Notes

Because the notes in this book are so extensive, I have omitted many that refer simply to city directories of Texarkana, Sedalia, St. Louis, Chicago, and New York for various years. Published yearly, or less frequently depending on the size of the town, in the days before telephone books these directories functioned to locate and identify the citizens of an area. As research sources they are invaluable, and far more helpful than modern telephone books, for they list occupations and often indicate ownership, or lack thereof, of the premises occupied. These directories helped to establish the residences, and in some cases the very presence, of Joplin and others in various towns and cities at different times, including the fact that Joplin never owned any of the homes in which he lived, which belies Joplin legend.

PROLOGUE: The Rediscovery of Scott Joplin

1. Interview with Fred Joplin by Dick Reavis, June 1976.
2. Ibid.
3. Taped correspondence from Jerry Atkins, June 1976.
4. Ann and John Vanderlee. “The Early Life of Scott Joplin,” Rag Times, January 1974, p. 2; telephone conversation with Charles Steger, August 13, 1976 (Steger has a copy of Monroe’s death certificate).
5. Death certificate, Jiles Joplin, State of Arkansas State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics; the spelling of Jiles Joplin’s name is discussed in Note 6 of Chapter I.
6. Ethel Brown and Donita Fowler are now living in California.
7. She did not own these buildings, according to records in the New York City Municipal Reference Library.
8. Kay C. Thompson. “Lottie Joplin,” The Record Changer, October 1950, p. 18.
9. S. Brunson Campbell. “The Ragtime Kid (An Autobiography).” Jazz Report, VI, 1967, n.p.
10. R. J. Carew. “Treemonisha,” The Record Changer, October 1946, p. 17.
11. James Lincoln Collier. “The Scott Joplin Rag,” New York Times Magazine, September 21, 1975, p. 28.
12. Reprinted in “Ragtime Gets Boost into Musical 400,” Rag Times, March 1972, p. 10.
13. Rag Times, September 1974, p. 5.
14. Dick Zimmerman. “Sedalia Rediscovers Ragtime,” Rag Times, November 1968, p. 13.
15. “School Named for Scott Joplin,” New York Amsterdam News, February 8, 1975, p. D-11.
16. For some years the rumor persisted that a copy of the opera was in Nevada City, California, in the safe of a Mr. Ott, a former county assayer. However, in 1976 Joplinophile Robert Bradford tracked down the rumor and proved it false. Though the safe contained handwritten manuscripts, they were songs, dated 1865–90, and definitely not by Scott Joplin. Robert Bradford, “In Search of the Guest of Honor,” Rag Times, May 1976, p. 3.
17. “Rare Rag Roll Found,” Rag Times, May 1970, p. 1; “‘Silver Swan Rag’ Now Available,” Rag Times, March 1973, p. 2.
18. “Joplin Song Discovered!,” Rag Times, May 1977, p. 7.
19. James Lincoln Collier, op. cit., p. 33.
20. Solomon Goodman. “Lottie Joplin,” Rag Times, September 1976, p. 3. Nor did she reap the monetary benefits of the Joplin revival. Whatever royalties, cash awards, etc., that have been paid have gone to her heirs, and it is doubtful that these sums are extensive, since copyrights on most of Joplin’s compositions have run out. Joplin’s surviving blood heirs, notably his niece, Donita Fowler, have inquired about money accrued to his estate, but under New York law none of the nieces and nephews is entitled to royalties from the music still under copyright. The Surrogate’s Court, County of New York, made a search of its records at the request of this author and confirmed that Joplin left no will.

CHAPTER I: Prelude

1. Nancy Moores Watts Jennings. “Moores or Mooresville and Harrison Chapel Cemetery, Bowie County, Texas.” The area was located about eight miles west of present day Texarkana. For purposes of clarity, it will be called Mooresville here. Most of this section on the early history of the Moores in Texas is indebted to Mrs. Jennings’ history.
2. Emma Lou Meadows. “De Kalb and Bowie County History and Genealogy.” Trammels Trace was named for Nicholas Trammel, who earlier in the century had made a business of running stolen slaves and horses from Arkansas to Texas. He made deals with the slaves whereby after they were resold in Texas they would run away and return to him, to be sold again.
3. Nancy Moores Watts Jennings, “Moores or Mooresville and Harrison Chapel Cemetery, Bowie County, Texas,” n.p.
4. Ibid. According to Mrs. Jennings, other regiments camped at Mooresville on the way to Mexico during the war, indicating that Colonel Charles Moores was in or closely associated with the militia.
5. Interview with Mrs. Jennings by Dick Reavis, June 1976.
6. In earlier books on Joplin, his father’s name is spelled with a “G,” and he is listed under that spelling in the 1880 Bowie County census. However, the 1850 slave census gives the “J” spelling, as does Jiles Joplin’s death certificate. Texarkana city directories carry different spellings in different years (Giles in the 1899–1900 and 1922 editions, Jiles in the 1906 edition). The “J” spelling is used here throughout.
7. 1850 Bowie County Slave Census, National Archives Micro Copy No. T-6, Roll No. 317. This is an exciting recent discovery, made by Mrs. Arthur Jennings. Benjamin Booth is a researcher’s and historian’s hero, for this Bowie County census seems to have been the only one to include the names of slaves and is thus an invaluable source. Who was Benjamin Booth and what was his motive in recording the slaves names? Although it is interesting to speculate on his attitude toward slavery, the answer is probably that Booth was a man with an eye for detail and who felt that a census was not complete unless it listed names, whether or not space was provided for this purpose. Presuming, as this author does, that the Jiles listed here is Jiles Joplin, we might never have been able to trace him if not for this census.

There is no proof that Jiles, slave of Charles Moores, was Jiles Joplin, father of Scott Joplin. However, the presence of a small slave named Jiles in the Red River area of East Texas helps to explain how Jiles Joplin, listed as having been born in North Carolina in the 1870 and 1880 federal censuses as well as on his death certificate, managed to get to Texas. Earlier books on Joplin state that Jiles was freed in North Carolina and then traveled to Texas. However, it is difficult to imagine his choosing to make his way to Texas through the South in the years before the war, for he would have been in danger of being captured as a runaway and/or re-enslaved. Also, between 1836 and 1865 a special act of the Texas state legislature was necessary for a freed slave to be allowed to remain in the state and, presumably, to enter the state. No freed slave named Jiles was the subject of such a special act. (Letter from Jean Carefoot, reference archivist, Texas State Library, September 1, 1976.) No legislation regarding free Blacks mentions a Joplin, nor do any of the memorials and petitions to the legislature in that period. Jiles may have been purchased from somewhere in North Carolina by James Rochelle.

