Scott Joplin

American composer

• Born: November 24, 1868
• Birthplace: Bowie City, Texas
• Died: April 1, 1917
• Place of death: New York, New York

Despite his humble origins and the burdens of racial prejudice and cultural barriers, Joplin became an admired piano player and composer of ragtime music that earned him the nickname of “King of Ragtime.” His most famous composition, “Maple Leaf Rag,” was the first song to sell one million copies of sheet music in the United States.

Early Life

Scott Joplin was one of six children of Giles and Florence Givens Joplin. Although they were a poor black family, music was an important part of their lives. Giles, a railroad worker and former slave, played the violin, and young Scott heard from him the waltzes, polkas, reels, and folk music that Giles had played for his former masters on the plantation. Scott’s freeborn mother sang and played the banjo, while his brother Will played guitar and violin and another brother, Robert, sang baritone.

At the age of seven Joplin began showing an interest in the piano. Florence worked as a servant for several white families in Texarkana, and while she cleaned, Joplin played their pianos. Eventually, the family put together enough money to buy a used piano for him to play at home. By age eleven he was writing and playing his own music, and his talent was well known in the community. Several local residents took an interest in his musical talent and gave him free lessons. The most influential of these people was a German music teacher, fondly remembered, who taught Joplin technique, sight reading, and harmony and gave him the opportunity to learn classical and popular European music.

Joplin argued frequently with his father about finding a steady job or trade, and after the death of his mother, the teenager left Texarkana to make his living in music. He worked as an itinerant musician in brothels, saloons, gambling halls, and traveling shows in towns and cities from Texas to the Mississippi River. He heard a variety of music played by musicians and singers, including a syncopated “ragged” style of music later known as “ragtime.” Arriving in St. Louis in 1885, he socialized with other piano players at John Turpin’s Silver Dollar Saloon. Joplin found steady work as a piano player and entertainer in a variety of St. Louis establishments and in other surrounding towns and cities.

In 1893, like many other African American piano players, Joplin sought a job at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago but found most of his work in the red-light district of the city. It was here that many people from around the nation were first exposed to ragtime music. Joplin then met a young piano player, Otis Saunders, who became a close friend and would be an important adviser during his future career. When the exposition closed, Joplin and Saunders returned to St. Louis; in 1894 they moved to Sedalia, Missouri.

Life’s Work

Sedalia greatly influenced Joplin’s career, and it was here that he began to compose and sell his piano compositions. He joined the locally popular Queen City Concert Band and attended the Smith School of Music at the George R. Smith College for Negroes, where he learned fundamentals of harmony and composition. In 1895 he returned to St. Louis and began spending time at Turpin’s ragtime headquarters, the Rosbud Cafe. Turpin, credited with the first published black American rag, “Harlem Rag” (1897), became an inspiration and friend to Joplin.

Upon his return to Sedalia, Joplin formed a vocalizing harmony group, the Texas Medley Quartette. His brothers Will and Robert were singers in the group, while Joplin sang and played the piano. They performed a variety of folk and popular songs as well as Joplin’s new music. They became so popular in Sedalia and the surrounding area that they decided to join a vaudeville tour and traveled as far as Syracuse, New York, where Joplin found publishers for two of his Victorian parlor songs, “A Picture of Her Face” (1895) and “Please Say You Will” (1895). He also composed marches and waltzes, although none of these were in the ragtime style that would later make him famous.

A second tour ended in Joplin, Missouri, and the group disbanded. Joplin returned to Sedalia in 1897 to play in various bars, bordellos, and social clubs, especially the Maple Leaf Club, which as owned by Tony Williams. Acquaintances knew Joplin as a polite, quiet, and well-spoken man who wanted to be respected as a serious composer. He often received support and encouragement from the white community and businesspeople.

Joplin continued to compose music in Sedalia. He sold his first ragtime composition, “Original Rag” (1899), to publisher Carl Hoffman of Kansas City, Kansas, after a Sedalia publisher, A. W. Perry and Son, rejected it. After rejections by another publisher, Hoffman and Perry and Son, Joplin sold his second and most important ragtime composition, “Maple Leaf Rag” (1899), to John Stark and Son of Sedalia for fifty dollars and a one-cent royalty. The composition was an immediate success and quickly sold thousands of copies. Ragtime music was already popular, but the “Maple Leaf Rag” became the standard for the genre. With the royalties he earned, Joplin could now afford to stop playing the piano for a living and concentrate on composing and teaching. “Maple Leaf Rag” also made John Stark a leading publisher in ragtime music. He moved his music store to St. Louis and made music publishing his full-time business.

In 1900 Joplin and his new bride, Belle Hayden, also moved to St. Louis. Stark and Son published “Peacherine Rag” (1901), “The Easy Winner” (1901), “A Breeze From Alabama” (1902), and “The Entertainer” (1902). The Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis inspired Joplin to write a musical tribute to it called “The Cascades” (1904). During his career Joplin would use various other publishers for his many rags, waltzes, songs, and an instruction book, School of Ragtime (1908). He occasionally visited the old St. Louis clubs and saloons to stay in contact with fellow ragtime friends and composers such as Turpin, Louis Chauvin, and Sam Patterson. He also played the “Maple Leaf Rag” and other songs on request.

