, tuba player and a founding member of the St. Louis Ragtimers, died August 28 in St. Louis. He was 92. A musician, engineer, and former co-owner of the Goldenrod Showboat, Franz helped sustain both the sound and the setting of St. Louis’ ragtime revival.
Donald Roy Franz was born October 9, 1933, and grew up in Brentwood, Missouri. He served in the Navy, worked as an engineer, and taught at Washington University, where he met his future wife, Margaret Ogilvy, in the early 1970s. Their marriage lasted more than 52 years; she died in December 2025.
Franz was already playing traditional jazz internationally before the Ragtimers formed. In 1959 he toured Germany and the Netherlands with the Chicago Stompers, alongside Ed and Jean Kittrell, trombonist Stan Vincent, clarinetist John Carlson, and banjoist Carl Lunsford. Vincent remembered the group as “a very tight and hard-driving sextet,” rehearsing in the afternoons and playing long hours seven days a week…