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Although some revisionist historians have placed the birth of ragtime at the feet of white composers, such as Irving Berlin, who published "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911, the true origin of the music was to be found in these low rent musical halls. In a move not uncommon for young blacks at the time, Joplin left home in his early teens, working as an itinerant pianist at honky-tonks and salons of the Midwest, South, and Southwest.
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A local German musician, similarly entranced with Scott Joplin's gift, gave the boy free lessons, teaching him the works of European composers, as well as the nuts and bolts of musical theory and harmony. At first, Giles Joplin was concerned that music would sidetrack his son from a solid, wage-earning trade, but he soon saw the clear inventive genius in Scott, who, by the time he was 11, was playing and improvising with unbelievable smoothness. Scott, whose first foray into the world of scales and half notes came on the guitar, discovered a richer lyrical agent in his neighbor's piano. Like many in the black community, the Joplins saw in music a rewarding tool of expression, and the talented family was sought out to perform at weddings, funerals, and parties. Florence Givens Joplin was a freeborn black woman who worked as a laundress and cared for her children. Joplin's father, Giles, was a railroad laborer who was born into slavery and obtained his freedom five years before his son's birth. He was born November 24, 1868, in Texarkana, a small city straddling the border of Texas and Arkansas. Many of the details of Joplin's life, like much of his music, have been lost to history. Sadly, for all his accomplishments in putting a new musical form on the map, Joplin spent his final years madly obsessed with a fruitless crusade to enter, if not conquer, another arena: opera, the staid, classical venue accepted by a white community that had for so long ridiculed ragtime as cheap, vulgar, and facile black music. It was Joplin's short, hard-driving melodies-and the syncopated backbone he furnished themthat helped define the musical parameters of ragtime, a style that gave voice to the African American experience during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Berlin and information about the annual Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, Missouri.Scott Joplin personified ragtime he was its chief champion, the figure most closely associated with its composition. This site includes a detailed biography by Edward A. This website provides photographs of the Joplin house in St. This website provides a biography of Joplin as well as a thorough explanation of ragtime music.
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This site is full of information about Scott Joplin and other ragtime musicians. The Society is not responsible for the content of the following websites: These links, which open in another window, will take you outside the Society’s website. This collection includes sheet music for six Joplin compositions: “The Favorite,” “Felicity Rag,” “Leola,” “Maple Leaf Rag,” “Palm Leaf Rag,” and “Stoptime Rag.” Includes printed brochures regarding ragtime, jazz, and Scott Joplin. Shoemaker, Columbia, MO, from Venice, CA, about ragtime musician Scott Joplin. Campbell, Sanford Brunson, Papers, 1947 (C3204).“Ragtime Struts Back Home.” Missouri Life. Missouri Historical Society, Spring 1994. “Scott Joplin and Sedalia: The King of Ragtime in the Queen City of Missouri.” Gateway Heritage. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994. Dancing to a Black Man’s Tune: A Life of Scott Joplin.
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Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999. “Scott Joplin House State Historic Site.” Missouri Resource Review. King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era.
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Louis and Scott Joplin: Atlanta Revives Opera Composed Here by ‘King of Ragtime.’” An editorial reprinted from St. “The King of Rag-Time Composers is Scott Joplin, a Colored St. “Respectability for ‘King of Ragtime.’” Kansas City Times. “Most Famous Joplin Number Written Here.” Sedalia Democrat.
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