Maple Leaf Rag
Encyclopedia
The "Maple Leaf Rag" is an early ragtime
musical composition for piano composed by Scott Joplin
. It was one of Joplin's early works, and is one of the most famous of all ragtime pieces, and became the model for ragtime compositions by subsequent composers. As a result Joplin was called the "King of Ragtime". The piece gave Joplin a steady if unspectacular income for the rest of his life.
Despite ragtime's decline after the death of Joplin in 1917 and the end of World War One, the Maple Leaf Rag continued to be recorded by well-known artists. The Ragtime revival of the 1970s brought it back to mainstream public notice.
. At first, Joplin stayed with the family of Arthur Marshall
, at the time a 13-year-old boy but later one of Joplin's students and a rag-time composer in his own right. There is no record of Joplin's having a permanent residence in the town until 1904, as Joplin was making a living as a touring musician. Joplin is likely to have first lived in Sedalia as a teenager before moving to St. Louis, so he would have known the town, which in the 1890s had a population of approximately 14,000 and was the center of commerce and transport for the region.
The town's saloons and brothels of the red-light district
on Main St, nicknamed "Battle Row", provided employment for musicians, and it is likely that Joplin worked in this area. The town was attractive for other reasons; race-relations
between Whites and Blacks in Sedalia were relatively good, especially when compared to other similar communities in Missouri in this period, there is no record of public lynchings in the area during the 1890s, there were several prominent black citizens who held minor positions in the Republican Party
, and the George R. Smith College
, a college for the education of blacks, opened in 1894.. In addition, Sedalia was described by a black resident of the town at the time as the "musical town of the West", because music was a major leisure-time activity. There were musical events mentioned in newspapers throughout the town almost every day with a wide variety of acts including military
and minstrel
bands, dances and balls, orchestral or solo piano performance, comic opera or operetta.
There is little precise evidence known about Joplin's activities at this time, although he performed as a solo musician at dances and at the major black clubs in Sedalia, the "Black 400" club, and the "Maple Leaf Club". Also, he performed in the Queen City Cornet Band, and his own six-piece dance orchestra. A tour with his own singing group, the Texas Medley Quartet, gave him his first opportunity to publish his own compositions and it is known that he went to Syracuse, New York
and Texas
. Two businessmen from New York published Joplin's first two works, the songs "Please Say You Will", and "A Picture of her Face" in 1895. Joplin's visit to Temple, Texas
enabled him to have three pieces published there in 1896, including the "Crush Collision March" which commemorated a planned train crash
on the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad
on 15 September. While in Sedalia he was teaching piano to students who included Arthur Marshall, composer and pianist Brun Campbell
, and Scott Hayden
, all of whom became ragtime composers in their own right. In turn, Joplin enrolled at the George R. Smith College where he apparently studied "advanced harmony and composition". The College records were destroyed in a fire in 1925 , and biographer Edward A. Berlin notes that it was unlikely that a small college for African-Americans would be able to provide such a course.
Although there were hundreds of rags in print by the time of the "Maple Leaf Rag's" publication, Joplin was not far behind. His first published rag was "Original Rags
" (March 1899) which had been completed in 1897, the same year as the first ragtime work in print, the "Mississippi Rag" by William Krell
. The "Maple Leaf Rag" was likely to have been known in Sedalia before its publication in 1899; Brun Campbell claimed to have seen the manuscript of the work in around 1898. The exact circumstances which led to the "Maple Leaf Rag"'s publication are unknown, and there are various different versions of the event which contradict each other. After several unsuccessful approaches to publishers, Joplin signed a contract with John Stillwell Stark
a retailer of musical instruments who later became his most important publisher, on 10 August 1899 for a 1% royalty on all sales of the rag, with a minimum sales price of 25c. The "Maple Leaf Rag" was published between 10 August and 20 September when the Copyright Office received two copies of the score. It is possible that the rag was named after the Maple Leaf Club, although there is no direct evidence to prove the link, and there were many other possible sources for the name in and around Sedalia at the time.
Even prior to publication, Joplin was anticipating success with the piece—he told Arthur Marshall, "Arthur, the Maple Leaf will make me the King of Ragtime Composers". The Rag was reissued in 1900 or 1901 with a new cover showing a green maple leaf and a photograph of Joplin. In 1903 Stark issued a "Maple Leaf Rag Song", an arrangement of Joplin's music with words by Sydney Brown.
