Scott Joplin's Legacy and the Evolution of Ragtime
Mar 30, 2024
Harriet
Step right up to the grand stage of history as we celebrate the life and tunes of Scott Joplin, the undisputed 'King of Ragtime'. I, Harriet Westmore, invite you into a bygone era where the syncopated rhythms of ragtime set the foundation for the jazz music we adore. Follow Joplin's remarkable journey from the bars and dance halls of his youth to his monumental success with the "Maple Leaf Rag". We'll uncover the man behind the music, his role as a ragtime teacher, and his innovative forays into ballet and opera. This episode is a heartfelt tribute to Joplin's enduring influence on American culture and the musical tapestry that has colored our past episodes.
As we wind down, let's raise a glass to the vibrant history of ragtime and the stories of resilience behind it. In the spirit of appreciation, I extend my gratitude to you, my dear listeners, for your unwavering support. Our shared passion for music is the melody that drives this podcast, and I'm thrilled to announce a little something to help you wear that passion proudly—our new jazz-inspired t-shirt design, a homage to this season's journey. So, as you savor the last notes of today's episode, remember to show your love with a like, subscribe, or even a donation. Here's to the rhythms that connect us and to Scott Joplin, who proved that music is indeed the greatest time traveler.
Step right up to the grand stage of history as we celebrate the life and tunes of Scott Joplin, the undisputed 'King of Ragtime'. I, Harriet Westmore, invite you into a bygone era where the syncopated rhythms of ragtime set the foundation for the jazz music we adore. Follow Joplin's remarkable journey from the bars and dance halls of his youth to his monumental success with the "Maple Leaf Rag". We'll uncover the man behind the music, his role as a ragtime teacher, and his innovative forays into ballet and opera. This episode is a heartfelt tribute to Joplin's enduring influence on American culture and the musical tapestry that has colored our past episodes.
As we wind down, let's raise a glass to the vibrant history of ragtime and the stories of resilience behind it. In the spirit of appreciation, I extend my gratitude to you, my dear listeners, for your unwavering support. Our shared passion for music is the melody that drives this podcast, and I'm thrilled to announce a little something to help you wear that passion proudly—our new jazz-inspired t-shirt design, a homage to this season's journey. So, as you savor the last notes of today's episode, remember to show your love with a like, subscribe, or even a donation. Here's to the rhythms that connect us and to Scott Joplin, who proved that music is indeed the greatest time traveler.
Hello everybody. This is Harriet Westmore with the More Wine and Music podcast, the podcast where I discuss music over a glass of wine. I'm doing something different tonight, so I'm going to be looking at two cameras. I have my phone camera because I'm on Facebook Live. So I'm hoping people would jump in on the Facebook and let me know. I'm trying to see if some comments will come through. All right, I'm gonna give it a few minutes and then I'll start. Happy Friday. I'm glad it's Friday. It's been a long week. I don't know about you, but it's been a long week for me and thank goodness I made it through. Okay, so come on in. Come on in. Come on in. I'm going to be looking at two cameras. I'm looking at my phone because I'm recording this live from the phone and also from the laptop, all right. So if you're here, let me know if you're here. All right, I have two people you haven't already clicked that share and like button. Sharing is caring, so I'm going, like I said, I'm doing two recordings here at the same time. I'm doing the live through the phone and also through my laptop. So if I'm turning my head every now and again, then that's when I'm doing. So I'm hoping people can see me as well on the Facebook Live. If you can just make a comment, I appreciate that, so that way I know that I am going live. I'm not really sure it's really my first time doing it. All right, before I get started into tonight's topic, please donate to buymeacoffeecom backslash more wine and music. That will help keep the content going. I'm three episodes away from end of season two and then I'll be starting season three with another genre, so I would like to bring more content and so donate by meacoffeecom.
Speaker 1:
So can the audio? Can anybody hear me? Anybody hear me? Alright, is that better? I'm trying to bring the mic up closer to Mic up closer to feedback. If anybody, can everybody hear me? I hope. Let me know Facebook. Let me know if you can hear me. If you can not hear me, let me know. Otherwise I'm going to keep going. I'm assuming I'm okay. I'm not hearing any no's. All right, let's get into it tonight. Episode eight Last week I was going to talk about a saxophone player named Frankie Trumbauer, but when I did some research, I mean it really wasn't enough, as most of my uh episodes probably episodes been really short, so I decided to, um, do a little something different and talk about someone different, someone very familiar but yet kind of backtrack a little bit.
Speaker 1:
That started the revolution of jazz. And so I'm going to go back in time a little bit, stuff that happened several years prior into the actual jazz scene, and that is ragtime music. And the first thing those who are out there, the first thing when you hear the name ragtime, what person do you associate, what artist do you associate ragtime with? Put it in the comments, if you know. Can anybody tell me, when you hear the music or the sound or the name of Racktime music, who do you think of? He's very well known Matter of fact. He was considered the father of ragtime. Anybody can tell me. All right, I guess I can't believe no one actually knows, or not saying anything. Louis Armstrong in ragtime, not quite. Someone way before then for him, someone way before Louis Armstrong. We're talking about the turn of the almost the end of the 19th century going into the 20th century Predated jazz. Muddy Waters I'm sorry, no, muddy Waters come from, that's in the blues genre, scatman.
