60 Fun Facts About Ragtime

What musical term describes ragtime's 'ragged' rhythm, with accents falling between the beats?

Joplin called the effect 'weird and intoxicating' and used the word 'swing' to describe how to play it, decades before swing became a jazz style.

Which pre-ragtime dance form took its name from the prize at plantation dance contests?

It began as a processional partner dance performed with mock formality, and many early rags were written for it.

Ragtime's steady left-hand bass was borrowed from the marches of which American bandleader?

One critic called ragtime an Afro-American version of the polka or the Sousa-style march, with a syncopated melody laid over the top.

Rags were usually written in 4/4 or which other time signature?

Bass notes land on the strong beats and chords on the weak ones; a rag written in triple time is called a ragtime waltz.

Which vaudeville musician first used the word 'ragtime' in 1896 and holds the earliest copyright on a published rag?

His 'You've Been a Good Old Wagon But You Done Broke Down' was registered in Louisville in January 1895, and he later billed himself as ragtime's inventor.

Which St. Louis saloon, run by ragtime pioneer Tom Turpin, was where Joplin and other pianists gathered?

Turpin was so large that his piano sat on blocks so he could play standing up, and Joplin named a 1905 march after the bar.

Which 1893 event, attended by 27 million people, is widely credited with spreading ragtime nationwide?

Joplin led a band there playing cornet, and by 1897 ragtime was a national craze.

Which of the 'Big Three' classic ragtime composers was the only one who was not African American?

He met Joplin in 1907 while buying sheet music at Stark's office, and later spent decades working as an accountant while composing only as a hobby.

Which 1899 Scott Joplin piece became ragtime's first great hit and the model for the classic rag?

The first print run of 400 copies took a year to sell, but the piece brought Joplin a steady income for the rest of his life.

To which Missouri town did Joplin move in 1894, playing at the Black 400 Club and teaching piano?

The town now hosts the Scott Joplin International Ragtime Festival, and his most famous rag was probably named for a club there.

Which music-store owner bought Joplin's 1899 hit and went on to become his most important publisher?

He paid $50 plus royalties, and his son later described Joplin as a mediocre pianist who composed on paper rather than at the keyboard.

Under his 1899 contract, what royalty did Joplin earn on each copy of his most famous rag?

With a minimum sale price of 25 cents, the first 400 copies earned him only a few dollars.

Joplin never made an audio recording. His playing survives on how many piano rolls, all cut in 1916?

Biographers think the rolls capture a man already suffering the tremors of the illness that killed him a year later.

Joplin died in a Manhattan mental hospital in 1917 from the late stage of which disease?

He was 48, and his death is often used to mark the end of the ragtime era.

Joplin was buried in a pauper's grave in Queens. For how many years did it stay unmarked?

The marker finally arrived in 1974, the same year the film built on his music won Best Picture.

Which Joplin opera, about a woman who leads her community against conjurers, was not fully staged until 1972?

Joplin paid to publish the piano-vocal score himself in 1911; a 1915 read-through in Harlem was such a failure that the audience walked out.

In Joplin's 1911 opera, the kidnapped heroine is about to be thrown into what before Remus rescues her?

The scene echoes the Br'er Rabbit briar patch story, one of several African-American folk tales woven into the plot.

Joplin was awarded a special posthumous Pulitzer Prize in which year?

The citation called it a Bicentennial-year award for his contributions to American music, and it honored his opera specifically.

The 1977 biopic Scott Joplin starred which actor as the composer?

Art Carney played his publisher, and a 90-year-old ragtime veteran appeared as the judge of a piano-cutting contest.

Whose 1970 album 'Scott Joplin: Piano Rags' became Nonesuch Records' first million-seller?

The record put ragtime in the classical bins for the first time, and he was later asked (and declined) to score The Sting.

Gunther Schuller's ensemble won a 1973 Grammy for which album of Joplin band arrangements?

The title is the nickname of a Stark collection called Standard High-Class Rags, so called for the color of its covers.

Which Joplin rag, the theme of The Sting (1973), became the top ice cream truck tune?

It was first recorded not on piano but on mandolin and guitar by a group called the Blue Boys in 1928.

Who adapted Joplin's rags for The Sting and won an Academy Award for the score?

Schuller grumbled that he won an Oscar for music he did not write and arrangements he did not make, adding: 'that's show biz'.

The single from The Sting's theme peaked at which position on the Billboard Hot 100 in May 1974?

The New York Times responded that 'the whole nation has begun to take notice' of a composer dead for 57 years.

The Sting is scored with ragtime though it is set in which Depression-era year?

The anachronism never hurt it: the film won seven Oscars including Best Picture and revived Joplin's reputation.

Zez Confrey's 1921 hit 'Kitten on the Keys' popularized which flashy, speed-driven successor to ragtime?

Confrey said the piece was inspired by hearing his grandmother's cat walk across her keyboard.

Which Harlem piano style, developed by James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, is named for the left hand's leaps?

Unlike ragtime players, its pianists improvised freely and applied the style to the pop songs of the day.

Jelly Roll Morton said the 'Spanish tinge' gave his music the rhythm of which dance?

He also claimed to have invented jazz outright in 1902, a boast critics have argued over ever since.

Which ragtime pianist died in 1983, five days after celebrations of his supposed 100th birthday (he was 96)?

Records show he was born in 1887, not the 1883 he claimed, and he had received the Presidential Medal of Freedom two years earlier.

