As a jazz musician Roberts sees his roots in the tradition of the great pianists – J. P. Johnson, Jelly Roll Morton and Thelonious Monk. His ragtime derivations even suggest his namesake Luckey Roberts. This is not really Joplin, but Joplin as a basis for taking off. Roberts admits that Joplin would probably not have approved but jazz musicians have always helped themselves and, after all, Joplin survives elsewhere.
These Joplin arrangements are riotous celebrations of the spirit of ragtime. The familiar rags are hilariously varied with stop-go patterns, extra beats thrown in and, in Bethena and Gladiolus Rag, cack-handed deliberate wrong notes and bits of bitonality a la Milhaud in The Entertainer. It’s rather like what happened when Cow Cow Davenport, who couldn’t read music, played Carey Morgan’s Trilby Rag from memory years later. The knowing way that Roberts does this constitutes his comic keyboard personality – a touch of Fats Waller? – which is also expressed in his own music.
I found Roberts’s own pieces much less interesting. It’s one thing to take off in a witty way on Joplin but quite another to be self-sufficient. These tracks have less sustained personality and are prone to fall into the pointless cliches of casual improvisation. But they make a good foil to the Joplin arrangements in a lightweight fun collection.'