Carbarlick Acid Rag

I frequently see old sheet music at sales, but rarely see a piece that catches my eye.  These devils dancing around a bottle of poison did.

"Carbarlick Acid" is obviously a play on Carbolic Acid.  I'm not sure if it's also a play on what you might be served in lieu of actual liquor at a bar.

It's referred to as a Two-step Cake Walk, which isn't to be confused with the carnival game you might have played as a child, walking to music and stopping when the music stops hoping to win a cake.

A traditional Cake Walk was a dance popularized by former slaves who remembered the dances from their slave days in which they competed with one another for the most outlandish dance steps, parodying their masters' moves.  The best performance won a prize, usually as judged by the master.

"Carbarlick Acid Rag" was a one-hit-wonder for Clarence Wiley.  Wiley was a pharmacist in Oskaloosa, Iowa who fancied himself a musician. He wrote the piece at the age of 18 in 1901, but it wasn't published until two years later.  He was a bit of a gadabout, though, and, according to this article, became involved with a railroad brakemen's wife, incurring the brakeman's wrath. While he survived that particular incident, he died only a few months later in an Opium den, having overdosed on morphine.

But his music survives and can now be listened to in the digital age.