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That's what it seems on first glance, but when I listen deeper and study the context, I hear a lot of unrest and tension.

Ragtime was music essentially created for the whorehouses in New Orleans and surrounding areas. Although it's not obvious from all the piano renditions, the music originated from the minstrel show. It becomes much clearer when you hear rags played on the banjo (Vess Ossman was the banjo master in the early 1900s). Here's another song from the era: "All Coons Look Alike To Me". Note the stylistic similarities to the ragtime number.

It's music purely for entertainment's sake. There's not much honest emotion there. In fact, it goes beyond this: it's music created by the cultural clash of blacks and poor white immigrants, mostly for the entertainment of the middle class (and other poor white immigrants). You can just feel the plastered smiles, overbearing racist jokes, and, of course, the blackface.

I personally find I am much happier when listening to the music that grew out of ragtime, mostly from the 20s. I find it to be a much more enduring and exciting artistic statement: capturing some emotion of the musicians as opposed to being simple entertainment. However, it has the same upbeat danceable energy as those ragtime recordings. All it took was one generation for those musical styles to be fully reclaimed, and they called it jazz (although we must note that the music was in the process of being reclaimed even when "All Coons Look Alike To Me" was released: Arthur Collins was a black performer, but he was also a minstrel performer, and he performed in blackface as well. America is weird.). Some cool examples from the 20s (easier on the ears than the two above):

• Jelly Roll Morton - Maple Leaf Stomp -- probably the most obvious way to see how hot jazz came to be out of ragtime. Morton got his start in those old whorehouses and recorded many songs that are probably the closest we're going to get to hearing how the music was actually played back then.
• Bix Beiderbecke - In A Mist (1928) -- known for his trumpet playing, this piece showcases his piano skills as well, and foreshadows the cool jazz of the 1950s. Listen to those exotic (at the time) chords!
• Louis Armstrong - Put 'Em Down Blues (1927) -- Armstrong's basically a household name at this point, but not for the stuff he recorded during the 1920s. Check out the brief piano solo to see how far ragtime had come in ~20 years.

And there's SO SO SO MUCH MORE. When it comes to recording, the period between 1927 and 1932 was incredible: electric recording had just been invented, so finally those old 78s were starting to sound really good. They recorded all sorts of stuff, and a lot of it is still awesome and interesting to hear today. I could link stuff from that period for hours...

tl;dr: Jazz was basically ragtime before it became all cool and intellectual, and it was awesome.

EDIT: Since this post seems to be gaining some popularity, I made a follow-up post below: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qtvav/iama_professional_pianist_who_can_improvise_on/cdgqnkc

Edit 2: Thank you for gold :)

Okay, let's do this. Please note: This list is not exhaustive. It's just a list of stuff I've been listening to lately! However, I'll do my best to cover a wide variety of music from the period, and explain how it relates to other music coming in the future.

I'll do this loosely from most "formal context acceptable" to least acceptable. The meaning of this should be obvious once I dig into a bit.

• Paul Whiteman Orchestra - Nobody's Sweetheart (1929). Paul Whiteman's Orchestra was the most popular jazz orchestra out there for a very long time. One of the group's most famous recordings is Rhapsody In Blue, featuring Gershwin himself on the piano. They mostly appealed to an "upper crust" audience. Whiteman was "a former symphony musician, he played viola or violin..." [0]. This is the furthest away from the racial boundary: "though 'jazz' was on everyone's lips, an indebtedness to negro culture was rarely mentioned" [0].

• Bing Crosby - Can't We Be Friends (1929). The "ol' groaner" was a very popular musician from the time. He also appealed to a similar upper-crust audience. A side note that'll become important later: he asked a young guitarist named Eddie Lang to become his main guitarist, and there was some video footage of the pair before Lang died young in '33.

• Al Jolson - Toot, Toot, Tootsie! (1927). This is actually a recording from "The Jazz Singer," the first "talkie" film. Definitely worth watching if you're interested in this kinda thing. Jolson was known as "the world's greatest entertainer" long before this movie came out -- he was recording cylinders back in the teens. However, this performance certainly shows that he can swing just like a good jazz band.

• Cliff Edwards - Sunday (1926). "The feeling is certainly jazz... his voice was to sweep the nation, and his ukelele was to find its counterpart in millions of college dormitories and vacation-time singalongs" [1]. Not at all edgy, just catchy and fun!

• Ruth Etting - Button Up Your Overcoat (1929). "In 1964, every girl who is over twelve has made an album before any kind of audience has heard her; in the Twenties, you had to be an important part of a Broadway show before anyone would think of asking you to sing for a recording... Ruth Etting is rather a surprise, because the cutie-pie execution she gives to her lyrics has nothing to do with the jungle-orchid pictures of her taken at the time..." [1] Another cute and fun tune, (likely) featuring my favorite guitarist from the era, Eddie Lang. Here's a video of them!

