Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin (Born between June
1867 and January
1868 [
1] – died
April 1,
1917) was an
African American musician and
composer of
ragtime music. He remains the best-known ragtime figure and is regarded as one of the three most important composers of classic ragtime, along with
James Scott and
Joseph Lamb.
Joplin was born in
Linden, Texas to Florence Givins and Giles (sometimes listed as "Jiles") Joplin. He was the second of six children. While for many years his date of birth was thought to be
November 24,
1868, new research by ragtime historian
Ed Berlin has revealed that this is inaccurate.
After 1871 the Joplin family moved to
Texarkana, Texas and Scott's mother cleaned homes so Scott could have a place to practice his music. By
1882 his mother had purchased a piano. Showing musical ability at an early age, the young Joplin received piano lessons for free from a German music teacher,
Julius Weiss, who gave him a well-rounded knowledge of classical music form. This is something that would serve him well in later years, and fuel his ambition to create a "classical" form of ragtime. He would later further his musical education by attending George R. Smith College in
Sedalia, studying composition.
By the late
1880s Joplin had left home to start a life of his own. He may have joined or formed various quartets and other musical groups and traveled around the midwest to sing. What is known is that he was part of a minstrel troupe in
Texarkana around
1891. In
1895, Joplin was in
Syracuse, New York, selling two songs, "Please Say You Will" and "A Picture of Her Face".
But despite all this traveling, his home was in
Sedalia, Missouri where he moved in
1894, working as a pianist in the Maple Leaf and Black 400 clubs, both social black clubs for respectable gentlemen.
By
1898 Joplin had sold six pieces for the piano. Of the six, only "Original Rags", a compilation of existing melodies which he wrote collaboratively, is a ragtime piece. The other five were two songs (mentioned previously), two
marches, and a
waltz.
In
1899, Scott Joplin sold what would become his most famous piece, "
Maple Leaf Rag" to
John Stark & Son, a Sedalia, Missouri, music publisher. Joplin received a one-cent royalty for each copy and ten free copies for his own use as well as an advance. It has been estimated that Joplin made $360 per year on this piece in his lifetime.
"Maple Leaf Rag" boosted Joplin to the top of the list of ragtime performers and moved ragtime into prominence as a musical form.
With a growing national reputation on the success of "Maple Leaf Rag", Joplin moved to
St. Louis in early 1900 with his new wife, Belle. While living there between 1900-1903, he produced some of his best-known works, including "
The Entertainer", "Elite Syncopations", "March Majestic" and "Ragtime Dance".
Joplin had several marriages. Perhaps his dearest love, Freddie Alexander, died at age twenty of complications resulting from a cold, just two months after marrying Joplin. The first work copyrighted after Freddie's death, "Bethena" (1905), is a very sad, musically complex ragtime waltz.
After months of faltering, Joplin continued writing and publishing. In those days before recorded music, he was a best-selling composer of sheet music. Joplin, with much hard work, produced the unrecognized but award-winning opera
Treemonisha. The score to an earlier ragtime opera by Joplin,
A Guest of Honor, is lost.
Joplin wanted to experiment further with compositions like
Treemonisha, but by
1916 he was suffering from the effects of terminal
syphilis. He suffered later from
dementia,
paranoia, paralysis and other symptoms. Despite this, he recorded six
piano rolls that year — "Maple Leaf Rag" (for Connorized and Uni-Record labels), "Something Doing", "Magnetic Rag", "Ole Miss Rag", and "Pleasant Moments" (all for Connorized). These are the only records of his playing we have, and are interesting for the embellishments added by Joplin to his performances. A surviving copy of the "Pleasant Moments" roll has not yet been discovered. It has been claimed that the uneven nature of some of Joplin's piano rolls, such as one of the recordings of "Maple Leaf Rag" mentioned above, documented the extent of Joplin's physical deterioration due to syphilis. However, the irregularities are just as likely due to the primitive technology used to record the rolls.
In mid-January
1917 Joplin was hospitalized at
Manhattan State Hospital in
New York City, and friends recounted that he would have bursts of lucidity in which he would jot down lines of music hurriedly before relapsing. Joplin died there on
April 1,
1917. Joplin was 49 or 50 years of age, as his exact birthdate is unknown.
Joplin's death did not make the headlines for two reasons: ragtime was quickly losing ground to
jazz and the United States would enter
World War I within days. He was buried in St. Michael's Cemetery in the
Astoria section of
Queens.