8. The 1870 federal census gives Jiles’s age as twenty-eight; the 1880 census as thirty-eight; his death certificate does not give an exact age.
9. Interview with Mrs. Arthur Jennings, June 1976; the 1860 slave census lists a D. W. Rochelle as holding ten slaves in trust for John Ross Rochelle, who had not yet reached the age of maturity. Also, Henry Rochelle is listed as owning sixteen slaves. Since no slave names were given in this census, we do not know if Jiles was among these twenty-six.
10. All earlier sources on Joplin state that Jiles had been trained in the European musical tradition and had played the violin at plantation dances. Most of these books are based on They All Played Ragtime, by Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, who obtained much of their information from interviews with Lottie Stokes Joplin among others. Presumably this is where the information on Jiles’s musical ability originated. It is supported to some extent by Mrs. Jennings’ research into the Moores family history and her visits to the Moores home before it was torn down.
11. Genealogy compiled by Mrs. Arthur Jennings on the occasion of the dedication of the Hooks Town Marker. Hooks still exists as a town today, with a population of less than two hundred.
12. The 1860 census lists Warren Hooks as having ninety-one slaves.
13. Hooks genealogy. The date of the marriage is not known. The 1870 census shows Josiah and Minerva B. Joplin living in the household of her father, Warren Hooks. The Joplins are listed as having two children, ages three and one. However, since Minerva was born in 1843 and it was customary for women to marry young, she was probably married in the late 1850s. Earlier children may have died. Once again, the connection with Jiles is conjectural, but since Josiah Joplin was the only Joplin in the Red River area at the time, it is likely that he was Jiles’s last master and thus the man whose name Jiles took as his own.
14. Given the laws prohibiting freedmen, one wonders how he managed to travel about in the state. It is probable that the laws were not strictly enforced.
15. Unfortunately, information on Florence’s early life—even information on which to base speculations—is sparse. Mattie Harris, Scott’s niece, recalled that her grandmother’s family were overseers of slaves. Fred Joplin, Scott’s nephew, believes that only his grandfather was born in slavery. Scott Joplin must have told his wife, Lottie, that his mother was freeborn, for this information is contained in the Blesh and Janis book. The condition of birth of ancestors is very important in Black family histories, and it is difficult to discount the recollections of the surviving members of the Joplin family. All attempts at locating Florence in Kentucky censuses have failed.
16. That Florence’s father was Milton Givins and her grandmother Susan Givins is conjectural, based on the 1870 census, which shows the Joplins living on the property of a family named Caves along with a Milton Givins, age fifty, from Kentucky, the same state in which Florence was born, and a Susan Givins, age seventy.

As to the Givinses being free, once again there is the problem of the legislation regarding admission of free Blacks to the state. No Givinses were the subjects of any special acts. There was a slaveowner named J. W. Givins in the area of present-day Linden, but none of the ages of his slaves given in the 1860 census are even close to those of Milton or Susan, so no connection can be made. The lack of records makes the truth difficult to ascertain, but perhaps someday someone will find a document or documents that will establish Florence Givins’ background and give a clue to the circumstances under which she and Jiles met.

17. Ann and John Vanderlee, “Scott Joplin’s Childhood Days in Texarkana,” Rag Times, November 1973, p. 6. Zenobia Campbell is now deceased.
18. The 1870 census lists Monroe’s age as seven, the 1880 census gives his age as nineteen and is probably more accurate.
19. Green C. Duncan Papers, University of Texas Archives, letter from Green C. Duncan to Mrs. M. E. Duncan, December 3, 1865.
20. It is not known when Jiles and Florence arrived on the Caves property, only that they were there in 1870. There is no Caves listed in the 1860 census.
21. S. Brunson Campbell and Roy Carew gave this date in one of their 1945 articles in The Record Changer. Blesh and Janis later used it in their book They All Played Ragtime and presumably had verified it with Joplin’s widow, Lottie.
22. There has been some controversy over Joplin’s birthplace. Alexander Ford, now deceased, told Ann and John Vanderlee in 1959 that the Joplins had lived near Marshall, Texas, when the Fords had lived there, leading to the speculation that Scott might have been born near Marshall. Most earlier books on Joplin give his birthplace as Texarkana, where he had grown up, to save time and needless explanation.

Scott Joplin himself probably contributed to the confusion. After he left Texas and traveled to cities like St. Louis and New York, it is likely that he gave his birthplace as Texarkana, where he had grown up to save time and needless explanation.

23. Henry Lee Swint. The Northern Teacher in the South, p. 130.
24. Dorothy Sterling. The Trouble They Seen: Black People Tell the Story of Reconstruction, p. vii.
25. This is undocumented. Fred Joplin, Momoe’s son, stated in June 1976 that his grandfather, Jiles Joplin, always said the family went to Texarkana from Jefferson. Mrs. Mattie Harris, Monroe’s daughter, said that Jefferson was often mentioned in family conversations. However, Jiles and Florence may simply have identified with the largest nearby town and at the time Jefferson was the largest town in the area near present-day Linden.
26. It is not known when the move occurred. The possibility must be reiterated that the Joplins also lived near Marshall, Texas, at some point before going to Texarkana. Old Joplin family friend Alexander Ford told the Vanderlees that the Joplins moved to Texarkana “soon after the birth of the youngest child.” Since the youngest Joplin child, Myrtle, is listed in the June 1880 census as three months old, the family might have just arrived in Texarkana. However, Arthur Marshall’s recollections are somewhat suspect. Elderly Texarkana resident George Mosley and a man named Burl Mitchell, who was Alexander Ford’s best friend, as well as Ford’s nephew Alec, say Ford did not come from Marshall. Also Fred Joplin says his mother’s people came from Marshall; thus, Ford may have the families confused.

CHAPTER II: Texarkana

1. “History of Texarkana, Texas,” pamphlet (New York Public Library), p. 2.
2. Barbara Overton Chandler and J. Ed. Howe. “History of Texarkana and Bowie and Miller Counties, Texas-Arkansas,” p. 8; “History of Texarkana, Texas,” p. 2.
3. Nancy Moores Watts Jennings, “Moores or Mooresville and Harrison Chapel Cemetery, Bowie County, Texas,” n.p.
4. The Bowie County, Texas, census of 1880, lists Jiles as a common laborer.
5. Nancy Moores Watts Jennings and Mary L. S. Phillips, compilers. “Texarkana Centennial Historical Program,” p. 9; Nancy Moores Watts Jennings, op. cit., n.p.
6. Nancy Moores Watts Jennings and Mary L. S. Phillips, op. cit., p. g.
7. There are no records of where the Joplins lived on the Texas side, only that they were living on the Texas side as of June 1880, when the federal census was taken. Mrs. Arthur Jennings, of the Bowie County Historical Commission, feels that the census taker may have moved west along the side streets starting from State Line Avenue. The Joplins are entry number 261 on the census and W. R. Hooks is number 264. In 1897, W. R. Hooks’s widow was living at 803 Pine Street, leading to the conjecture that the Joplins also lived on Pine, a block or so east of the Hookses. The first Black church in Texarkana, Mt. Zion, was erected in 1875 on the Texas side, at Fourth and Elm, not far from where the Joplins might have lived.
8. Subsequent to the 1870 census, for she is not listed on it. There is some confusion about the spelling of her name. The 1880 census lists her as Josie, age ten; the 1899–1900 city directory lists her as Osie; some interviewees say her name was Ocie.
9. People of all races comprised the bucket brigades. There were Black fire-fighting companies in towns like Marshall and Columbus.
10. Edward King. The Great South, p. 99.
11. Recently some contradictory theories have been advanced regarding the attitudes of the immigrants to the freedmen they encountered in the West, but most historians agree that there was considerable anti-Black sentiment among the white newcomers and that their competition for jobs and land rendered Blacks’ economic situation even more perilous than it was already.
12. The 1880 census lists both Scott and Robert as “Going to school.”
13. Herny Allen Bullock. A History of Negro Education in the South, p. 27.
14. William R. Davis. The Development and Present Status of Negro Education in East Texas, p. 26.
15. This information is contained in earlier Joplin books and presumably was obtained from Lottie Stokes Joplin by Blesh and Janis. There is little reason to dispute Jiles and Florence Joplin’s musical interests, for all but the eldest Joplin child later sang or played instruments.
16. Jim Haskins and Hugh F. Butts. The Psychology of Black Language, p. 68.
17. W. F. Allen, C. P. Ware, and L. M. Garrison. Slave Songs of the United States, p. 89.
18. Jim Haskins and Hugh F. Butts, op. cit., pp. 68–69.
19. J. M. Carroll. A History of Texas Baptists, p. 337.
20. James Haskins. Witchcraft, Mysticism and Magic in the Black World, p. 109.
21. A history of the Black community in Texarkana compiled by the students of Dunbar High School in 1939. Hereafter, it will be referred to as “The 1939 History”: “. . . the members on the Arkansas side all had to go down to Mt. Zion to worship.”
22. Lawrence D. Rice. The Negro in Texas: 1874–1900, p. 274.
23. Jim Haskins and Hugh F. Butts, op. cit., p. 73.
24. The Nation, Vol. 4, May 30, 1867, pp. 432-33.
25. Marshall W. Stearns. The Story of Jazz, p. 128.
26. Interview with George Mosley by Dick J. Reavis, June 1976. Mag Washington, incidentally, was George Mosley’s aunt.
27. Records of a real estate transaction in 1897 list him as Professor J. C. Johnson.
28. Interview, June 1976. Over the years there have been attempts to identify sites that might have served as the model for the plantation in Treemonisha. In 1889 Wesley and Mary Johnson, presumably relatives of J.C., made him “agent and attorney in fact” for them for twelve acres of rural land they owned in Miller County, Arkansas. Dick J. Reavis identified the tract as four miles north of the center of Texarkana in the area now called Sugar Hill. While the Johnson couple did not purchase the acreage until September 12, 1887, it is possible that they had worked the land for years before buying it. It is interesting to imagine Scott, while under the influence of J. C. Johnson, traveling with him to the area to visit his teacher’s relatives and later recalling the site and using it as his setting for Treemonisha.
29. Listed as three twelfths of a month old in the 1880 census and, inexplicably, as a male child named Johnny.
30. The 1880 census for Bowie County lists numerous cases of measles among Black children in Texarkana, Texas, including Osie, Willie, and Myrtle.
31. Interview, June 1976.
32. They were living together when the 1880 census was taken in June of that year. Alexander Ford, interviewed by the Vanderlees in 1959, said that Scott was about twelve when the separation occurred. Eugene Cook, for whose mother Florence Joplin worked, described her to the Vanderlees as a widow and said Scott was twelve or thirteen years old when Florence worked at the Cook home. Earlier Joplin sources state that one reason for the separation was Florence’s purchase of a piano for Scott, but it is doubtful that she purchased one at this time, for later Scott practiced on the Cooks’ piano.
33. The 1880 census lists her occupation as “Wash & Iron.”
34. This is the earliest Joplin residence in Texarkana of which there is any record, and that record is a late one, contained in the 1899–1900 city directory. However, all the Texarkanans interviewed agree that Florence and her children were living there after Jiles and Florence separated. The house was located on what property records designate as Lots 10, 1 1, or 12 of Block 26 of the original townsite of Texarkana, Arkansas. A search of property records reveals no Joplin ownership.
35. Interview with George Mosley, June 1976; “The 1939 History,” op. cit.
36. Interview with Fred Joplin, June 1976.
37. “The 1939 History.” George Mosley says that this is where the church was when he was born in 1887.
38. Florence is described as caretaker of a church in Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime. George Mosley remembers her ringing the bell of the Canaan Baptist Church after it was formally established. That she acted as caretaker while it was housed in the Dyckman Hide house is conjecture.
39. Ann and John Vanderlee, “The Early Life of Scott Joplin,” Rag Times, January 1974, p. 2.
40. R. J. Carew and Private Don E. Fowler. “Scott Joplin: Overlooked Genius,” The Record Changer, October 1944, p. 11.
41. The Texas Gazetteer and Business Directory 1882-83, Standard Directory Service for Texarkana, says “good public schools.” Fred Joplin, Monroe’s son, states, “My father didn’t go to school.”
42. Fred Joplin states that he skipped five grades of school. “I went from the sixth grade to the eleventh, and graduated.”
43. “The 1939 History” (p. 4) makes this statement about the later Orr School, and it is assumed there were none at Central High, which was later called Dunbar High School.
44. Until recently, Orr School was regarded as the first school for Blacks in Texarkana. There is considerable evidence, although no formal records exist, that Central High School existed well in advance of Orr School. “The 1939 History” devotes a paragraph to it. More compelling evidence is contained in the “First Annual Report of Public Free Schools of City of Texarkana, Tex., 1886–87,” which includes a synopsis of a report “From the Principal of Colored School to Superintendent”: “Enrollment 198 over 147 the year before and 96 in 1885 . . . A suitable building is a crying necessity . . . a High School Department imminent in two more years . . .” According to the dates mentioned in this report, there was indeed a Black school of some sort operating as early as 1885 and perhaps earlier. The same report from the principal of the “Colored School” also mentions another school: “I suggest the schools be united; I speak of the School near Bowie Lumber Co.’s mill, under the charge of Mr. Sims . . .” “The 1939 History” mentions no Mr. Sims. Mrs. Jennings has tried to document, at my request, the location of the mill but has found only a Stevens Brick Yard on Congress Avenue about 1880–1900 not far from Dickey Clay Pipe, which was formerly a lumberyard.
45. Presumably, Lottie Joplin told this to Blesh and Janis; there is no documentation.
46. Interview with George Mosley, 1976.
47. Ann and John Vanderlee, op. cit., p. 3.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid. The Orr School building exists today as a one-story structure, Twin-City Day Care Center.
51. Ibid. Other Joplin sources state that the group was formed during Joplin’s Sedalia period. Although Ford’s credibility is questionable in some respects, it is likely that Joplin formed such a group when he was a teenager and that he revived it later during his days in Sedalia.
52. Most Joplin sources state that Scott left the town when he was fourteen, after the death of his mother. However, Florence Joplin did not die until 1902 or 1904. In a 1945 article, S. Brunson Campbell and Roy J. Carew stated that Scott left Texarkana at about the age of twenty; Zenobia Campbell says she was at Orr School with Scott; and dates and facts concerning his stay in St. Louis also point to a considerably later date for his leaving home.

