"Zez" Confrey has long been known as one of the most popular progenitors of the Novelty Piano style that was born out of the desire for piano roll arrangers to give their works more bite. He was born to railroad clerk Thomas J. Confrey and his wife Margaret (Brown) Confrey in rural Peru, Illinois at the dawn of the ragtime era. Edward (who may have just as often been called Elzear as he was shown on some official records) was the second youngest of five surviving children of nine born to the couple, including James (3/1885), Frank (11/1886), William (11/1893) and Margaret (5/1897). He displayed his propensity for music at the age of four. Just after his talented older brother Jim had completed a piece during a piano lesson, the youngest Confrey stood at the piano and picked out the melody of the same piece he had been listening to Jim play. So lessons for Elzear started quite early.

In the 1910 census the family was shown living in La Salle, Illinois (near Peru) with Thomas still working for the railroad, joined by his son Frank. Oldest son Jim was working as an orchestra musician that year, which was around the time Edward was in high school, and already conducting his own orchestra. "Zez" (as he was now known) had progressed well beyond what most local teachers could offer him. So he soon attended the fairly close by Chicago Musical College (run by Florenz Ziegfeld Sr., father of the famous Ziegfeld Follies founder) for better grounding in all musical forms ranging from classical music to contemporary composers Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, and others. It was the influence of the French impressionist composers that showed up in his later compositions.

One of his earliest pieces that might be considered a precursor to novelty piano was titled Twaify's Piano. Composed in the late 1910s but never published, it was based on a broken-down player piano at Twaify's on Eighth Street in La Salle. He imitated as much as many of the instrument's characteristics as he could, including "its wheezing performance, wrong and missing notes, the asthmatic pedal, the flapping roll," all on a fully working instrument.

In an effort to support himself during college, Zez logically chose performance, and his older brother Jim stepped in to help him out. They formed an orchestra, then even opened their own venue, The Kaskasia Hotel, to feature it, as well as engaging in occasional short performance tours. This was interrupted by The Great War (World War I). His 1917 draft card lists him as a music teacher living in La Salle. Zez ultimately joined the Navy, where he ended up entertaining the sailors more than serving with them. One of his performing partners during his stint in the show Leave It To Sailors was a talented violinist from Waukegan, Illinois named Benjamin Kubelsky. He later started telling jokes between tunes and soon changed his stage name to Jack Benny.

When Zez was fresh out of the Navy he sought to expand his exposure by successfully auditioning for the QRS Piano Roll Company, making it clear that he felt his arranging skills would help their rolls sell better. During his six-plus years there he proved that contention to be accurate. In all he made at least one hundred twenty five rolls for QRS, and perhaps several more that have not been positively identified as they were released under pseudonyms. Zez secured a job as a manager with publisher G. Schirmer in Chicago in 1919, a branch dealing mostly with vaudeville singers. From there, it was a natural progression that his next step would be composition.

After a few interesting pieces, Zez pulled My Pet out of his hat in 1921 (possibly a couple of years earlier). Where Felix Arndt's Nola had broken some new ground six years earlier in the use of seemingly complex sounding patterns, My Pet threw in a impressionistic harmonic progressions and previously implausible syncopated patterns to define his own brilliant take on the novelty piano genre. It was followed almost immediately by his wildly popular mega-hit Kitten on the Keys, and both were quickly packaged on a Brunswick record, as well as arranged for piano roll.

In the midst of a barrage of interesting solos that would follow, he penned Stumbling, an instrumental that became his most popular vocal song. It came about when Zez watched a postman doing his duty amidst snowdrifts during a winter storm. The piece was used gratuitously throughout the movie Thoroughly Modern Millie in 1967. Some of the sides he did for Brunswick were repeated in 1921 and 1922 for the Emerson label, and he performed Kitten on the Keys on a celebrated Edison Diamond Disc as well on the last day of 1921.

Publisher Jack Mills was thrilled to have Confrey as one of his prime composers. Confrey had experienced rejection by many publishers who thought his pieces were outlandishly difficult for the average pianist, and was reluctant to even present them to the adventurous entrepreneur. However, Mills saw the sales potential by promoting their musicality as well as making sure they were available on phonograph records. This created a successful paradox where even hack amateurs were so sure they could play what they heard on those recordings that they bought Confrey tunes by the thousands, only to discover their own limitations as represented by the apparent complexity. In truth, Zez Confrey novelties mostly consisted of simple patterns, and had they taken the time to master those patterns the learning curve would have been greatly lowered. A very successful folio of Zez Confrey's Modern Course in Novelty Piano Playing was created in 1923 to address this issue, and indeed remained in print for four decades. A ringing endorsement of this was the adoption of this book by the dominant Christensen School of Music with branches throughout the country. Still, in the end, it was the complexity of novelty piano that soured sheet music sales for Mills and other companies in the genre, but money was still to be made in the record business.

