![]() ![]() He regularly performed it, and several of his other rags, after gleefully swinging out of retirement in his 80s amid the rediscovery of the genre. “Charleston Rag” was apparently one of his earliest pieces, albeit not written down for several years after its composition. “‘Mister Blake! Take that ragtime out of my house!’” he quoted her in numerous interviews, including one with Morath.īlake’s mother probably didn’t expect him to follow her orders literally, but he did: He got a job playing the piano at a Baltimore “sporting house” (bordello) in his mid-teens, and in that same time period he started to compose his own music. But long before Blake made it to Broadway, he was drawing the ire of his devoutly religious mother for syncopating hymns on his family’s small organ. Ragtime was only one component in the tremendous musical life of Eubie Blake, the composer behind the 1921 musical comedy “ Shuffle Along,” which launched the careers of some of the 20th century’s most important Black entertainers including Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson. (Never mind that it was set in the 1930s, when no one would have been listening to ragtime.) In that decade, Boston University professor Joshua Rifkin recorded an album of Joplin’s piano rags for Nonesuch Records, Gunther Schuller founded the New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble, and the use of his music in the best picture-winning heist film “The Sting” launched Marvin Hamlisch’s arrangement of “ The Entertainer” into the Billboard Top 10. ![]() His grave in New York City remained unmarked until the ragtime revival of the 1970s. Joplin also strove to transcend the piano-rag niche, but his first opera was lost shortly after the premiere, and his second, “ Treemonisha,” was never staged during his lifetime despite his best efforts, which ultimately bankrupted him. He railed against those who dismissed ragtime entirely - “syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music,” he wrote - and scorned players who performed rags at flashy, fast tempos. His childhood piano lessons from a German Jewish immigrant had instilled in him a love for European classical music and opera, and the composer yearned to carve out a place in the world of “serious” art music not just for ragtime, but more generally for music that treated Black people with dignity. Here began a pattern that irked Joplin for the rest of his life. In the same year, he completed “The Ragtime Dance,” a “folk-ballet ” with narration and choreography. 18681917) became famous through the publication of the 'Maple Leaf Rag' (1899) and a string of ragtime hits such as 'The Entertainer' (1902), although he was later forgotten by all but a small, dedicated community of ragtime aficionados until the major ragtime revival in the early 1970s. His first hit, “ The Maple Leaf Rag,” went to the presses in 1899. ![]() Joplin eventually settled in Missouri, where his first compositions were picked up for sheet music publication. ![]()
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