CHAPTER III: Itinerant Pianist

1. S. Brunson Campbell. “The Ragtime Kid (An Autobiography)” (unpublished), Fisk University Library Special Collections, Samuel Brunson Campbell Papers, n.p.
2. This is the most widely accepted explanation of the derivation of the term ragtime, although there are many others. Here are two more. It was born on the levees of the Mississippi in the 1880s, where children in ragged or tattered garments danced to the music played by itinerant Black pianists, leading to the identification of the music as ragtime. It arose in the saloons of Louisiana, where white pianist Ben Hamey, who later published several ragtime compositions, was frequently greeted with the words, “Take off your rag and play us those new songs.” In time, when Harney would arrive, the boys would say, “It’s ragtime,” in anticipation of the music he would play. “How Did Ragtime Get Its Name?,” Rag Times, September 1976, p. 8.
3. In 1970 this author visited the Sea Islands of South Carolina, whose native Black population, called Geechee, have been isolated for centuries and thus have retained a number of Africanisms. Attending a church service, I heard the combination sorrowful melody/staccato clapping described in these pages, and even to this ear, accustomed to syncopation in a variety of forms, it was a strange and almost incomprehensible sound.
4. Marshall W. Stearns. The Story of Jazz, p. 111.
5. Ibid., pp. 111-12.
6. No doubt this is the origin of the later personification of segregation in the character of Jim Crow.
7. Alain Locke. The Negro and His Music: Negro Art Past and Present, p. 54; selected from The American Negro: His History and Literature, William Loren Katz, general editor.
8. Addison Walker Reed. The Life and Works of Scott Joplin, pp. 174-75.
9. Bernard Katz, ed. The Social Implications of Early Negro Music in the United States, p. 13; selected from The American Negro: His History and Literature, William Loren Katz, general editor.
10. Ibid., p. xi.
11. Addison Walker Reed, op. cit., p. 175.
12. Ibid., pp. 175-76.
13. William J. Schafer and Johannes Reidel. The Art of Ragtime, p. 8.
14. Ibid., p. 6.
15. S. Brunson Campbell, “The Ragtime Kid (An Autobiography)” Jazz Report, VI, 1967, n.p.
16. Lillian Brandt. “The Negroes of St. Louis.” American Statistical Association, New Series No. 61.
17. S. Brunson Campbell. “A Hop Head’s Dream of Paradise,” unpublished, Fisk University Library Special Collections, Samuel Brunson Campbell Papers, n.p.
18. According to legend, Joplin arrived in St. Louis in 1885 and immediately began to frequent the Silver Dollar Saloon, which John L. Turpin was running by himself as his two sons were off on a mining expedition in Searchlight, Nevada. John L. Turpin appears to have bad three sons, Robert, Thomas, and Charles. Charles and Thomas were mining in Searchlight, Nevada, in 1881, and they may indeed have been there still in 1885, for there is no listing for them in 1885 or 1886; nor, for that matter, are there listings for John L. Turpin for these two years. In 1887 John L. and Charles Turpin, laborer and bellhop respectively, are listed as rooming at 8 Moore. In 1888, Charles, laborer, is rooming at 4172 New Manchester Road and John L., “roots,” is rooming at 1422 Market. In 1889 there is no listing for Charles, and John L. is listed under no occupation, still rooming at 1422 Market. The 1890 city directory is the first to list John L. Turpin’s saloon at 425 South Twelfth Street. He is still rooming at 1422 Market and in this year he is joined at this address by Charles, Robert, and Thomas, all of whom are listed as bartenders. In 1891, all are rooming at 1422 Market, Robert and Charles are listed as bartenders, and Thomas is now given the listing “music.” It is more likely, then, that the Silver Dollar Saloon was established in 1890 and all three sons were in St. Louis at the time, and that Joplin arrived in the city considerably later than 1885.
19. Rudi Blesh. “Scott Joplin: Black American Classicist,” Introduction to Scott Joplin: Collected Piano Works, Vera Brodsky Lawrence, ed., p. xxxi.
20. Interview with Jan Goldberg, May 1976.
21. Addison Walker Reed, op. cit., p. 20. This trip of Joplin’s to Chicago and his activities there are all based on legend, as there is no real documentation of his stay. In fact, his only documented stay in the city occurred in 1905-6.
22. Ibid., p. 22.
23. There is no documentary evidence that Joplin was in Sedalia at this time, but it may explain how Emmett Cook became part of the revived Texas Medley Quartette, for Cook was based in Sedalia.
24. Alexander Ford told the Vanderlees that Scott came back frequently between engagements and taught guitar, mandolin, and piano during his visits to Texarkana.
25. Ann and John Vanderlee, “The Early Life of Scott Joplin,” Rag Times, January 1974, p. 3·
26. It is also possible, of course, that Joplin merely mailed his compositions to Syracuse and never performed there. But it is more likely that he peddled his music personally, for he was an unknown composer.
27. Roy Carew and Private Don E. Fowler. “Scott Joplin: Overlooked Genius,” The Record Changer, September 1944, p. 14.
28. S. Brunson Campbell and R. J. Carew. “Sedalia, Missouri: Cradle of Ragtime,” The Record Changer, June 1945, p. 3.
29. According to the sheet music cover, Smith was an agent for the London firm of Chas. Sheard & Co., but no registration for the work has ever been found in the London copyright office. It is customary for a composer’s previous works to be listed on the cover, but there is no mention of Joplin’s two songs published the previous year. Perhaps they were left out because they were songs and this was an instrumental piece.
30. Addison Walker Reed, in The Life and Works of Scott Joplin (p. 68), feels that the only one of the three compositions to include syncopation is “Harmony Club Waltz,” specifically in the fifth strain. In any case, the intensive study of the development of ragtime elements in Joplin’s music may have caused musicologists to stretch the point a bit and find echoes of a syncopation that is not actually there. In the absence of any recordings of these works by Joplin, the point remains debatable. Incidentally, the first page of “Great Crush Collision March” contains the blurb “Scott Joplin, Author of ‘Combination March,’ ‘Harmony Club Waltz,’ &c.” and presumably the “&c” refers to his two published songs. However, it is possible that not all of Joplin’s works have been accounted for and that there may be an early march or waltz yet to be discovered.
31. Campbell states that Saunders accompanied Joplin on the Texas Medley Quartette tour. “From Rags to Ragtime and Riches,” unpublished, Fisk University Library Special Collections, Samuel Brunson Campbell Papers, n.p.