"Maple Leaf Rag" is a multi-strain
ragtime march
with athletic bass lines and upbeat melodies
. Each of the four parts features a recurring theme and a striding bass line with copious seventh chord
s. The piece may be considered the 'archetypal rag' due to its influence on the genre; its structure was the basis for many other famous rags, including 'Sensation' by Joseph Lamb
.
It is more carefully constructed than almost all the previous rags, and the syncopation
s, especially in the transition between the first and second strain, were novel at the time.
Generally, the piece is not considered difficult, however; one must have very good coordination in the left hand to perform the piece successfully, particularly for the Trio, which involves leaps of two octaves. The piece was featured on the Trinity Guildhall Grade 8 syllabus. When it was first published, it was considered significantly more difficult than the average Tin Pan Alley
and early ragtime sheet music
common at the time.
The "Gladiolus Rag", a later composition by Joplin, is a developed variant of the Maple Leaf Rag, showcasing Joplin's increasing musical sophistication, and is usually played at a somewhat slower tempo. In addition, the first part of Joplin's "The Cascades" is very close to "Maple Leaf Rag"'s first theme.
wrote that during its first six months the piece sold 75,000 copies, and became "the first great instrumental sheet music hit in America". However, research by Joplin's later biographer Edward A. Berlin demonstrated that this was not the case; the initial print-run of 400 took one year to sell, and under the terms of Joplin's contract with a 1% royalty would have given Joplin an income of $4, or approximately $ in current value). Later sales were steady and would have given Joplin an income which would have covered his expenses; in 1909 estimated sales would have given him an income of $600 annually (approximately $ in current prices).
In addition to sales of sheet music, it was also popular in orchestration
s for dance bands and brass band
s for years. Joplin failed to relive the success of Maple Leaf Rag, with none of his other famous rags (such as The Entertainer
) garnering as much popularity as the Maple Leaf Rag did. The royalties
earned by the sheet music sales did provide Joplin with a steady income for the rest of his life, however.
Soon after the "Maple Leaf Rag's" publication the earliest recordings of the rag took place; band leader Wilbur Sweatman
recorded it onto Phonograph cylinder
a year later, but there are no known copies which have survived.. The first surviving record of the rag comes from the second known recording of the rag by the United States Military Band from 1906.
While Joplin never made an audio recording, his playing is preserved on seven piano roll
s for use in mechanical player piano
s. All seven were made in 1916. Berlin theorizes that by the time Joplin made these recordings he may have been experiencing discoordination of the fingers, tremors and an inability to speak clearly, symptoms of syphilis
, the disease that took his life in 1917. The recording of "Maple Leaf Rag", on the Aeolian Uni-Record label from June 1916 was described by biographer Blesh as "... shocking... disorganized and completely distressing to hear." Berlin notes that the "Maple Leaf Rag" roll was "painfully bad" and likely to be the truest record of Joplin's playing at the time. The roll, however, does not reflect his abilities earlier in life.
The tune continued to be in the repertoire of jazz
bands decades later, with artists such as the New Orleans Rhythm Kings
in the 1920s, and Sidney Bechet
in the 1930s giving it up-to-date adaptations, maintaining a timeless quality to it. As an indication of its persistent popularity and recognition, it was performed on phonograph
records six times in each of the three decades after its first publication. In 1930, it was featured in the gangster movie classic, The Public Enemy
. "Maple Leaf Rag" was the Joplin piece found most often on 78 rpm records.
In November 1970, Joshua Rifkin
released a recording called Scott Joplin: Piano Rags
on the classical
label Nonesuch
, which featured as its first track the "Maple Leaf Rag". It sold 100,000 copies in its first year and eventually became Nonesuch's first million-selling record. The Billboard
"Best-Selling Classical LPs" chart for 28 September 1974 has the record at number 5, with the follow-up "Volume 2" at number 4, and a combined set of both volumes at number 3. Separately both volumes had been on the chart for 64 weeks. The album was nominated in 1971 for two Grammy Award
categories: Best Album Notes
and Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra)
, but at the ceremony on 14 March 1972, Rifkin did not win in any category.. In 1979 Alan Rich
in the New York Magazine wrote that by giving artists like Rifkin the opportunity to put Joplin's music on disk Nonesuch Records
"created, almost alone, the Scott Joplin revival."