• Ted Weems - Remarkable Girl (1929). Ted Weems' Orchestra was one of the "sweet bands" of the period. However, they were certainly hot! This is "the quintessential sound of early American Dance Music" [2]. Ted Weems has a number of great tunes like this, here's another.

• I had to skip a few points here, such as obscure band conductor Fred Waring and Ben Pollack (who's orchestra would contain Benny Goodman, of Carnegie Hall fame) because there's nothing on Youtube. Send me a message if you have a burning desire to hear it.

• The Mound City Blue Blowers - I Ain't Got Nobody (1929). Watch this link! This is my favorite video out of all the ones I post. I love Red McKenzie, the singer/comb + tissue paper player, and I love Eddie Lang, the guitarist. Here's another tune of his, From Monday On, also featuring Joe Venuti on the "jazz violin." Hm. These guys are a bit cool and different, I'll return to them later, but, like, if you have a CD from them, please let me know. The links here are literally all the music I have by them. Another quote, McKenzie is "one of the noblest of the completely untutored, completely warm, completely happy-go-lucky white singers" [1], and I love it!

• Broadway Bell-Hops (with Bix Beiderbecke) - There Ain't No Land Like Dixieland To Me (1927). Here's a little tune that ties Bix into the rest of the stuff. Same violin player as the last bullet: Joe Venuti. Cheesy but fun. However, I want to take a closer look at Bix before we move on. Check this out: Frank Trumbauer And His Orchestra, ft. Bix Beiderbecke - I'm Coming Virginia (1927). "In this, his longest solo, Bix is at the height of his powers. He eschews the gutbucket growls and half-valves that were just becoming popular with Duke Ellington and instead digs deep into the melody" 3. This tune foreshadows cool jazz so heavily it's insane. The guitarist is, again, Eddie Lang. Hm. Also, consider the Bix tune I linked in the first post I made on this topic.

• Clarence Williams' Blue Five - Cake Walking Babies From Home (1925). This is actually the hottest tune I know. This tune can be described as "viciously swinging, timeless, priceless, joyous, epic" -- I think it's accurate. For more info on this specific song and its history, read this great blog post that describes this song as a battle between Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet. It's a great read. Here's another Armstrong tune I like that has a bit less history behind it: Louis Armstrong - Struttin' With Some Barbeque (1927). It's not super fancy, but it's a great demonstration of Armstrong's innovations on the trumpet. It's also worth checking out King Oliver, as he was Armstrong's mentor back in New Orleans. One of his tunes I like is Sweet Like This (1929). Though it was recorded long after Armstrong left to form his own group, Oliver's solo (he's the second trumpet player, with the mute) demonstrates some of the novel techniques that Armstrong carried with him.

• Jimmie Rodgers + Louis Armstrong - Blue Yodel No. 9 (1930). Jimmie Rodgers is the beginning of country music. He was a vaudeville performer: his act was yodeling, and he did it damn well. He also loved jazz. Rodgers was really the first musician to combine the blues with "hillbilly music," about 30 years before Elvis would do a similar thing to make Rock N Roll. Here's a great video of him from 1930, certainly worth watching! Note that Rodgers was discovered at the same session in Bristol, TN/VA that The Carter Family was discovered at, check out Can The Circle Be Unbroken (1927), and listen to that guitar style: "the Carter Scratch" would be incredibly important in the development of country.

• Blind Blake - Skeedle Loo Doo (1926). So, uh, in the 20s, ragtime lived in a form closer to the original than jazz was. I guess I kinda lied earlier. It was just a bit less obvious. Blind Blake was a fingerpicker from Florida who is known as "the best blues fingerpicker that will ever live, ever" (I made that quote up, but it's true). Here's some other songs of his I like: Too Tight (1929), Hey Hey Daddy Blues (1927). He plays the guitar like a piano on a ragtime tune. This is good stuff, especially if you're more of a rock/folk fan who doesn't quite get the whole brass thing.

• Dock Boggs - Sugar Baby (1927). Wow, what a great transfer, holy shit! Boggs was basically a dude from out the mountains who played the banjo really damn well. A middle class white dude from the suburbs wouldn't be caught dead with a recording like this, but goddamn is it good. Here's another tune of his, Country Blues, very eerie. Here's another similar sort of tune, Buell Kazee - East Virginia.

That's my summary for 1920s tunes. (Continued in next post)

References:

[0]: Charles Edwin Smith, liner notes to "Paul Whiteman, Volume 1", RCA Victor, LPV-555 (1968)
[1]: Larry Carr, liner notes to "The Original Sound of the 20's", Columbia C3L 25 (1965)
[2]: Richard Jenkins, liner notes to "Original Dance Music of the 1920s and 1930s", Swing Time 9906 (2000)

EDIT: Fixed a link.

I came to make this reference as well. Have we known about time travel since the 70s but really kept it under wraps?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=do+you+like+google

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=do+you+like+Bing%3F

As a follow-up, could you potentially give more detail on what it was like to work with Brian Wilson? What he was like as a person, as a producer, etc...