Perhaps the highlight of Confrey's performance career, and indeed a benchmark for jazz music that announced it was here to stay, was the legendary concert that bandleader Paul Whiteman arranged at Aeolian Hall in New York City on February 12, 1924. While most may remember that event as the premiere of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue as arranged by Ferdé Grofé, it should also be noted that some of Confrey's compositions were featured as well, and the composer himself rolled out his newest piece, the classically structured Three Little Oddities, along with the bombastic Dizzy Fingers and famous Kitten on the Keys. In fact, the official billing for the concert read, "Paul Whiteman and his Palais Royal Orchestra will offer An Experiment in Modern Music, assisted by Zez Confrey and George Gershwin." After the event he accepted a position creating rolls exclusively for Ampico reproducing pianos, and turned out forty-four over the next three years. In addition, Whiteman had sponsored Confrey's own orchestra as part of his band empire as early as 1922, a dance orchestra which recorded several sides for Victor as well as performed live at many events. Some of these made it overseas on the HMV (His Master's Voice) label as well

For all of his performance duties, it appears that Zez took the creation of piano rolls more seriously than anything. It is difficult to get a full estimate of the number of rolls he recorded for QRS, Aeolian and other concerns (the number 223 has been suggested), but each of them clearly has his stamp on them. Confrey could take a semi-popular song, as he did with Titina in 1925, and turn it into a novelty masterpiece, sometimes by adding an original section or altering the format of the song. They were also carefully edited after he made the mark-up copies for a very refined performance. His acoustic recordings were more throwaways in some regards, even though some of them indicated as many as 12 takes for a piece, sometimes across two sessions. In on instance, fellow pianist Phil Ohman sat in for Confrey both playing and leading his orchestra. After two years of constant recording with Victor his output appears to have simply dropped off in 1924, perhaps so he could focus on other concerns like composition and traveling with the orchestra. A series of recuts of Confrey pieces was done in 1927 after the advent of electronic recording, but with the exception of one tracks, this time it was Victor's musical director Nat Shilkret at the piano with the "Confrey Orchestra," which was actually the Victor house band.

As he became more popular, Confrey became a spokesperson in some ways for the advancement of music forms, which is natural since he was part of the transition of ragtime into jazz and novelty tunes. An article from The Music Trade Review of February 25, 1928, read as follows:

However, as the 1930s approached, Zez turned more to composition than to performance. An announcement in the October 6, 1928 edition of The Music Trade Review noted the following:

Zez at the piano with composer Byron Gay (L) and slugger Babe Ruth (R)

The onset of the Great Depression may have hit Confrey hard as it did much of the music business not directly involved with radio, as the 1930 census shows him living once again with his parents and his brothers Jim and Frank back in La Salle, although this may have also simply coincided with a visit there. Still, he did fall on some hard times over the next few years. On March 5, 1932, Zez married showgirl Wilhelmina Matthes (11/1903), and their son Paul Beaumont Confrey was born in April of 1933.

In the mid 1930s Zez participated in a few short subject films in New York. One of those, Home Run on the Keys from 1937, featured his Kitten on the Keys played live, and included fellow composer Byron Gay who had recently returned from a trip to the South Pole. The star of the film was the one who garnered the most attention at that time, New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth. Ruth and Confrey had been friends for several years as Wilhelmina, who had appeared with Ethel Merman in Girl Crazy and The Ziegfeld Follies was a friend of Ruth's current wife who had also worked as a showgirl. Zez's signature piece, Kitten on the Keys, was also prominently featured in a 1935 Disney Silly Symphony, Three Orphan Kittens, through the emulation of a piano roll that was actually played live. Beyond incidentals like these, occasional radio appearances were largely his mid to late 1930s exposure to the general public.

In the 1940 Federal census, Edward was shown living in Queens with Wilhelmina and their two sons, Paul (1934) and Thomas (1939). He listed his occupation as a hotel musician. Confrey's 1942 draft card shows him listed as a "free lance composer" still living in Queens, NY, a decade after his unfortunate downslide. He was now perhaps well enough off from his royalties in addition to any playing appearances he might have made during this time that things had been looking up. Zez sought out ways to expand genres within his repertoire of pieces. This ambition was mostly realized, but hindered by the onset of Parkinson's Disease in the mid to late 1940s. While this did not inhibit his compositional abilities, it made performance difficult, and he retired from public appearances.

During the honky-tonk piano craze of the 1950s there was a definitive revival of Confrey's pieces, including Kitten on the Keys and Dizzy Fingers among others, thanks to artists like Lou Busch, Ray Turner and Dick Hyman. He composed a small suite of tunes at the end of the decade, but many of his efforts remained in manuscript form until after his death. Confrey's older works were only infrequently heard or performed during the 1960s. Jim Confrey died in November 1968. Zez finally succumbed to the ravages of Parkinson's disease, dying of a stroke in November 1971. It was right at the beginning of the big ragtime revival that would culminate in a book of his [nearly] complete works published in 1982. His son Paul cooperated with the project, and ultimately survived his father through August 2008. Wilhelmina survived her husband until September 1991. Zez Confrey left behind a staggering variety of memorable pieces that are still continually rediscovered by a new generation and are actively performed in the 21st century.