Speaker 1:
No, if I give you the title of the song, you may get it. The title of the song that everybody know is called the Entertainer Anybody? That should be an obvious answer. Let's see, I can't believe it. When you hear the song entertain and don't look it up on Google either. Anybody who's on Google don't look it up. Just take a guess. Anybody remember the song? Was it a movie or a song by the entertainer Rack Time? He's the biggest. Everybody knows. When you hear the name Rack Time Music, everybody should know Zoom suits. Okay, I'm done.
Speaker 1:
No, I'm talking about Scott Joplin. Does anybody know that name? Scott Joplin, the zoot suits. That's the style of the early jazz and that's a Chicago thing too, if I'm not mistaken. But does anybody know the name Scott Joplin? Scott Joplin, yes, he was considered the king of ragtime. How was it going? All right, and that's the end of my humming. Okay, so that's who I'm talking about and that's who I wanted to discuss tonight. He was actually one of the king of the early times, of the genre of ragtime, which predated into the jazz until it became a different upbeat. So it became jazz. So yeah, mr Scott Joplin, I'm still laughing about Muddy Waters. That's blues. All right, scott Joplin was born on, you were singing it, so that counts. Ok, as long as you were singing it. Ok, I'll, I'll, I'll give you that, all right.
Speaker 1:
Mr Scott Joplin was born here again, it's depending on where you look and who you ask. He was born on November 24th, in either 1867 or 1868, in Texarkana, texas, which is a small town that borders guess what? Texas and Arkansas. Hence Texarkana. For those who didn't realize, because if you ever heard of Texarkana and, by the way, if people who have been on this podcast for the past, ever since I started in the blues genre, there was somebody else that was born in Texarkana and that was Blind Lemon Jefferson. If you can recall, back in my first season, when I was talking about the blues, blind Lemon Jefferson was also born in Texarkana, texas. In Texarkana, texas.
Speaker 1:
Okay so, but anyways, scott Joplin, his parents were both musicians, they both had a feel for music. His mother name was Florence Givens and she was actually a singer and she played the banjo, and his father, giles Joplin. He played the violin. So again, another artist who came from a musical family. At a young age he played the guitar and then he switched on and wanted to play the piano. It was during the time when they were living in Texarkana. There was a neighbor who saw young Scott playing really well in the piano and he happened to have been a musician teacher. He taught music. So he kind of took young Scott under his wing and began to mentor him and taught him music. And his name? He was actually a German music instructor and his name was Julius Weiss, music instructor, and his name was Julius Weiss. So through Mr Weiss he was able to perfect his music talent and also he became a vocalist and played the cornet.
Speaker 1:
Now it seems to me that when you play jazz and also ragtime, it seems that the instrument cornet is kind of popular. Because, as we talked about earlier, who was it that started off in the cornet? Actually, louis Armstrong started off, I believe, in the cornet. King Oliver he started off playing the cornet. Actually, louis Armstrong started off, I believe, in the cornet. King Oliver he started off playing the cornet. So I mean, I guess it was one of the popular instruments of the day when he became.
Speaker 1:
When Scott became a teenager, when he became in his teens, he did what most of the young musicians back then did he left home and joined a band and started traveling around and start playing in the local bars and in the dance halls and then it was there while he started learning about the genre, the actual sound of rag, what was called ragtime, what was called rag music. So that's where he pretty much started learning the new sound that was out at that time and it was rag music and, as you, as it was described, you know, it was a kind of a different rhythm and I mean, if you know the song, like the entertainer, I mean it has that gayish type of beat to it, so that's's what. And it was known as rag music. And so he began to hone in on that type of genre because it became popular. And to me it also reminds me of the era which was known as the gay 90s, not 1990s, but the gay 1890s. That was, that whole 10 year era of 1890s was considered, you know, everybody, gay and happy, gay in terms of happy and joyful and jolly and doing all the dancing. And that's really when the ragtime music and the early parts of jazz started to come on the scene.
Speaker 1:
So after a while, scott found his way up in Chicago, but before he went to Chicago he settled. He went to Missouri and settled there, he moved there and settled there for a little bit, and so around 1883. 1883. Through 1890, he wrote and published his first two songs, which was called Please Say you Will, and A Picture of Her Face, and while living in Missouri, he happened to study at the George R Smith for Negroes this is this actual school and that was the name of the school. This is this actual school and that was the name of the school George R Smith for Negroes and that's where he, he studied and he actually became a teacher. He taught there as well and he's taught ragtime music to students and mentored the student, the up and coming young students that were coming up behind him. He would teach them rag, rag style of music.
