In the past I have referred to classical music as written by “Those Old Dead White Guys”. This week as I was about to hand a student a Sonatina by Clementi, I could see the look on his face and pulled the piece of music back and said how would you like to play a piece by “That Old Dead Black Guy”. While he still had the puzzled look on his face, I handed him a copy of The Entertainer. Even in his short sheltered suburban life he had heard about this song but did not know where.
The name Scott Joplin is familiar but not many people can place it. However, for musicians, Scott Joplin’s music constitutes its own genre of music – Ragtime. Scott Joplin created this genre and since then no one has been able to compose decent supplements to Ragtime. Scott Joplin was an original, and not duplicated since.
Joplin was born in 1868 in Texarkana, Texas to an ex slave from North Carolina and a free black woman from Kentucky. His father was a laborer for the railroads and his mother cleaned houses. She would bring Scott along on her cleaning jobs where the rich families usually had musical instruments for Scott to play while her mother cleaned. This gave Scott and early glimpse into the power of music but not much in the way of real learning.
However there was a man in Texarkana, George Weiss, who heard Scott playing and took a real interest in Scott’s development. Mr. Weiss, was a German Jew who was a professor of music in Germany but left for the relatively unbiased America and settled in Texarkana. It was George Weiss who gave Scott his true musical training for free and even got Scott a piano of his own. Without George Weiss it is probable that no one would have ever heard of Scott Joplin. However, Joplin recognized the importance of Weiss in his life and continued to send money to Weiss in his later years even to Joplin’s own financial stress.
Joplin, in his 20’s took to the road playing in bars and brothels across the south and finally settling in St. Louis. It was a lonely and financially unrewarding career as black musicians were not well received. It was in 1893 when Joplin went to the Chicago World Fair that he was finally recognized for his genius. Of the millions of visitors to the fair many hear Scott playing in nightclubs and fell in love with Ragtime music. In 1899 Maple Leaf Rag was published and became the first piece of sheet music to sell a million copies and subsequently most of his other ragtime compositions were published included two of his more famous, The Entertainer and Easy Winners.
Like other musicians we have studied in this series, Joplin’s personal life was typical. He was married three times and partook of the favors of the brothels where he performed. He moved to New York City in 1907 where he tried to write opera’s consistent with Black culture of the time. He did this in honor of his mentor, George Weiss, who had loved German Operas. However, the world was not ready for Black Operas and his works were profound failures. It was in NYC when syphilis ravaged Joplin’s body and mind and he was committed to a mental hospital and he died in 1917 at age 49 and was buried in a pauper’s grave. It was not until 1973 when the movie Sting came out featuring Joplin’s music that his grave was found and a proper headstone laid.
It is interesting to me to see how the Classical music world has come to adopt Joplin as a true musical genius and has put his music on the same level as other modern composers like Debussy and Rachmaninoff. Here are YouTube videos of two of Scott Joplin’s most famous rags played by Joplin himself and recorded via piano rolls.
The Entertainer