Two of Joplin’s young Sedalia protégés were Arthur Marshall and Scott Hayden. Joplin’s music influenced both of them, and they collaborated on several musical compositions. Joplin and Hayden produced “Sunflower Slow Drag” (1901), “Something Doing” (1911), “Felicity Rag” (1911), and “Kismet Rag” (1913). Joplin and Marshall collaborated on two compositions: “Swipsey Cake Walk” (1900) and “Lily Queen—A Ragtime Two-Step” (1907). Joplin continued to influence and help other composers of ragtime music, such as James Scott and Joseph Lamb, throughout his career.

In St. Louis, Joplin concentrated on his desire to compose serious classical music. He wrote Ragtime Dance (1902), a nine-page, twenty-minute folk ballet with dancers and singers, which Stark reluctantly published. Popular as a production in Sedalia, it was a failure as sheet music. Joplin then decided to compose a ragtime opera, A Guest of Honor (1903). It was performed once in a St. Louis rehearsal, but Joplin was unsuccessful in finding a backer or publisher for the opera, including Stark. Meanwhile, Joplin’s personal life was not a success either. His wife was not interested in his musical career. After the death of their infant girl, Belle and Joplin separated; she died two years later.

Depressed and discouraged, Joplin moved to Chicago in 1906. He stayed a short time with his friend Marshall, but he wanted to move to New York City. Stark had already opened a new publishing store there in 1905 to compete with the Tin Pan Alley music firms. Joplin finally moved to New York in 1907, and from this base he traveled with vaudeville tours to supplement his income. In 1909 he married Lottie Stokes, a woman who was interested in and supportive of his career. They opened a boarding house, and Joplin continued composing and teaching violin and piano.

Despite his first failures to succeed as a more serious classical composer, Joplin began a three-act opera, Treemonisha (1911), that drew from his experiences growing up on the Texas-Arkansas state border during Reconstruction. Its theme dealt with African American society, superstitions, and the necessity of education to better their lives. Joplin became obsessed with this work, spending much of his time and income on it. Unable to find a publisher for Treemonisha, Joplin copyrighted and published it himself. He even financed a 1915 rehearsal in front of a select audience in Harlem’s Lincoln Theater. Without scenery or costumes and with only Joplin playing the piano, the performance was a failure. Treemonisha’s rejection devastated him.

Although Joplin wrote many new compositions in New York, his health was deteriorating from the advanced stages of syphilis he had contracted earlier in life. He suffered from mood swings and an inability to concentrate. He even had difficulty playing the piano and speaking coherently. Finally, in the fall of 1916, Lottie admitted him to the Manhattan State Hospital on Ward’s Island in the East River where he died on April 1, 1917, from dementia paralytica-cerebra. Lottie buried him in St. Michael’s Cemetery on Long Island.

Significance

Ragtime was the first distinctive American music. Although the height of its popularity lasted for only a short period, from 1896 to 1917, it was a forerunner and influence on other music, especially jazz. It came from the African music, plantation melodies, and folk songs played on banjos and fiddles. It offered exciting, bouncy, and infectious syncopations. Ragtime was not considered respectable by white and black middle- and upper-class society because musicians originally played it in the saloons, bordellos, and sporting clubs of the red-light districts. Despite its disreputable beginning, it eventually became popular and was played by bands and orchestras, in theaters, and on parlor pianos of respectable homes.

Scott Joplin is credited with shaping this new music and influencing other composers and imitators with his sophisticated and classical style. John Stark termed Joplin’s music “classic rag” to sell it as the best type of ragtime music. It combined black folk music and rhythms with nineteenth century European classical music. Joplin raised ragtime from improvised entertainment to his own smooth style of published music. He was serious and less flashy than many of his contemporaries and encouraged his students and performers not to hurry the tempo of his compositions.

Joplin wrote sixty-six published compositions and two operas. Many other unpublished works were lost in the years following Lottie Joplin’s death. When Scott Joplin died, Stark wrote a brief obituary that stated, “Scott Joplin is dead. A homeless itinerant, he left his mark on American music.”

Bibliography

Berlin, Edward A. King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. A comprehensive biography with attention to Joplin’s music. Examines new information from archives and newspapers. Contains photographs, illustrations, alphabetical and chronological listings of Joplin’s works, extensive notes, and bibliography.

Blesh, Rudi, and Harriet Janis. They All Played Ragtime. New York: Oak, 1971. A history of ragtime music and a study of its composers and players. Uses extensive personal interviews and correspondence and includes illustrations, photographs, complete musical scores, and lists of ragtime compositions.

Curtis, Susan. Dancing to a Black Man’s Tune: A Life of Scott Joplin. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994. Scholarly biography with an interpretation of the communities and societies of Joplin’s era. Contains extensive chapter notes and a bibliography.

Gammond, Peter. Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975. A scholastic and historical look at ragtime and Joplin’s works. Contains illustrations and photographs.

Jasen, David A., and Trebor Jay Tichenor. Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History. New York: Seabury Press, 1978. A history of ragtime and a description of the major ragtime composers and their pieces. Contains illustrations and photographs.

Waldo, Terry. This Is Ragtime. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1976. A history of ragtime music. Includes illustrations, photographs, bibliography, and a select discography.