The "Maple Leaf Rag" is still a favorite of ragtime pianist
s, and has been described as an "American institution... still in print and still popular". As the copyright
has expired, the composition is in the public domain
. It appears in the soundtracks of hundreds of films, cartoons, commercials, and video games. In 2004 Canadian radio listeners voted it the 39th greatest song of all time
.
Ragtime
Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...
musical composition for piano composed by Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin was an American composer and pianist. Joplin achieved fame for his ragtime compositions, and was later dubbed "The King of Ragtime". During his brief career, Joplin wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas...
. It was one of Joplin's early works, and is one of the most famous of all ragtime pieces, and became the model for ragtime compositions by subsequent composers. As a result Joplin was called the "King of Ragtime". The piece gave Joplin a steady if unspectacular income for the rest of his life.
Despite ragtime's decline after the death of Joplin in 1917 and the end of World War One, the Maple Leaf Rag continued to be recorded by well-known artists. The Ragtime revival of the 1970s brought it back to mainstream public notice.
Background
In 1894 Scott Joplin arrived in Sedalia, MissouriSedalia, Missouri
Sedalia is a city located about south of the Missouri River in Pettis County, Missouri. U.S. Highway 50 and U.S. Highway 65 intersect in the city. As of 2006, the city had a total population of 20,669. It is the county seat of Pettis County. The Sedalia Micropolitan Statistical Area consists of...
. At first, Joplin stayed with the family of Arthur Marshall
Arthur Marshall (ragtime composer)
Arthur Marshall was an African-American composer and performer of ragtime music.Marshall was born on a farm in Saline County, Missouri, but a few years later his family moved to Sedalia, Missouri...
, at the time a 13-year-old boy but later one of Joplin's students and a rag-time composer in his own right. There is no record of Joplin's having a permanent residence in the town until 1904, as Joplin was making a living as a touring musician. Joplin is likely to have first lived in Sedalia as a teenager before moving to St. Louis, so he would have known the town, which in the 1890s had a population of approximately 14,000 and was the center of commerce and transport for the region.
The town's saloons and brothels of the red-light district
Red-light district
A red-light district is a part of an urban area where there is a concentration of prostitution and sex-oriented businesses, such as sex shops, strip clubs, adult theaters, etc...
on Main St, nicknamed "Battle Row", provided employment for musicians, and it is likely that Joplin worked in this area. The town was attractive for other reasons; race-relations
Discrimination in the United States
Discrimination, according to Merriam Webster’s dictionary, is the process by which two stimuli differing in some aspect are responded to differently. This term is used to highlight the difference of treatment between members of different groups when one group is intentionally singled out and...
between Whites and Blacks in Sedalia were relatively good, especially when compared to other similar communities in Missouri in this period, there is no record of public lynchings in the area during the 1890s, there were several prominent black citizens who held minor positions in the Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
, and the George R. Smith College
George R. Smith College
George R. Smith College, located in Sedalia, Missouri, was attended by the famed and prolific American ragtime-music piano composer Scott Joplin famous for the piano music piece "Maple Leaf Rag."...
, a college for the education of blacks, opened in 1894.. In addition, Sedalia was described by a black resident of the town at the time as the "musical town of the West", because music was a major leisure-time activity. There were musical events mentioned in newspapers throughout the town almost every day with a wide variety of acts including military
Military band
A military band originally was a group of personnel that performs musical duties for military functions, usually for the armed forces. A typical military band consists mostly of wind and percussion instruments. The conductor of a band commonly bears the title of Bandmaster or Director of Music...
and minstrel
Minstrel
A minstrel was a medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories of distant places or of existing or imaginary historical events. Although minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. Frequently they were retained by royalty...
bands, dances and balls, orchestral or solo piano performance, comic opera or operetta.
There is little precise evidence known about Joplin's activities at this time, although he performed as a solo musician at dances and at the major black clubs in Sedalia, the "Black 400" club, and the "Maple Leaf Club". Also, he performed in the Queen City Cornet Band, and his own six-piece dance orchestra. A tour with his own singing group, the Texas Medley Quartet, gave him his first opportunity to publish his own compositions and it is known that he went to Syracuse, New York
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...
and Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
. Two businessmen from New York published Joplin's first two works, the songs "Please Say You Will", and "A Picture of her Face" in 1895. Joplin's visit to Temple, Texas
Temple, Texas
Temple is a city in Bell County, Texas, United States. Located near the county seat of Belton, Temple lies in the region referred to as Central Texas. Located off Interstate 35, Temple is 65 miles north of Austin and 34 miles south of Waco. In the 2010 Census, Temple's population was 66,102, an...