CHAPTER IV: Sedalia

1. “Cape Girardeau,” Rag Times, September 1975, p. 2.
2. S. Brunson Campbell and R. J. Carew. “Sedalia, Missouri: Cradle of Ragtime,” The Record Changer, May 1945, p. 26.
3. Addison Walker Reed, op. cit., p. 23. Reed interviewed an Ida Mae Abbott of Sedalia regarding the teachers under whom Joplin might have studied at the college, which was destroyed by fire in April 1925. No records exist to attest to the dates of Joplin’s enrollment or the courses he took.
4. A native of Leavenworth, Kansas, Daniels was at the time employed by Hoffman as a song plugger and arranger with E. Harry Kelly. Under the name Neil Moret, Daniels would later write “Hiawatha,” which he sold to Whitney Warner for $10,000. Dennis Pash. “E. Harry Kelly,” Rag Times, March 1976, p. 2.
5. The article is presented in full later in the chapter.
6. S. Brunson Campbell. “Ragtime Begins: Early Days with Scott Joplin Recalled,” The Record Changer, March 1948, p. 8.
7. In a letter to Arna Bontemps among the Samuel Brunson Campbell Papers at Fisk University, Tom Ireland, who played clarinet in Joplin’s band, states that Joplin did not particularly like band music.
8. “Ragtime Music Was Born in Sedalia,” Sedalia Democrat, October 16, 1960, p. 10.
9. S. Brunson Campbell and R. J. Carew, op. cit., p. 36. The authors also say that the owner of this tavern, which they do not identify, was among those who encouraged Joplin to enroll in the Smith College of Music. As mentioned earlier in the text, Campbell identified a Black tavern operator as influential in Joplin’s enrollment. It is possible that the two sources are actually referring to the same club, the different racial identification of the owner not withstanding.
10. S. Brunson Campbell, op. cit., p. 8. The Black 400 Club is not listed in any Sedalia city directories.
11. “The Original Maple Leaf Club,” Rag Times, May 1974, p. 3. Other Joplin sources do not appear to have noted or given sufficient attention to Campbell’s references to this club and seem to have concentrated almost exclusively on the Maple Leaf Club. Yet, as will be seen, it is doubtful that the Maple Leaf Club existed before 1899.
12. S. Brunson Campbell and R. J. Carew, op. cit., p. 36. Apparently this work was never published.
13. Addison Walker Reed, op. cit., pp. 183-84. This section has been paraphrased from Reed, for this author feels it is an excellent explanation of the ragtime composition for the layman.
14. Dick Zimmerman. “Interview with Joe Jordan,” Rag Times, September 1968, p. 6.
15. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis. They All Played Ragtime, p. 19.
16. Trebor Jay Tichenor. “Missouri Ragtime Revival,” Rag Times, January 1971, p. 4.
17. The Sedalia Democrat, October 16, 1960. Reasons why it was probably not named after the Maple Leaf Club will be discussed later.
18. “The Maple Leaf Route,” Rag Times, November 1976, p. 7.
19. Bill Mitchell. “The Maple Leaf Rag Story,” Rag Times, March–April 1969, p. 7.
20. Dick Zimmerman. “Joe Jordan and Scott Joplin,” Rag Times, November 1968, p. 5.
21. “Original Maple Leaf Club Document Found,” Rag Times, March 1976, p. 1. This is a recent and important discovery made in 1975 by Naomi Brown, Pettis County, Missouri, Recorder of Deeds. It gave rise to stories in the press that the Maple Leaf Club was not a bawdy house, as legend would have it, but a very respectable gentle men’s club. Actually, it was probably somewhere between the two.
22. The Maple Leaf Club was not listed in any of the city directories.
23. Rag Times, May 1974, p. 3. This newspaper item lends support to S. Brunson Campbell’s recollections of the Black 400 Club and Joplin’s connections with it.
24. Ibid. Neither of these items indicates how long the Maple Leaf Club had been open. Some observers feel the club could hardly have been the subject of the Black ministers’ ire if it had only been open a month. Others suggest that they could have included it in their indictment even if it was brand new, suspecting that it would be similar to the Black 400 Club.
25. Ibid. Larry Melton, a Joplinophile in Sedalia, found this card in a secondhand bookstore in Sedalia in 1974. It gives rise to the speculation that the Maple Leaf Club might originally have been called Williams’ Place and might have been renamed in honor of Joplin’s still unpublished rag. S. Brunson Campbell believed the club was named after the tune.
26. The building that housed the club was torn down years ago. In the early 1900s most of the wooden buildings on Main Street were demolished by a tornado. Amazingly, 121 East Main Street remained standing amid the rubble, but it was torn down in the general rebuilding that followed.
27. W. D. Hill. “Saga of Scott Joplin,” Sedalia Democrat, February 11, 1962.
28. “Missouri Was the Birthplace of Ragtime,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 18, 1961, p. 137. The article consists primarily of an interview with Carrie Bruggeman Stark, widow of Will Stark. According to Sedalia directories, Stark would move his company and his residence several times in the next fourteen years.
29. Prior to 1974 none of the Stark pre-Joplin publications was known, but early in that year St. Louis ragtime player and historian Trebor Jay Tichenor found a copy of ”The Lavada March,” by E. J. Stark, copyrighted in 1893.
30. “Missouri Was the Birthplace of Ragtime,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 18, 1961, p. 137. Some Joplin sources state that John Stark first discovered Joplin when he dropped by the Maple Leaf Club for a drink and heard the pianist. Impressed with the man’s music, Stark invited him to stop by his publishing office the next day, where upon the encounter with Joplin and his young friend ensued.
31. The contract was witnessed by R. A. Higdon, nothing of whom was known until his daughter, Lucile Higdon, saw an item in the Sedalia Democrat about the contract. In a letter to the paper she wrote: ” . . . My father had just graduated from Missouri University Law School in 1898, so he had just opened his law office. My father and mother said that Scott Joplin used to play for all their dances, and my dad was such a music lover that when Scott Joplin played the Maple Leaf Rag my dad was so impressed with it, he told Scott ‘You should have it published.’ But Scott said that ‘he didn’t know how to do that,’ so my father said he’d attend to getting it published for him. I know my father did it as a friend and admirer of the musician, not with any thought of monetary gain. So he interested and secured Stark in publishing the Maple Leaf Rag, and my father handled the contract to make it legal for Joplin . . .” Rag Times, November 1975, p. 11.
32. John Stark once wrote: “Scott Joplin left his mark on American music when he first came to our office . . . with the manuscript of the ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ and ‘Sunflower Drag.’ He had tried other publishers but had failed to sell them. We quickly discerned their quality, bought them and made a five year contract with Joplin to write only for our firm.” Quoted in W. D. Hill, “Saga of Scott Joplin,” p. 1. The question of the existence of a contract has been the subject of continuous controversy. Some point to the several compositions Joplin placed with other publishers in the next five years. It is this author’s belief, however, that there was such a contract and that Joplin broke it at two crucial periods when he and Stark were disagreeing about the publication of his first two extended works.
33. Dick Zimmerman, op. cit., p. 5.
34. This edition is very rare. Trebor Jay Tichenor has one; it is not known how many are extant.
35. Roy Carew and Private Don E. Fowler. “Scott Joplin: Overlooked Genius,” The Record Changer, October 1944, p. 10. This statement contradicts the legend that “Maple Leaf Rag” sold 75,000 copies in its first six months and enabled Joplin to cease performing for a living.
36. Ibid., p. 14.
37. S. Brunson Campbell, “The Ragtime Kid (An Autobiography)” (unpublished), Fisk University Library Special Collections, Samuel Brunson Campbell Papers, n.p.
38. Other members of the company were Latisha Howell, whose stage name was Zaorada Tosschatie, Ludie Umbler, Murrte Whitley, Frank Bledsoe, Henry Burres and Lourenda Brown, according to Arthur Marshall, in Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime, p. 71.
39. S. Brunson Campbell, op. cit., n.p. Some earlier Joplin writers have cited this statement as evidence that “Maple Leaf Rag” was written in 1897, but this author feels Joplin was referring to “Original Rags.”
40. S. Brunson Campbell and R. J. Carew, op. cit., p. 37. The authors go on to say: “In those Sedalia days Joplin couldn’t foresee that in later years his ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ would become a standard teaching number, that musicians’ unions would use it as a qualifying test for admittance, that Les Copeland, the great ragtime pianist with minstrel shows, would play Joplin rags at a command performance before the King of England.”
41. “Missouri Was the Birthplace of Ragtime,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 18, 1961, p. 137. Earlier Joplin sources state that the Starks moved late in 1901. However, since the firm was listed in the St. Louis City Directory for 1901, it is likely that they moved there the previous year.
42. Gould’s St. Louis City Directory, 1901. This, too, belies the immediate popularity of “Maple Leaf Rag.”
43. Addison Walker Reed, op. cit., pp. 80–81. In 1971, Reed spoke with Mrs. Mildred Steward, daughter of Arthur Marshall, as well as to relatives and contemporaries of Hayden. All agreed that Joplin and his young protégés worked together on improvisations frequently and contributed equally to their collaborative works.
44. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, op. cit., pp. 52–53.
45. Stark’s rapid climb, due to the success of “Maple Leaf Rag,” is shown graphically in the St. Louis city directories. Listed as a tuner in 1901, by 1903 he is listed as John Stark & Son, music. In 1905 he is John Stark, President, Music Printing and Publishing Co.; the 1906 listing gives his residence in New York.
46. Letter to the author from Daniel A. Conforti, Executive Assistant, American Brands, Inc., October 13, 1976.
47. Trebor Jay Tichenor says that Perry purchased the rag in 1900, and indeed stylistically it belongs to Joplin’s Sedalia period.
48. According to legend, they were married either in Sedalia or St. Louis. However, neither the St. Louis nor the Pettis County Recorder of Deeds has any record of their marriage—or, for that matter, of a later divorce. It is likely that they lived as common-law man and wife.

