Scott Joplin
(1867-1917)
Scott Joplin was known as the "King of Ragtime" music.
His father was a slave and his mother was a free-born black woman. Both parents were reputed to have been musical, and two of Joplin's five siblings became musical performers.
When Joplin was young, he played the banjo and piano. As a teenager, he worked as a dance musician.
When Joplin was about 20 he settled in the St. Louis, MO area. There he studied and led in the development of music now known as RAGTIME - a unique blend of European classical music (much like Vivaldi) combined with African American harmony and rhythm.
Ragtime emerged in the early 1890s and became known to the public at the world's fair held in Chicago in 1893.
In the late 1890s, Joplin worked at the Maple Leaf Club in Sedalia which provided the title for his best known composition, the Maple Leaf Rag, published in 1899. This was followed a few years later by The Entertainer, another well known Joplin composition. Over the next fifteen years, Joplin composed over sixty more songs.
In 1911, Joplin moved to New York City, where he produced the opera Treemonisha, the first opera composed by an African American. At the time, however, this opera was not successful.
Although Joplin's music was popular and he received modest royalties during his lifetime, he was not known as a serious composer for more than fifty years after his death.
Listen to Scott Joplin's Music: