My Love Affair with Scott Joplin

For my non-musician friends, I will bet that the title caught your attention! For those who are unaware, Scott Joplin was the person who wrote a lot of famous ragtime music such as “The Entertainer” and “The Maple Leaf Rag”. In fact, even in his own time, he was known as the King of Ragtime. If you think you have not heard of any of his compositions, I can pretty much guarantee that you have and that you would recognise them if you heard them.

I discovered Scott Joplin when I was in high school. My piano teacher at the time, Miss West, had recommended that my mother buy me some “fun” music for me to play over the summer months. We ended up coming home from the store with a book of songs that were popular in the 50s, 60s, and 70s (it was the 1980s, after all!). Inside the book, there was sheet music for “The Entertainer”. I was always a pianist who liked a good challenge when it came to sight reading music, and it looked like one of the hardest pieces in it, next to “Gonna Fly Now” - the theme from “Rocky”. Once I realised that I recognised the tune, I started to pick away at it and when I brought the book to my lesson to show Miss West that we did indeed get a book of something other than the hard core classical pieces we normally worked on, she encouraged me to play it and provided tips and suggestions to tackle it. Tackle it, I did. And then because there was a page turn in the middle of it, I actually memorised the first two pages, so I could play it without having to turn the page!

I thought “The Entertainer” sounded so cool. It reminded me of the saloons in the old western TV shows that I spent hours watching in my teens. When I played it, I pictured the cowboys with their spurs and pistols wandering up to the bar. The tables where the gambling was happening with the cards and a guy playing an upright in the corner of the saloon. The ladies would be wearing their long gowns if they were coming in to fetch their menfolk, or the skimpier attire of the ladies of the night.

And so, in addition to not wanting to deal with a page turn, I thought it would be cool to at least have the first bit memorised so I could invoke the spirit of those old saloons that I saw in the westerns whenever and wherever I was. Although, looking back on it, I should have memorised the whole thing. To this day, I can still only play those first two pages from memory!!

I have played it in many different spaces over the years. The most memorable moment was when I was in my improv class at York University almost twenty years ago. We students were waiting around for the professor to show up for the class, so I sat down at the piano and started playing “The Entertainer”. It totally changed the atmosphere in the room and everyone was really enjoying it. I had my back to the door of the classroom so I did not see the professor walk in initially. I caught him out of the corner of my eye and stopped playing. He had this look on his face where I wasn’t entirely sure if I was doing something wrong. He just made one comment that was regarding the dynamic range that I was using and that Scott Joplin intended for there to be more expression.

I think of ragtime as party music. It is fun and lively and the precursor to modern jazz and rock and roll. I also think of it as Gold Rush music. Scott Joplin’s compositions were published in the 1890s and 1900s, so they may not have been featured in any of the American gold rush periods, they definitely coincide with the Gold Rush in the Yukon here in Canada. “The Maple Leaf Rag” had a copyright of 1899, which would definitely make it current during the end of the Klondike Gold Rush.

I ended up exploring the music library at York University, where they had tons of scores and CDs that you could borrow. I loved it! In addition to what I needed for my studies, I did raid it for other things that interested me. And Scott Joplin interested me. I found a volume of Scott Joplin sheet music that also included his biography that I took home with me. I picked through some of the music and decided that this was definitely something that I wanted to delve into a little more.

As I left York University for the summer break in April 2006, I went on a mission to find my own copies of Scott Joplin’s music. I did find a book, much skinnier and without the biography, that offered me enough to get started. I started to work on “The Maple Leaf Rag” and a couple of the other ones that caught my ear when I sat down to sight read. As you can see, that book has become tattered. I have used it well! The pages are falling out of it now, so I ended up getting a new book a few years back.

I have not memorised anything more than the first section of “The Maple Leaf Rag” for one reason only - it had a page turn. Although, I should by rights go back and finish memorising both “The Entertainer” as well as “The Maple Leaf Rag”. It seems silly to only have part of them memorised. I should just finish them so I have complete pieces in my head.

So, given that I had played both that much that I had partial memorisation, it was much to my consternation to discover that I had lost them! You know the saying, “If you don’t use it, you lose it”? In the last two years, I had focused my attention on the repertoire for my grade 10 piano exam and had not dragged out or even picked at the memorised sections of my ragtime favourites. In the last few weeks, I decided to dig out my Scott Joplin again and much to my consternation, I could not play it with the same proficiency that I once did. Now, I am working to get it back up to a fun level of play again.

However, due to my less than stellar day for my grade 10 piano exam, I am still working on that material. I will be re-taking the exam at some point in the future. I am dismayed that I lost the Scott Joplin material so easily, so I will need to make a bit of time to play it to ensure I don’t lose it again. After all, it is fun to play and fun to listen to and every musician needs fun stuff in their repertoire!