Speaker 1:
Okay, and so he, you know, during I mean as much of an accomplished composer that he was, it didn't he didn't really start getting popular until he wrote the first hit, which was Maple Leaf Rag, and that gained popularity around 1899, in the late 1890s, so around 1898 and 1899. While he went to, he happened was invited to be a, to join a band and be part of the band and play for the World's Fair in Chicago. Now, if anybody doesn't know, back in the day they used to have these world fairs and these were like fairs that would invite all kinds of people of different nationality and cultures and have this like this exhibition so everybody from around the world would come to. You know the event. Usually it was in Chicago, it could be in New York or whatever year, and it was usually during that time, like in late 19th century into the turn of the 20th century, that they had the World's Fair. So Scott was able to, was invited to play at the World's Fair around in the 1890s. He also was one of the few that was able to.
Speaker 1:
Like I said, he published his first two pieces but unfortunately he didn't get the credit that he deserved, as always. But until he joined a partnership with a guy named John Stark and then, once he joined up with him, this time he kind of got business savvy to where he, whatever song that he composed, he would get royalties, some royalties, from that. So he made sure that he get some kind of compensation and get residual income from the compositions and pieces that he created. At first, when Maple Leaf Rag was put out, I mean, he went on tour, as you know, to push that song out and it didn't catch on. At first it started catching on and then it's. He started to sell a lot of copies and it ended up he sold over a million copies. So it didn't. I couldn't tell how much he I mean you would think he should have gotten a pretty good chunk of change from the sales of that, but I don't know. I'm sure he got something, but it didn't say exactly how much he received.
Speaker 1:
After that, I mean that kind of put him on the scene of being a popular and well-sought author. He wanted to stretch his talent and he started writing for different plays and different opera. So he in 1902, he created a piece of music for a ballet and it was called Ragtime Dance. In 1903, he composed a piece called A Guest of Honor, and that was from there. He took a tour around the Midwest area and unfortunately on this particular tour he met a devastation loss because at one of the theaters where he was performing the box office receipts were stolen. Somebody stole the box office receipts so that that was a financial loss to him and that that really set him back and that that really set him back. So he had to return back to his home in Missouri and you know, kind of regroup and to put on these kind of shows in opera houses and things like that. And so in 1907 in New York, he was able to get enough funding to create a piece for this opera called Trimonisha. Trimonisha was a story about a Black American community near his hometown in Texarkana. So he was able to put on that show and create the music for that particular show. I don't know how it turned out. I hope it was, you know, somewhat of a success for him. But that's how he, you know, he kept expanding himself, expanding himself, and I think that was his actual, his, his claim to fame was able to compose different pieces for different plays and ballet and opera and stuff like that. He, in his later years he continued to compose music and by then he was married on his third wife. Now we don't even know, I don't even know when or how or the circumstances of his first two wives. So he I mean apparently he was married three times. So in 1913, with his third wife, who was named Lottie, they formed a publishing. They create their own publishing company to publish songs and from there, within three years, they publish other people's music as well as their own and all the pieces that he composed and self-published.
Speaker 1:
However, in 1916, scott Joplin became kind of sick and he started getting sick. Didn't know what was going on until he went to the doctor and found out that he was in the early stages of syphilis and he figured it was syphilis that he might have caught earlier, in several years prior to 1916. And if anybody who knows about syphilis, left untreated, it ravages, eventually ravages your brain, you become. You know, I can't understand, I mean it's hard to describe, but they say that if you, you know, left untreated, syphilis does attack the brain to where your brain is pretty much mush after a while. And that's basically what happened with him between 1916 and 1917. He became hospitalized and after a while he had to go to a mental institution and that's where he died. He died on April Fool's Day in 1917 from syphilis and because at that time he was, his brain was far gone. And I think, if I'm not mistaking, I think that's what happened to Al Capone. Al Capone died of syphilis because after a while his you know, he started deteriorating and it attacked his brain and he was pretty much far gone and he eventually died. And I think that's what it was. It was syphilis. So there you have it.
Speaker 1:
Scott Joplin, father of ragtime music. Like I said, I decided to kind of go backwards a little bit to predate music. That really ragtime music, really was the actual start of the music, what we know now as jazz. So I wanted to kind of go back a little bit. All right, next week I'll have we're going into episode number nine.
Speaker 1:
I'll have three more episodes, like I said earlier, and I'm going to, you know, do some familiar the last three episodes. I want to talk about somebody familiar, so I'll either I'm going'm either going to do John Coltrane, which is somebody I personally love. I love his music. I want to do Charlie Parker, who was a phenomenal horn player but he had a rough life. So I'm definitely going to talk about. I'm definitely going to talk about those two and the third person. I'm not really sure yet, but just stay tuned next week One of the two, it'll be either John Coltrane or Charlie Parker, all right.
Speaker 1:
So again, thank you for joining. Also, remember to buymeacoffeecom backslash morewinemusic to help keep the podcast and everything going. Also, hit that share and like button. Subscribe to wwwmorewineandmusiccom, become a member. I'm going to create another t-shirt that's for the genre of jazz. So I'm going to come up with a design and put that for purchase on the wwwmorewineandmusiccom website so that it will reflect season number two for jazz. All right, thank you, and have a good Friday. All right, take care. Bye, thank you.