enabled him to have three pieces published there in 1896, including the "Crush Collision March" which commemorated a planned train crash
Crush, Texas
Crush, Texas, was a temporary "city" established as a one-day publicity stunt in 1896. William George Crush, general passenger agent of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad , conceived the idea to demonstrate a train wreck as a spectacle. No admission was charged, and train fares to the crash site...
on the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad
Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad
The Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad was incorporated May 23, 1870. In its earliest days the MKT was commonly referred to as "the K-T", which was its stock exchange symbol; this common designation soon evolved into "the Katy"....
on 15 September. While in Sedalia he was teaching piano to students who included Arthur Marshall, composer and pianist Brun Campbell
Brun Campbell
Brun Campbell was an American composer and pianist. Born Sanford Brunson Campbell in Oberlin, Kansas, he ran away to Oklahoma City when he was fifteen and met Scott Joplin. For the next decade, he made his living as a traveling pianist in the Midwestern and Southern United States...
, and Scott Hayden
Scott Hayden
Scott Hayden was an African-American composer of ragtime music.Born in Sedalia, Missouri, he was the son of Marion and Julia Hayden...
, all of whom became ragtime composers in their own right. In turn, Joplin enrolled at the George R. Smith College where he apparently studied "advanced harmony and composition". The College records were destroyed in a fire in 1925 , and biographer Edward A. Berlin notes that it was unlikely that a small college for African-Americans would be able to provide such a course.
Although there were hundreds of rags in print by the time of the "Maple Leaf Rag's" publication, Joplin was not far behind. His first published rag was "Original Rags
Original Rags
"Original Rags" was an early ragtime medley for piano.It was the first of Scott Joplin's rags to appear in print, in early 1899, preceding his "Maple Leaf Rag" by half a year.- Publication history :...
" (March 1899) which had been completed in 1897, the same year as the first ragtime work in print, the "Mississippi Rag" by William Krell
William Krell
William Henry Krell composed what is regarded as the first rag or ragtime composition in 1897 called Mississippi Rag, published in New York by S. Brainard's Sons and copyrighted on January 27, 1897...
. The "Maple Leaf Rag" was likely to have been known in Sedalia before its publication in 1899; Brun Campbell claimed to have seen the manuscript of the work in around 1898. The exact circumstances which led to the "Maple Leaf Rag"'s publication are unknown, and there are various different versions of the event which contradict each other. After several unsuccessful approaches to publishers, Joplin signed a contract with John Stillwell Stark
John Stillwell Stark
John Stillwell Stark was a United States publisher of ragtime music. He is best known for publishing and promoting the music of Scott Joplin....
a retailer of musical instruments who later became his most important publisher, on 10 August 1899 for a 1% royalty on all sales of the rag, with a minimum sales price of 25c. The "Maple Leaf Rag" was published between 10 August and 20 September when the Copyright Office received two copies of the score. It is possible that the rag was named after the Maple Leaf Club, although there is no direct evidence to prove the link, and there were many other possible sources for the name in and around Sedalia at the time.
Even prior to publication, Joplin was anticipating success with the piece—he told Arthur Marshall, "Arthur, the Maple Leaf will make me the King of Ragtime Composers". The Rag was reissued in 1900 or 1901 with a new cover showing a green maple leaf and a photograph of Joplin. In 1903 Stark issued a "Maple Leaf Rag Song", an arrangement of Joplin's music with words by Sydney Brown.
Structure
- AA BB A CC DD
"Maple Leaf Rag" is a multi-strain
Strain (music)
A strain is a series of musical phrases that create a distinct melody of a piece. A strain is often referred to as a "section" of a musical piece. Often, a strain is repeated for the sake of instilling the melody clearly. This is so in ragtime and marches....
ragtime march
March (music)
A march, as a musical genre, is a piece of music with a strong regular rhythm which in origin was expressly written for marching to and most frequently performed by a military band. In mood, marches range from the moving death march in Wagner's Götterdämmerung to the brisk military marches of John...
with athletic bass lines and upbeat melodies
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
. Each of the four parts features a recurring theme and a striding bass line with copious seventh chord
Seventh chord
A seventh chord is a chord consisting of a triad plus a note forming an interval of a seventh above the chord's root. When not otherwise specified, a "seventh chord" usually means a major triad with an added minor seventh...
s. The piece may be considered the 'archetypal rag' due to its influence on the genre; its structure was the basis for many other famous rags, including 'Sensation' by Joseph Lamb
Joseph Lamb
Joseph Francis Lamb was a noted American composer of ragtime music. Lamb, of Irish descent, was the only non-African American of the "Big Three" composers of classical ragtime, the other two being Scott Joplin and James Scott.-Life and Career:Lamb was born in Montclair, New Jersey...
