The Magical ‘Maple Leaf Rag’

With a cascade of notes, Joplin created an American classic.

By Neely tucker
▪ Scott Joplin and John Stark submitted this printed copy of “Maple Leaf Rag” to the U.S. Copyright Office at the Library in 1899. Music Division
In the final year of the 19th century, a little-known pianist and composer named Scott Joplin and a Missouri music publisher named John Stark sent a small package to the U.S. Copyright Office at the Library.

Tucked inside were two copies of sheet music for a highly syncopated, upbeat piano piece with intense flurries of notes — more than 2,000 in a song that took less than three minutes to perform. It was called “Maple Leaf Rag,” and it blew the doors off everything.

“Maple” sold 75,000 copies of sheet music in six months and went on to sell millions both as sheet music and in dozens of recordings. It changed the lives of both men and changed popular music. It became the signature piece of ragtime, which itself lent its name to an era of American life and helped set the foundations for jazz.

Joplin, who was born in 1868 in northeast Texas, wrote dozens of ragtime pieces, a ballet and two operas and eventually became regarded as one of the nation’s most significant composers. Decades after his death, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for “his contributions to American music” and honored with a postage stamp. The Library’s National Recording Registry included his work in its inaugural class of 2002.

But when Joplin died in 1917 in New York — of syphilis, at 48, after nearly a decade of illness — he was destitute and largely forgotten. Only a few photographs of him survive, and no recordings of his voice or of him playing the piano exist. The only echo of him at the keyboard are heavily edited player piano rolls, preserved in the recording registry.

Like legendary New Orleans jazz trumpet player Buddy Bolden, who also died without a recording, Joplin seemed to fall into the long shadows of American history, a figure composed of equal parts man and myth.

So, it’s quite the feeling today to walk into the Music Division and see, resting on a table, the two copies of “Maple” that Joplin and Stark had printed and mailed to the Library in 1899.

Now 125 years old, they’re a bit faded and sepia-toned, the edges a little ragged. The cover features crudely drawn images of two well-dressed black couples out for a night on the town — common to the era but seen as cartoonish and racist today — taken from a tobacco advertisement. It credits Joplin as composer just below the title. It sold for 50 cents, and Joplin got a penny from every sale. It made him moderately well off for several years.

A black-and-white oval-framed portrait of Scott Joplin, the African American composer and pianist known for his ragtime music. He is wearing a formal suit with a high-collared shirt and a patterned tie.
▪ One of the few known photographs of Joplin, published in a 1907 issue of The American Musician and Art Journal. Music Division
When you gently open the cover, you see the cascade of musical notes running up and down the staffs, showcasing the complicated, joyful, bouncing piece that so delighted audiences. The prevailing popular music of the time tended to be sentimental; this had to land like a lightning bolt.

Though much of Joplin’s life is lost to the era, the Library documents much of ragtime’s history and some of his. There are other early copies of “Maple” and his other sheet music; a 1907 copy of The American Musician and Art Journal that has one of the few known photos of Joplin; and the oldest known recording of “Maple,” in 1906 by the Marine Corps Band.

The Library also has the adaptations of Joplin’s work that Marvin Hamlisch turned into the Oscar-winning score for the hit 1973 film “The Sting.” (There also is the Oscar statuette itself.) The soundtrack, composed almost entirely of Joplin tunes, topped the Billboard Hot 100 for five straight weeks in 1974, stirring a new appreciation of Joplin’s work 57 years after his death.

Joplin’s prime years were in Missouri and the last decade of his life was in New York City, but his music captured something timeless in the American imagination.

—Neely Tucker is a writer-editor in the Office of Communications.
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