CHAPTER V: St. Louis

1. Gould’s St. Louis Directory, 1902. Morgan Town Road is now Delmar Street, and the row house in which the Joplins lived still stands.
2. Passports were not required for American travelers prior to World War I. (Letter to the author from William B. Wharton, Chief, Legal Division, Passport Office, December 21, 1976.) Joplin may have visited Europe later, around 1905, a possibility that is discussed in Chapter VI.
3. Rudi Blesh and Haniet Janis, They All Played Ragtime, 1959, p. 101.
4. Gould’s St. Louis Directory, 1899, lists Turpin, Thomas M., insp. r 2638 West Chestnut. The 1900 directory lists him as a laborer living at 2221 West Chestnut.
5. No address is given for this saloon in the city directory.
6. Trebor Jay Tichenor, “Chestnut Valley Days,” Rag Times, November 1971, p. 3.
7. Dick Zimmerman. “Joe Jordan and Scott Joplin,” Rag Times, November 1968, p. 5.
8. Trebor Jay Tichenor, op. cit., p. 3.
9. Kay C. Thompson, “Lottie Joplin,” The Record Changer, October 1950, p. 8.
10. Peter Gammond. Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era, p. 127.
11. Rudi Blesh. “Scott Joplin: Black American Classicist,” Introduction to Scott Joplin: Collected Piano Works, Vera Brodsky Lawrence, ed., p. xxiv.
12. Trebor Jay Tichenor, “The Entertainer,” Rag Times, July 1974, p. 5.
13. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, op. cit., p. 69. Now that Treemonisha has been produced, perhaps this ballet will be performed as well.
14. Freeman later composed a number of operas, and his Voodoo is believed to be the first opera written by a Negro, based on a Negro theme, to be performed by a Negro cast on Broadway (1928). Freeman and Joplin knew each other, and Joplin may have been influenced by Freeman’s work.
15. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, op. cit., pp. 66–67. Carter’s use of “Maple Leaf Club” rather than “Maple Leaf Rag” is an interesting slip. In a later article, Carter states that the piece was named after the Maple Leaf Club, which may be one reason why this legend persists.
16. Called the Rosebud Cafe in some sources, it was called the Rosebud Bar in 1904 advertisements in the St. Louis Palladium. Advertised as a distributor for Old Rosebud Whiskey, the club may have derived its name from the liquor brand name.
17. Rag Times, November 1971, p. 3. The site is now occupied by a radiator shop.
18. Gould’s St. Louis City Directory, 1903, lists Joplin, Scott, music, r. 2117 Lucas Ave. Earlier Joplin sources state that he owned the house. It does not appear that he ever owned a house, either in St. Louis or in New York.
19. Roy Carew discovered a card in the Copyright Office that read: “Class cxx 42461. Feb. 18, 1903. A GUEST OF HONOR, a ragtime opera written and composed by Scott Joplin, published by John Stark and Son.” Roy Carew and Private Don E. Fowler, “Scott Joplin: Overlooked Genius,” The Record Changer, October 1944, p. 12.
20. Letter quoted in Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, op. cit., p. 71.
21. Undoubtedly this article is one source of the erroneous legend that “Maple Leaf Rag” was an immediate hit.
22. It is not known whether Joplin visited Chicago at this time or conducted the publishing arrangements by mail or through a friend in Chicago.
23. Trebor Jay Tichenor. “‘Weeping Willow’: An Analysis,” Rag Times, March 1973, p. 4.
24. According to most earlier sources, the baby was born early in 1905. Attempts to locate either a birth or a death certificate for the baby in St. Louis have been fruitless. The placing of the birth two years earlier here results from documentation that in 1904 Joplin was living in Sedalia. This is also the reason why the breakup between Scott and Belle is placed in 1903 here rather than in 1905. That Scott and Belle separated, tried to make up, and conceived the child in the process is unlikely.
25. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, op. cit., pp. 79–80.

