Scott Joplin was the “king of ragtime,” a musical genre popularized in the U.S. in the early 20th century. Born in the late 1860s somewhere around Texarkana, Joplin began playing the piano as a child and was a traveling musician by the time he was a teen. Over the next few decades, Joplin became the best-known ragtime composer, writing “The Entertainer,” and “The Maple Leaf Rag,” the biggest-selling ragtime song in history. Joplin also wrote longer compositions, including the opera “Treemonisha,” before his death in 1917.
In 1973, “The Entertainer” was used as the theme song for The Sting, the hit movie starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Joplin’s music was suddenly all the rage again, and in 1976, Joplin was awarded a special posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his work that influenced so much American music.
Around the time “The Entertainer” was making its comeback, I was starting piano lessons—not because I had any interest in learning to play the piano but because my mother had an interest in me playing the piano. Unfortunately, I was quite the disappointment. My skills never advanced very far because I didn’t like my teacher and I didn’t like to practice. But I did like “The Entertainer.” So I acquired some simplified sheet music and determined to learn that one song. Although I never mastered the whole piece, I was eventually able to play the opening section fairly well. And that made my mother happy. Thank you, Mr. Joplin, for giving that little gift to me and my mother.
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