.
At the same time, he was pursuing a degree in American Ethnomusicology at Fort Lewis College, as well as booking gigs around town, playing at the college, restaurants and the Abbey Theatre, now known as Animas City Theatre.
It was at the Abbey that Edwards received his nickname, which he says sometimes still follows him.
“I played there for the melodramas,” he said. “There was a guy who came in quite often, and he’d say, 'Play another one perfessor.’”
The name, which Edwards says is more memorable than “Bill,” can be traced back a century.
“It turns out a lot of the guys who conducted orchestras back in the early 1900s often had some sort of college education, so they were called the professors,” he said. “But in the time that elapsed, a lot of them got mispronounced so it became ‘perfessor’ in many cases.”
In the late 1980s, Edwards was pulled away from Durango and to the East Coast where he began a 31-year career as a web developer for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
“It’s the job that pays for my music habit,” he said.
Despite his departure from Durango, Edwards was left with a lifelong nickname and fondness for the town.
In 2013, local award-winning ragtime pianist Adam Swanson invited Edwards to revisit Durango where he reconnected with then Strater owner Rod Barker.
“Rod said, ‘Why don’t you start coming out and doing two to three weeks in the summers?’” Edwards said. “And I’ve been doing it every year since 2018.”
“Bill’s style is authentic to the original ragtime era,” said Swanson, who has known Edwards for more than two decades. “You can hear a bit of Joe ‘Fingers’ Carr in his style.”
Edwards is a hit at the Diamond Belle, said Tori Ossola, general manager of the Strater Hotel.
“Bill is quite an entertainer,” she said. “He engages the audience and invites them to shout out requests. Our guests really enjoy his music.”
The Strater Hotel is one of the only places in the country where someone can play ragtime music and make money doing it, Swanson said.
It has made the Strater a place of refuge for ragtime artists and listeners alike.
“All of our ragtime performers have a great following of locals and snowbirds who come in for the summer who are loyal to them. They come and listen to (the performers) and they really appreciate their styles and the nuances and differences between them,” Ossola said. “Come hell or high water, they’ll be here to listen to the ragtime music.”
While Edwards is not obligated to return to the Diamond Belle each summer, Ossola said it is a tradition she hopes will continue.
“He is always welcome back,” she said.
lveress@duarngoherald.com