Scott Joplin

Scott Joplin, born in the Texarkana area of Texas between the summer of 1867 and January 1868, was an American composer and pianist whose work defined the ragtime era. Known as the "King of Ragtime," he composed more than forty ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. His Broadway credits include Treemonisha, for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score in 1976.

Joplin was the second of six children born to Giles Joplin, a former slave from North Carolina, and Florence Givens, a freeborn African-American woman from Kentucky. His father played violin and his mother sang and played banjo, giving Joplin an early musical foundation. From the age of seven, he was permitted to play piano while his mother worked as a cleaner. His most significant early teacher was Julius Weiss, a German-born Jewish music professor employed by a prominent local business family, who taught Joplin free of charge from approximately ages eleven to sixteen, introducing him to folk music, classical music, and opera. Weiss also helped Florence acquire a used piano for her son. Joplin maintained gratitude toward Weiss throughout his life, sending him money in his old age until Weiss died.

By his mid-teens, Joplin was performing in a vocal quartet in and around Texarkana and teaching guitar and mandolin. In the late 1880s, he left Texarkana to travel the American South as a musician, playing pre-ragtime piano in various venues across the mid-South. In 1893, he traveled to Chicago for the World's Fair, where he formed a band, played cornet, and arranged the group's music. The exposition, attended by approximately twenty-seven million visitors, contributed significantly to spreading ragtime's popularity, and by 1897 the genre had become a national phenomenon.

Joplin settled in Sedalia, Missouri, in 1894, where he worked as a piano teacher and performed at local clubs including the Black 400 Club and the Maple Leaf Club. He also performed with the Queen City Cornet Band and led his own six-piece dance orchestra. His first published compositions, the songs "Please Say You Will" and "A Picture of Her Face," appeared in 1895. Among his piano students in Sedalia were future ragtime composers Arthur Marshall, Brun Campbell, and Scott Hayden. He also enrolled at George R. Smith College to study harmony and composition. In 1899, his "Maple Leaf Rag" was published, bringing him both fame and a reliable income, and it became the genre's first widely influential hit.

In 1901, Joplin relocated to St. Louis, and two years later completed his first opera, A Guest of Honor. The work was confiscated along with his belongings due to unpaid bills and is now considered lost. In 1907, he moved to New York City in an unsuccessful effort to find a producer for a new opera. By 1916, Joplin had descended into dementia caused by neurosyphilis, and he died on April 1, 1917, a date widely regarded as marking the close of the ragtime era.

Joplin's music experienced a major revival in the early 1970s, beginning with a million-selling album recorded by Joshua Rifkin. The 1973 film The Sting, which won the Academy Award and incorporated several of his compositions, further renewed public interest in his work. His second opera, Treemonisha, received its production in 1972 and subsequently reached Broadway, earning Joplin a Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score in 1976. That same year, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.