.
It is more carefully constructed than almost all the previous rags, and the syncopation
Syncopation
In music, syncopation includes a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak but also powerful beats in a meter . These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would normally be...
s, especially in the transition between the first and second strain, were novel at the time.
Generally, the piece is not considered difficult, however; one must have very good coordination in the left hand to perform the piece successfully, particularly for the Trio, which involves leaps of two octaves. The piece was featured on the Trinity Guildhall Grade 8 syllabus. When it was first published, it was considered significantly more difficult than the average Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century...
and early ragtime sheet music
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
common at the time.
The "Gladiolus Rag", a later composition by Joplin, is a developed variant of the Maple Leaf Rag, showcasing Joplin's increasing musical sophistication, and is usually played at a somewhat slower tempo. In addition, the first part of Joplin's "The Cascades" is very close to "Maple Leaf Rag"'s first theme.
Popularity and legacy
There have been many claims about the sales of the "Maple Leaf Rag", for example that 1 million copies of the sheet music were sold in the composer's lifetime, making Scott Joplin the first musician to sell 1 million copies of a piece of instrumental music. Joplin's first biographer Rudi BleshRudi Blesh
Rudi Blesh was an American jazz critic and enthusiast....
wrote that during its first six months the piece sold 75,000 copies, and became "the first great instrumental sheet music hit in America". However, research by Joplin's later biographer Edward A. Berlin demonstrated that this was not the case; the initial print-run of 400 took one year to sell, and under the terms of Joplin's contract with a 1% royalty would have given Joplin an income of $4, or approximately $ in current value). Later sales were steady and would have given Joplin an income which would have covered his expenses; in 1909 estimated sales would have given him an income of $600 annually (approximately $ in current prices).
In addition to sales of sheet music, it was also popular in orchestration
Orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
s for dance bands and brass band
Brass band
A brass band is a musical ensemble generally consisting entirely of brass instruments, most often with a percussion section. Ensembles that include brass and woodwind instruments can in certain traditions also be termed brass bands , but are usually more correctly termed military bands, concert...
s for years. Joplin failed to relive the success of Maple Leaf Rag, with none of his other famous rags (such as The Entertainer
The Entertainer (rag)
"The Entertainer" is sub-titled "A rag time two step", which was a form of dance popular until about 1911, and a style which was common among rags written at the time.Its structure is: Intro AA BB A CC Intro2 DD....
) garnering as much popularity as the Maple Leaf Rag did. The royalties
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
earned by the sheet music sales did provide Joplin with a steady income for the rest of his life, however.
Soon after the "Maple Leaf Rag's" publication the earliest recordings of the rag took place; band leader Wilbur Sweatman
Wilbur Sweatman
Wilbur C. Sweatman was an African-American ragtime and dixieland jazz composer, bandleader, and clarinetist....
recorded it onto Phonograph cylinder
Phonograph cylinder
Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...
a year later, but there are no known copies which have survived.. The first surviving record of the rag comes from the second known recording of the rag by the United States Military Band from 1906.
While Joplin never made an audio recording, his playing is preserved on seven piano roll
Piano roll
A piano roll is a music storage medium used to operate a player piano, piano player or reproducing piano. A piano roll is a continuous roll of paper with perforations punched into it. The peforations represent note control data...
s for use in mechanical player piano
Player piano
A player piano is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in...
s. All seven were made in 1916. Berlin theorizes that by the time Joplin made these recordings he may have been experiencing discoordination of the fingers, tremors and an inability to speak clearly, symptoms of syphilis
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
, the disease that took his life in 1917. The recording of "Maple Leaf Rag", on the Aeolian Uni-Record label from June 1916 was described by biographer Blesh as "... shocking... disorganized and completely distressing to hear." Berlin notes that the "Maple Leaf Rag" roll was "painfully bad" and likely to be the truest record of Joplin's playing at the time. The roll, however, does not reflect his abilities earlier in life.
