Black History Month continues, remembering the ‘King of Ragtime’

Scott Joplin was an African American composer and pianist also known as “King of Ragtime”. Though his exact birth location is unknown, it is likely he was born in the black colony of Shiloh, between Linden and Atlanta. Joplin’s legacy continues through the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, Missouri.

According to Biography.com, “Joplin’s exact date of birth and location is not known, though it is estimated that he was born between the summer of June 1867 and January 1868. Born to Florence Givens and Giles Joplin.” However, his official birthday is November 24, 1868.”

When Joplin was still a young child, Joplin’s family left the farm and moved to the newly established town of Texarkana, Texas. There, his musical family became railroad workers.

However, it was in the home where his mother worked that Joplin gained access to a piano and he taught himself the rudiments of music. His talents were noticed there by a local German-born music teacher, Julius Wiess. While in Texarkana, he formed a vocal quartet and taught mandolin and guitar.

During the late 1880s, it was noted that he left his job as a railroad laborer and traveled through the South as a traveling musician. In 1893 he went to Chicago for the World’s Fair, where he played a major part in making ragtime a national craze by 1897.

“In 1893, he attended the Chicago Columbian Exposition in Chicago where he heard music from around the world and he was especially interested in an emerging form called syncopation. After the Fair, he came to Sedalia where he easily found employment, signed on to play with the Queen City Concert Band and attended music classes at the all-Negro George R. Smith College. Joplin also gave piano lessons and taught two young men so well (Arthur Marshall and Scott Hayden), they would become collaborators,” notes ScottJoplin.org

It was noted in Biography.com that Joplin “immersed himself in the emerging musical form known as ragtime and became the genre’s foremost composer with tunes like ‘The Entertainer,’ ‘Solace’ and ‘The Maple Leaf Rag,’ which is the biggest-selling ragtime song in history. Joplin also penned the operas Guest of Honor and Treemonisha.”

According to historical citations, Joplin moved to New York City in 1907 to try something new and find a producer for a new opera. but unfortunately, with little monetary success. His second opera, Treemonisha, was never fully staged during his life.

In 1916, Joplin succumbed to dementia from neurosyphilis. He was admitted to Manhattan State Hospital in January 1917 and died there three months later at the young age of 48.

Joplin’s death is widely considered to mark the end of ragtime as a mainstream music format; over the next several years, it evolved with other styles into stride, jazz and eventually big band swing.

At the time of his death, he was almost forgotten but Joplin never slipped into oblivion, his maple leaf rag continued to exercise its magic on successive generations of musicians and music lovers.

In the 1970’s Joplin’s became popular again with the album by Joshua Rifkin that sold over a million albums. This was later followed by the Academy Award-winning 1973 film The Sting, which featured several of Joplin’s compositions, most notably “The Entertainer”, the piece performed by pianist Marvin Hamlisch.

Of note, Treemonisha. Joplin’s Opera was finally produced in full, to wide acclaim, in 1972. In 1976, Joplin was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

Recently “In 2015, a new collaborative initiative happened to bring together the Liberty Center Association for the Arts, the Scott Joplin International Ragtime Festival and the Sedalia Heritage Foundation and its Ragtime Archive Project,” notes on ScottJoplin.org. “In 2016, Sedalia’s Central Business and Cultural District became involved by erecting a plaque at 114 East Fifth Street, the former address of John Stark’s business where he and Joplin executed the Maple Leaf Rag publishing contract.”