CHAPTER VI: On the Move Again

1. The New York Dramatic Mirror, September 12, 1903, October 17, 1903, and October 24, 1903. According to legend, the opera was also performed once in Sedalia, and that performance, if it did take place, likely occurred on this tour.
2. Interview with Trebor Jay Tichenor by Jan Goldberg, May 1976. Actually, it is not known when these parades began.
3. The article includes a substantial list of people who attended and who assisted Tom Turpin, a list too long to include in the body of the text; it did not mention Joplin. The concentration of the writer on the orderliness of the affair indicates a certain defensiveness; either such affairs were not always orderly or the white population considered them generally rowdy.
4. It would seem that an agreement had been signed to this effect. Otherwise, the Perry company would not have waited to publish the rag.
5. Edwin C. McReynolds. Missouri: A History of the Crossroads State, p. 228.
6. Roy Carew and Private Don E. Fowler. “Scott Joplin: Overlooked Genius,” The Record Changer, October 1944, p. 11.
7. Now that the identity of Joplin’s German mentor is known, it is possible that Ernst either gave him the book or suggested that he buy it. That Joplin owned the book is mentioned in Rudi Blesh’s introduction to Scott Joplin: Collected Piano Works, p. xxxiv.
8. Trebor Jay Tichenor, “‘The Chrysanthemum’: An Analysis,” Rag Times, September 1974, p. 11.
9. Trebor Jay Tichenor says: “I always thought that the Sedalia tunes had a kind of uncomplicated freshness about them that he later lost. Later, Joplin got much more complicated and emotional in the rags he wrote while he was in St. Louis. As time went on, his writings got more involved, because he’d go from one thing to another—he was always experimenting—he was always changing year periods—different patterns—always changing—much more than any of the other composers.” Interview with Jan Goldberg, May 1976. Undoubtedly, this was due in part to the influence of Alfred Ernst.
10. The cover bears the legend “Entered at Stationer’s Hall, London, England,” the old way of establishing British copyright. No British edition has ever been found.
11. Trebor Jay Tichenor, “Chestnut Valley Days: An Interview with Charlie Thompson,” Rag Times, November 1971, p. 3. Tichenor says in this article, “. . . let me assert that I have the utmost faith in Charlie’s recall . . . Charlie is very hep and not given to spinning tales.”
12. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, op. cit., pp. 79–80.
13. Robert Allen Bradford, “Arthur Marshall: Last of the Sedalia Ragtimers,” Rag Times, May 1968, p. 8.
14. In They All Played Ragtime, by Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, it is stated that Marshall was living at 2900 State Street (p. 231). If so, he did not list himself in the Chicago directories. The directories for 1905–7 list an Arthur Marshall, laborer, at 143 Sedgwick Avenue, but he may not have been the Arthur Marshall. An interesting possibility is that Robert and Will Joplin preceded Scott to Chicago. The 1905 directory lists a Robert B. Joplin as living at 2635 Armitage Avenue and a William Joplin, laborer, at 602 West Fifty-ninth Street. In the 1906 and 1907 directories there are no listings for a Robert Joplin. William Joplin is listed at the same address. The only listing for Scott is in 1906, at 2840 Armour Avenue.
15. Rudi Blesh, “Scott Joplin: Black American Classicist,” Introduction to Scott Joplin: Collected Piano Works, Vera Brodsky Lawrence, ed., p. xxx.
16. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, op. cit., p. 231.
17. Interview with Trebor Jay Tichenor, May 1976. Tichenor found advertisements to this effect in St. Louis Black newspapers.
18. Surviving relatives and friends remember his visiting at least twice. Mattie Hanis, Scott Joplin’s niece, was eighty-eight years old in 1976. She remembers Scott’s visiting when she was in her pre-teens, or around 1900. George Mosley was seventy-seven years old in 1976. He has a faint recollection of Scott’s returning to Texarkana, and must remember the 1907 visit. Fred Joplin, Scott’s nephew, says he remembers a visit in 1907.
19. No death certificate for Florence has as yet been located. She is last listed in the Texarkana City Directory of 1902. Mattie Harris says she had died by 1904.
20. “The 1939 History,” p. 10.
21. Interview with George Mosley, June 1976.
22. Jerry Atkins, “Scott Joplin: Early Days in Texas,” Rag Times, September 1972, p. 3; interview with Jerry Atkins, June 1976.
23. Interview with Jerry Atkins, June 1976.
24. Interview with George Mosley, June 1976.
25. Texarkana city directories indicate that the separation occurred sometime between 1901, when Jiles is listed at 830 Laurel, and 1906, when he is listed at 815 Laurel. Laura Joplin is listed at 830 Laurel in 1905, 1908, and 1910.
26. Ann and John Vanderlee, “The Early Life of Scott Joplin,” Rag Times, January 1974, p. 2.
27. Interview with Fred Joplin, June 1976: “Now Robert…I didn’t see him until I went to Chicago, and that was in the early twenties. Now Willie, I never did see him.”
28. Ibid.
29. Telephone interview with Mattie Harris, June 1976.
30. Interview with George Mosley, June 1976.
31. Interview with Fred Joplin, June 1976.
32. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, op. cit., pp. 235–37.
33. “The Jess Williams Joplin Story,” Rag Times, September 1976, p. 9. Aspects of the story are questionable. Williams remembers Joplin as a tall, slender man and as a pianist of some prowess. By most other accounts, Joplin was a small man and not a particularly good pianist. Williams recalls that the meeting took place in 1909, and that Joplin told him that he and his wife had recently broken up; yet Joplin and Belle Hayden had been separated for some years. It is possible that the man who called himself Scott Joplin was an impostor. But it is also possible that to the teen-age Williams he appeared taller than he actually was, and a better pianist than he actually was, and that he was still brooding about Belle. And Williams’ recollection just might be off by a couple of years.
34. “Man Who knew Joplin Is the Man of the Hour,” The Washingtonian, August 11, 1972, p. B1.
35. Kay C. Thompson, “Lottie Joplin,” The Record Changer, October 1950, p. 8., gives the year 1907. Blesh and Janis say that the year was 1909. S. Brunson Campbell stated that the two were married June 18, 1910. A search of the marriage records for the Borough of Manhattan for 1907, 1909, and 1910 reveals no record of the marriage, and at tempts to locate a record of marriage in Washington, D.C., have also proved unsuccessful.
36. Trebor Jay Tichenor, “Missouri Ragtime Revival,” Rag Times, January 1971, p. 5.
37. New York Age, April 4, 1917.
38. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, op. cit., p. 242.
39. Roy Carew and Private Don E. Fowler, op. cit., p. 12.
40. Rudi Blesh, op. cit., p. x.xvii.

