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Scott Joplin, King Of Ragtime, Is Born

Scott Joplin, Ragtime composer and pianist, is born in Northeast Texas.

Near the turn of the 20th century when Joplin publishes his seminal ragtime tune "Maple Leaf Rag," the genre is already sweeping the nation with its ragged rhythms and offbeat melodies, often banged out on barroom pianos. But Joplin, who cultivates his style as a traveling musician throughout the Midwest, seeks to elevate ragtime as a classical style. Shortly after issuing his first rag, "Original Rags," in 1899, Joplin presents "Maple Leaf Rag" to Missouri publisher John Stark, who offers the composer a contract with a one-cent royalty for each copy sold. Although lofty claims are made about the rag's sales - supposedly it's the first instrumental to sell a million copies - Joplin's biographer Edward Berlin asserts the initial run of 400 takes a year to sell and maybe hits half a million by 1909. Nevertheless, the tune becomes the archetypal rag that every pianist tries to play and every ragtime composer tries to recreate. Hailed as the King of Ragtime, Joplin continues to release famous rags like "The Entertainer," "March Majestic" and the concert waltz "Bethena," but the composer's focus shifts to opera. After a disappointing first turn with the doomed A Guest of Honor, which closes after the theft of its box office receipts, Joplin becomes obsessed with his next opera, Treemonisha. Unfortunately, Joplin never gets to see a full staging of the show; he dies of syphilitic dementia in 1917 at age 48. As ragtime falls out of favor, so does Joplin. By the 1970s, only ragtime enthusiasts remember the composer until a series of unrelated events thrusts the genre and its king back into the spotlight: Musicologist Joshua Rifkin releases an album of Joplin's rags, which becomes a surprise best-seller; the renowned New England Conservatory of Music presents a Joplin-themed concert; Georgia's Morehouse College gives Treemonisha its first full staging; and the Paul Newman/Robert Redford film The Sting (1973) borrows "The Entertainer" as its theme and spawns a #1 hit soundtrack with Marvin Hamlisch's adaptations of Joplin's rags. The posthumous fame wouldn't be a surprise to the late composer, who often claimed he wouldn't get his due until his death. In 1976 - nearly 60 years after his passing - Joplin is awarded with a Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to American music.

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