Black Clover Rag is a light-hearted, modern ragtime composition. Its musical distinctiveness lies in its jaunty, melodic character and traditional stride-based construction.
Students must pay close attention to the jump bass in the left hand to ensure accurate and clean landing points.
Comparable difficulty and character — good candidates for what to learn next.
Black Clover Rag is rated Henle level 3 of 9 — late beginner repertoire, roughly ABRSM grades 4–5. In the RCM system it corresponds to about level 3.
You should be comfortable at Henle level 3 — meaning you can already play level 2–3 pieces cleanly. Learning it one level early is possible as a stretch piece, but more than that usually leads to months of frustration.
A typical performance of Black Clover Rag lasts about 3 minutes.
Black Clover Rag is available as free public-domain sheet music on IMSLP — the score is linked directly from this page.
Pieces at a comparable difficulty and character include 24th Street Rag by Cameron Lee Simpson, Bullseye Rag by Cameron Lee Simpson, Banana Pepper Rag by Cameron Lee Simpson — see the full similar-pieces list on this page.