Which 1921 Sissle and Blake revue was the first hit Broadway musical by and about Black Americans?

One of its songs later became Harry Truman's campaign theme in the 1948 presidential election.

Who wrote the 1911 hit 'Alexander's Ragtime Band'?

It is really a march, and its writer later insisted that ragtime and jazz were the same thing.

Which Russian composer wrote 'Piano-Rag-Music' in 1919 and put a rag in L'Histoire du soldat?

European composers likely first heard ragtime at the 1900 Paris Exposition, on a touring American band's visit.

Who wrote the 1975 novel Ragtime, featuring Houdini, J. P. Morgan and Evelyn Nesbit?

He wrote it at his home in New Rochelle, and Bantam paid a record $1.8 million for the paperback rights.

The 1975 novel opens with a Joplin epigraph warning that it is never right to play ragtime how?

The line comes from a note Joplin printed on the sheet music for his 1905 rag 'Leola'.

The novel's unnamed family of Father, Mother and Younger Brother lives in which New York suburb?

The family business is flags and fireworks, an easy fortune in a patriotic era.

What is the name of the novel's ragtime pianist, whose new car is vandalised by a racist fire crew?

When legal redress fails, he bombs firehouses and seizes the Morgan Library, demanding his car be restored.

The novel's vengeful pianist is named in homage to which 1811 Heinrich von Kleist novella?

Kleist's story is about a 16th-century horse dealer whose search for justice against a nobleman turns violent.

In the novel, Father leaves home to join whose expedition to the North Pole?

Peary's assistant Matthew Henson also appears; Mother tastes independence while Father is away and their marriage never recovers.

Father is killed near the novel's end aboard which torpedoed ocean liner?

Mother then marries Tateh, the immigrant artist turned filmmaker, and the blended family moves to California.

Which real-life pair does the novel put together on the Tunnel of Love at Coney Island?

The novel's mash-ups of real figures caused some controversy, but it won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.

Which millionaire husband of Evelyn Nesbit shot architect Stanford White in the 'crime of the century'?

The 1981 film opens with the shooting, and Younger Brother's obsession with Nesbit drives much of his story.

Who directed the 1981 film adaptation of Ragtime?

Altman was originally attached, but producer Dino De Laurentiis fired him after he wanted to shoot the novel as two three-hour films.

Which Hollywood legend left 20 years of retirement to play a 1981 film's police commissioner, his final role?

Hundreds of fans mobbed him when he arrived at Southampton on the QE2, and his role was expanded to give him more screen time.

Which actor made his film debut in the 1981 Ragtime?

Samuel L. Jackson, Fran Drescher and John Ratzenberger also had early roles in the film.

Who composed the all-original score for the 1981 film, avoiding real recordings from the era?

He decided most surviving recordings from the early 1900s were too tinny and scratchy to use.

Which boxer was considered for the pianist role in the 1981 film that eventually went to Howard Rollins?

Redd Foxx and O. J. Simpson were also considered; Rollins earned an Oscar nomination for the part.

Which songwriting team wrote the score of the 1998 Broadway musical Ragtime?

Producer Livent made candidates write four songs in eleven days; Kander and Ebb, Jason Robert Brown and Adam Guettel all auditioned.

Which playwright, known for Master Class and Love! Valour! Compassion!, wrote the musical's book?

He was hired before the songwriters were chosen and helped pick the winning team.

The musical premiered in December 1996 in which city, more than a year before Broadway?

Producer Garth Drabinsky's Livent had already launched Kiss of the Spider Woman there before it moved to Broadway.

Who won the 1998 Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for playing Sarah?

It was her third Tony by age 28; she has since won a record six.

Which baritone originated the role of Ragtime's vengeful pianist on Broadway in 1998?

He won his Tony two years later for Kiss Me, Kate, and returned in 2016 to narrate a concert of the show on Ellis Island.

Ragtime led the 1998 Tony nominations, but which show beat it for Best Musical?

The New York Times called it one of the most competitive Tony contests in years; Ragtime still took Score, Book and Orchestrations.

The $10 million Broadway staging included a working example of which plot-central automobile?

Henry Ford himself appears as a character to glorify the assembly line while the pianist buys his car.

Which actor played the pianist in the 2025 Lincoln Center revival at the Vivian Beaumont Theater?

The production grew out of a 2024 Encores! gala at New York City Center and was directed by Lear deBessonet.

The 2025 Lincoln Center production won four Tony Awards, including which top prize?

It was nominated for eleven, and a North American tour is set to open in Buffalo in late 2027.

In which Texas town, on the Arkansas border, did Scott Joplin grow up in a family of railway labourers?

His father had played violin at plantation parties and his mother sang and played banjo; he later toured the South as a travelling musician.

Which instrument did Joplin play in the band he formed at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair?

He also arranged the band's music; though the fair sidelined African Americans, Black performers filled the saloons nearby.

Joplin's classically trained first piano teacher, a German immigrant, was named what?

Some speculate that his old-world polka sensibility rubbed off on the 11-year-old pupil and helped shape ragtime.

Which piece had Joplin dedicated to Freddie Alexander, the bride who died ten weeks after their 1904 wedding?

She died of complications from a cold; the haunting waltz 'Bethena' was published the following year.

Which rag did Joplin and his wife Lottie self-publish in 1914 through the newly formed Scott Joplin Music Company?

Biographer Vera Brodsky Lawrence suggests he knew his health was failing and rushed to get his music out.