CHAPTER VII: Treemonisha

1. Interview with Trebor Jay Tichenor, May 1976. John Stark and his son Will failed to forsee the eventual mechanization of music and copyrighted only the sheet music, reserving no rights to either piano rolls or records. In 1961, Will’s widow, Carrie Bruggeman Stark, said, “Some people think ‘Maple Leaf’ and other rags made us rich, but unfortunately that just isn’t so. Eventually, the copyrights ran out on the sheet music, and we never made a dime on the thousands of ragtime piano rolls that became popular. Now, of course, it is obvious that Will and his father made a mistake in not protecting all the rights to this early music, but in those early days it was difficult to see just what lay around the corner—musically speaking.”
2. “Leo Feist: Ragtime Publisher,” The Metronome, September 1923, reprinted in Rag Times, March 1973, pp. 10-11.
3. Russ Cassidy, “Joseph Lamb: Last of the Ragtime Composers,” Jazz Monthly, August 1961, p. 6.
4. Rudi Blesh, “Scott Joplin: Black American Classicist,” Introduction to Scott Joplin: Collected Piano Works, Vera Brodsky Lawrence, ed., p. xxxv.
5. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime, p. 204.
6. Russ Cassidy, op. cit., p. 6. After the death of Lottie Joplin in 1953, Lamb told her lawyer that he was willing to pay for the rag, should it be found among her effects, but he received no response.
7. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, op. cit., p. 249.
8. Kay C. Thompson, “Lottie Joplin,” The Record Changer, October 1950, p. 18. To this author’s knowledge, the person and the song have not been identified.
9. William J. Schafer and Johannes Reidel, The Art of Ragtime, p. 205.
10. Stark is listed in Trow’s General Directory (New York City) for four years. His business address is the same in all four directories. His various home addresses were as follows: 1906 and 1907, 2321 Old Broadway; 1908, 9 Old Broadway; 1909, 400 Manhattan Avenue (a new apartment building called “The Parthenon”).
11. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, op. cit., p. 242.

CHAPTER VIII: The Last Years

1. Dick Zimmerman. “Ragtime Recollections,” Rag Times, May 1968, p. 7.
2. The building still stands and now houses one of Harlem’s many religious sects. Next door is the building where the famous nightclub Connie’s Inn was once located.
3. Peter Gammond. Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era, p. 148.
4. Trow’s General Directory, 1916, Other Joplin sources state that the move to Harlem occurred earlier, and do not mention this first Harlem residence of the Joplins, citing only the address to which they moved the following year.
5. Patterson is not listed in the city directory until 1917 and then at 336 West Fifty-ninth Street.
6. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis. They All Played Ragtime, pp. 248–9.
7. S. Brunson Campbell, “The Ragtime Kid (An Autobiography),” Jazz Report, VI, 1967, n.p. Campbell is the only writer on Joplin who identified the theater; other writers call it simply a “dingy theatre.” The Lincoln underwent a change in 1915, from the original movie house established by Mrs. M. C. Downs about 1909 to an enlarged vaudeville house in October 1915. If Treemonisha was presented there when it was “dingy,” then the performance probably occurred in the spring or early summer of 1915.
8. Orrin Clayton Suthern II, “Minstrelsy in Popular Culture,”‘ in Remus, Rastus, Revolution, Marshall Fishwick, ed., p. 70.
9. Lynde Denig, “A Unique American Playhouse,” The Theatre magazine, June 1916, p. 362.
10. Reprinted in “Joplin Gets Second Hit,” Dick Zimmerman, Rag Times, May 1974, p. 1.
11. Earlier Joplin sources suggest that Scott contracted the disease in New York’s Tenderloin. However, the symptoms of dementia paralytica do not arise until at least eight years after the contraction of syphilis, and can remain latent for as long as twenty years. It is more likely that Scott contracted syphilis during his wandering period following the breakup with Belle. It is also likely that he was or had been under treatment. The symptoms described here and later on are conjectural, based on the usual symptoms exhibited in the three stages of dementia paralytica and on the notation on Joplin’s death certificate that the onset of the illness occurred one and a half years before his death.
12. Trow’s General Directory, 1917: “Joplin, Lottie furn rms 163 W 131st St.” They did not own the building, as other sources state. Renting rooms to rent out in turn was a common practice at the time.
13. Rudi Blesh, “Scott Joplin: Black American Classicist,” Introduction to Scott Joplin: Collected Piano Works, Vera Brodsky Lawrence, ed. p. xxix.
14. Dick Zimmerman, op. cit., p. 7.
15. Interview with Trebor Jay Tichenor, May 1976.
16. To this author’s knowledge the music has never surfaced. However, Lottie Joplin mentioned a symphony to Kay Thompson in 1950: “When Scott died, he was composing a ragtime symphony, which he believed would be his most important effort.”
17. Kay C. Thompson, “Lottie Joplin,” The Record Changer, October 1950, p. 18. Some other writers on Joplin have suggested that he was paranoid. However, paranoia is not a usual symptom of dementia paralytica. And, according to Lottie, Scott had good reason to be concerned about his scripts. As she told Thompson, “. . . he was afraid that, if anything happened to him, they might get stolen. In those days, there was a lot of that; more than you might think.”
18. Death certificate for Scott Joplin, City of New York, Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Records.
19. Ibid. Cause of death is listed as: Dementia Paralytica—cerebral form. Duration: 1 yr. 6 mos. Contrib. cause: Syphilis—unknown duration. In the spring of 1977 this author heard that some of Joplin’s belongings were still being held at the hospital and made inquiries. However, in a letter dated June 23, 1977, Preston Grier, Associate Director of Manhattan Psychiatric Center, stated that no property that might have belonged to Joplin could be located.
20. “The Great American Composer,” reprinted in Rag Times, July 1974, p. 24.
21. Kay C. Thompson, op. cit., p. 18.
22. New York Age, April 5, 1917. Contrary to legend, there was no large impressive funeral procession, no mourners’ cars draped with banners printed with the names of Joplin’s most famous rags.
23. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, op. cit., p. 250.
24. Roy Carew and Private Don E. Fowler, “Scott Joplin: Overlooked Genius,” The Record Changer, October 1944, p. 11.