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Jelly Roll Morton

Scott Joplin
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The St. Louis School

Ragtime seems to have developed in the two decades preceding the turn of the century, but exactly where is open to speculation. However, it was the natural outgrowth of the musical history of black Americans. Slave music was often performed so that the percussive element was taken over by foot stomping, an element incorporated into ragtime by the left hand, freeing the right to perform syncopated melodies.

While there were precursors of ragtime throughout America up to 1890, it was that decade that solidified the musical form. Like many of the pioneer ragtime pianists, many of the early black ragtime music writers were musically illiterate. In this sense, ragtime is very similar to the early history of the blues, where music was learned by playing and not from written music.

Scott Joplin was the most famous ragtime writer and performer. He began performing in 1884 and moved to St. Louis, the capital of ragtime, the next year. A decade later he began publishing the songs that were to be so influential; in 1899 The Maple Leaf Rag came out and was soon followed by the equally popular The Michigan Rag and The Entertainer. Its success helped Joplin become the greatest black musician to that time in American history.

In fact, St. Louis from 1885-1900 was the center of black music in America. As Eileen Southern notes:

"When Joplin arrived at St. Louis in 1885, it was a frontier town with a thriving black population and a prosperous sporting-life district. Chesnut and Market streets were especially notorious for their bawdy houses and saloons, from which came forth the sound of piano thumping day and night. Joplin got a job playing piano in the Silver Dollar, a saloon owned by "Honest" John Turpin, one of the important men of the district. The Turpins - first the father and later the sons - were true patrons of ragtime music; their saloons and clubs provided hospitable centers for local and visiting pianists, places where they could exchange ideas and engage in friendly competition."

Thomas Turpin, the father, besides owning several saloons, was the "Father of St. Louis Ragtime" and an accomplished ragtime pianist and composer himself, penning the famous St. Louis Rag and Harlem Rag among others. With a patron (Turpin) and a star performer (Joplin), it is no surprise that St. Louis became the center of the ragtime universe. The St. Louis School of Ragtime, as it became known, besides Joplin and Turpin, embraced such piano luminaries as James Sylvester Scott, Scott Hayden, Arthur Marshall, Charlie Warfield, and Otis Saunders, among others.

St. Louis held a big ragtime contest in 1904 to coincide with the World's Fair, a contest frequented by such luminaries as the legendary jazz/blues/ragtime pianoman Jelly Roll Morton and won by another New Orleans ragtime pianist named Alfred Wilson. By 1906, with ragtime on the wane, the St. Louis school slowly broke up and drifted apart. Three decades later, however, the legacy of great piano in St. Louis was reignited by the influx of some of the greatest blues pianists of the era. In this way ragtime indeed paved the way for the blues, despite the fact that both musical forms probably developed around the same time.

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