Joplin's musical papers, including unpublished manuscripts, were willed to Joplin's friend and the executor of his will, musician and composer
Wilber Sweatman. Sweatman took care of these papers and generously shared access to them to those who enquired. However these were unfortunately few, since Joplin's music had come to be considered passé. After Sweatman's death in
1961 the papers were last known to go into storage during a legal battle among Sweatman's heirs; their current location is not known, nor even if they still exist.
There was, however, an important find in
1971 — a piano-roll copy of the lost "Silver Swan Rag," cut sometime around
1914. It had not been published in sheet-music form in Joplin's lifetime. Before this, his only posthumously published piece had been "Reflection Rag", published by Stark in
1917 from an older manuscript he'd kept back.
Joplin's music remained popular for the years to come.
Marvin Hamlisch's adaptation of the Joplin rag "The Entertainer" reached number 3 on the
Billboard magazine Hot 100 music chart in
1974, and a much wider and deeper interest in ragtime in general and Joplin in particular was created.
Ironically, this interest stemmed from Hamlisch's arrangements and performances of Joplin's rags in the popular and
Oscar-winning film,
The Sting, which was set in the 1930s, well past the peak of the ragtime era.
In 1974 Kenneth MacMillan created a ballet for the Royal Ballet,
Elite Syncopations, based on tunes by Joplin, Max Morath and others. It is still performed occasionally.
Scott Joplin has a star on the
St. Louis Walk of Fame.
A
Saturday Night Live sketch featured "time-travelling" Scott Joplin, portrayed by
Maya Rudolph.
Antoinette (1906)
Augustan Club Waltz (1901)
Bethena (1905)
Binks' Waltz (1905)
A Breeze From Alabama (1902)
Cascades (1904)
The Chrysanthemum (1904) dedicated to Freddie Alexander, Joplin's second wife.
Cleopha (1902)
Combination March (1896)
Country Club (1909)
The Great Crush Collision March (1896)
The Easy Winners (1901)
Elite Syncopations (1902)
The Entertainer (1902)
Eugenia (1906)
Euphonic Sounds (1909)
The Favorite (1904)
Felicity Rag (1911) with Scott Hayden
Fig Leaf Rag (1908)
Gladiolus Rag (1907)
Harmony Club Waltz (1896)
Heliotrope Bouquet (1907) with Louis Chauvin
I Am Thinking of My Pickanniny Days (1902) lyrics by Henry Jackson
Kismet Rag (1913) with Scott Hayden
Leola (1905)
Lily Queen (1907) with Arthur Marshall
Little Black Baby (1903) lyrics by Louis Armstrong Bristol
Magnetic Rag (1914)
Maple Leaf Rag (1899)
March Majestic (1902)
The Nonpareil (1907)
Original Rags (1899) arranged by Chas. N. Daniels
Palm Leaf Rag (1903)
Paragon Rag (1909)
Peacherine Rag (1901)
A Picture of Her Face (1895)
Pine Apple Rag (1908)
Pleasant Moments (1909)
Please Say You Will (1895)
The Ragtime Dance (1902)
The Ragtime Dance (1906) this version was shortened and published to recoup losses from the 1902 version.
Reflection Rag (1917) posthumous publication
The Rose-bud March (1905)
Rose Leaf Rag (1907)
Sarah Dear (1905) lyrics by Henry Jackson
School of ragtime (1908)
Searchlight Rag (1907)
Silver Swan Rag (1971) posthumous publication
Solace (1909)
Something Doing (1903) with Scott Hayden
Stoptime Rag (1910)
The Strenuous Life (1902)
Sugar Cane (1908)
Sunflower Slow Drag (1901) with Scott Hayden
Swipesy (1900) with Arthur Marshall
The Sycamore (1904)
Treemonisha (1911)
Wall Street Rag (1909)
Weeping Willow (1903)
When Your Hair Is Like the Snow (1907) lyrics by "Owen Spendthrift"
*
Maple Leaf Rag first section,
Ogg Vorbis format, 17 seconds, 148 KB (
info...)
Edward A. Berlin,
King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era (ISBN 0195101081) — the most authoritative book on Joplin's life.
*
Joplin Myths*
Scott Joplin: King of Ragtime (1868-1917)*
A good overview of Joplin's life and work*
Brief biography of Scott Joplin*
St. Louis Walk of Fame*
The Mutopia project has freely downloadable piano scores of several of Joplin's works
*
The Werner Icking Music Archive provides free scores of some piano ragtimes
*
Scott Joplin at Find-A-Grave*
Scott Joplin at PianoVault has sheet music and MIDIs for all of Joplin's piano music
