Scott Joplin
From Philosopedia
Scott Joplin (born between June 1867 and January 1868 - died 1 April 1917)
Joplin, the best-known ragtime figure and a major composer along with James Scott and Joseph Lamb of classic ragtime, was born in Linden, Texas, the second of six children. The possible birthdate is 24 November 1868.
Joplin's early musical career took place in centers of entertainment, not in church. He played piano in a brothel, and in a club (the famous Maple Leaf) that was shut down due to pressure from local churches, whose pastors were ashamed of the "iniquitous practices" (dancing and cards) taking place there. Ragtime was America's first uniquely national style of music.
Joplin, born in Texas and raised in Missouri, did not invent ragtime, but it was his compositions that propelled the style to national prominence, especially after his 1899 "Maple Leaf Rag" became a huge hit, followed by dozens more, including "The Entertainer," which is still popular today.
He arrived in New York in 1907 and lived in an old brownstone converted to a rooming house at 128 West 29th Street, a building that no longer stands Tin Pan Alley, technically refers to the block of 28th Street from Broadway to the Avenue of the Americas, so he lived nearby. In the 1910 census, he gave "composer" and "musician" as his occupation, but most of his fellow tenants had service jobs, like houseman and porter. From 1912 to 1915 he lived in a small apartment house that still stands at 252 West 47th. It was at that address that he formed the Scott Joplin Music Publishing Company with Lottie Stokes, his common-law wife. While in the city, according to Christopher Gray (The New York Times, 4 February 2007), he wrote pieces like "Rose Leaf Rag" and "Fig Leaf Rag" but was unable to find a backer for an opera that he envisioned, "Treemonisha." For most of his time in Manhattan, he lived in what Edward A. Berlin's King of Ragtime - Scott Joplin and His Era (Oxford, 1994) called "straightened circumstances." He also lived at 133 West 138th St and 160 West 133rd. Ms. Stokes ran a boarding house in the old brownstone at 163 West 131st St., which was his address when he died of syphilis on 1 April 1917, at age 49.
In Treemonisha, an opera dealing with the fact that the African-American community was still living in ignorance, superstition, and misery, Joplin tells his audience that the way out of this condition is through education. He does not propose religion as the solution. "Ignorance is criminal," he tells us. Treemonisha, a woman who promotes education, is a leader who is more persuasive than the useless pastor in town. To the conjurer Zodzetrick, she says: "You have lived without working for many years, All by your tricks of conjury. You have caused superstition and many sad tears. You should stop, you are doing great injury." Revealing a freethought attitude, Joplin named the pastor "Parson Alltalk" - all he does is talk and exhort the people to be good; he is totally ineffectual, unable to see the people's real needs and, being uneducated, unable to provide leadership. The opera contains no gospel music, no hymns or religious melodies that would have been expected of such a community.
Whatever Joplin’s private views may have been, his music was not inspired by religion. “There is no harm in musical sounds,” he is quoted by Edward A. Berlin as having said, reflecting the view of many composers that music simply speaks for itself. “It matters not whether it is fast ragtime or a slow melody like ‘The Rosary’,” Joplin continued, implying that there is no such thing as religious, or nonreligious, music. Music is music.
{Dan Barker, FFRF; Edward A. Berlin, King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era (Oxford University Press, 1994).}
Joplin's Death
Joplin's death did not make the headlines for two reasons: ragtime was quickly losing ground to jazz and the United States would enter World War I within days.
After his death from syphilis, he was buried in St. Michael's Cemetery in the Astoria section of Queens, a borough of New York City.