The tune continued to be in the repertoire of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
bands decades later, with artists such as the New Orleans Rhythm Kings
New Orleans Rhythm Kings
The New Orleans Rhythm Kings were one of the most influential jazz bands of the early-to-mid 1920s. The band was a combination of New Orleans and Chicago musicians who helped shape Chicago Jazz and influenced many younger jazz musicians....
in the 1920s, and Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.He was one of the first important soloists in jazz , and was perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist...
in the 1930s giving it up-to-date adaptations, maintaining a timeless quality to it. As an indication of its persistent popularity and recognition, it was performed on phonograph
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
records six times in each of the three decades after its first publication. In 1930, it was featured in the gangster movie classic, The Public Enemy
The Public Enemy
The Public Enemy is a 1931 American Pre-Code crime film starring James Cagney and directed by William A. Wellman. The film relates the story of a young man's rise in the criminal underworld in prohibition-era urban America...
. "Maple Leaf Rag" was the Joplin piece found most often on 78 rpm records.
In November 1970, Joshua Rifkin
Joshua Rifkin
Joshua Rifkin is an American conductor, keyboard player, and musicologist. He is best known by the general public for having played a central role in the ragtime revival in the 1970s with the three albums he recorded of Scott Joplin's works for Nonesuch Records, and to classical musicians for his...
released a recording called Scott Joplin: Piano Rags
Scott Joplin: Piano Rags
Scott Joplin: Piano Rags is a 1970 ragtime piano album, consisting of compositions by Scott Joplin played by Joshua Rifkin, on the Nonesuch Records label. The album cover states the name as Piano Rags by Scott Joplin. The record is considered to have been the first to reintroduce the music of...
on the classical
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
label Nonesuch
Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed by Warner Bros. Records.-Company history:Nonesuch was founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman to produce "fine records at the same price as a trade paperback", which would be half the price of a normal LP...
, which featured as its first track the "Maple Leaf Rag". It sold 100,000 copies in its first year and eventually became Nonesuch's first million-selling record. The Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
"Best-Selling Classical LPs" chart for 28 September 1974 has the record at number 5, with the follow-up "Volume 2" at number 4, and a combined set of both volumes at number 3. Separately both volumes had been on the chart for 64 weeks. The album was nominated in 1971 for two Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
categories: Best Album Notes
Grammy Award for Best Album Notes
The Grammy Award for Best Album Notes has been presented since 1964. From 1973 to 1976, a separate award was presented for Best Album Notes - Classical. Those awards are listed under those years below. The award recognizes albums with excellent liner notes...
and Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra)
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra)
The Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance was awarded from 1959 to 2011. From 1967 to 1971 and in 1987 the award was combined with the award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance and awarded as the Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance - Instrumental Soloist or...
, but at the ceremony on 14 March 1972, Rifkin did not win in any category.. In 1979 Alan Rich
Alan Rich
Alan Rich was an American music critic who served on the staff of many newspapers and magazines on both coasts. Originally from Brookline, Massachusetts, he first studied medicine at Harvard University before turning to music...
in the New York Magazine wrote that by giving artists like Rifkin the opportunity to put Joplin's music on disk Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed by Warner Bros. Records.-Company history:Nonesuch was founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman to produce "fine records at the same price as a trade paperback", which would be half the price of a normal LP...
"created, almost alone, the Scott Joplin revival."
The "Maple Leaf Rag" is still a favorite of ragtime pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
s, and has been described as an "American institution... still in print and still popular". As the copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
has expired, the composition is in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
. It appears in the soundtracks of hundreds of films, cartoons, commercials, and video games. In 2004 Canadian radio listeners voted it the 39th greatest song of all time
50 Tracks
50 Tracks is a Canadian radio program, which aired on CBC Radio One in 2004. The show, hosted by Jian Ghomeshi, was a listener vote to determine the 50 most essential songs in pop music history. This said, the choice was not by any means based solely on popular vote...
.
External links
- Maple Leaf Rag - from the Mutopia ProjectMutopia projectThe Mutopia Project is a volunteer-run effort to create a library of free content sheet music, in a way similar to Project Gutenberg's library of public domain books.The music is reproduced from old scores that are out of copyright...
(musical score transcription and MIDI file)