Introduction
Like most other Blacks, I was pleased when Scott Joplin was “rediscovered,” and I read avidly the books and the articles about him that began to appear in abundance even in the mass audience magazines, to say nothing of the music periodicals. I noticed, however, that the revival of interest in Joplin was almost exclusively in his music, that there seemed little in Scott Joplin, the man. What little biographical information was furnished consisted of paraphrases and rehashes of the few earlier sources that contained information on Joplin’s life, information that was neither abundant nor in many cases well documented.
I felt that others among the reading public shared my interest in learning more about Scott Joplin, the man, and I set out to document the existing information about his life and, I hoped, to uncover hitherto unknown information, to gain a sense of what it was like to be a Black composer at the turn of the century, particularly one with a mission, as was Joplin. The results of my work are contained in the following pages.
This work has been the most exciting, and the most frustrating, I have ever undertaken. I have made and learned of discoveries that debunk some of the earlier myths about Joplin. I have come extremely close to making other discoveries but have not quite managed to do so. Despite intensive efforts, there are still facts I cannot document. And there is painfully little material relative to Joplin’s feelings and thoughts. Too much time has passed, too few family records were kept, too few members of his family survive. What I have done, therefore, is to take the facts I have documented together with the interview material I have gathered and the undocumented legends about Joplin and made what I consider educated conjectures about what is not known. I have provided extensive footnotes, explaining the bases for my conjectures, and I invite the reader to form his or her own opinions.
I feel it is most important to point out here that I had no pre-established opinions and that my interest was not qualified by any political considerations. Now that Joplin has been rediscovered, there are numerous localities that wish to claim importance in his life, a sort of “Scott Joplin slept here” syndrome. Although I am of course deeply grateful to the people who helped me in these various localities, I have made no attempt to fit my interpretations to their desires. I have made no statements that I do not believe.
What has made this project particularly exciting is the continued appearance of new material. Much of the material contained in this book is based on comparatively recent discoveries—a census entry discovered by chance in Shreveport, Louisiana, an old business card found in a secondhand bookstore in Sedalia—and there is every hope that more discoveries of equal importance will be made in the future. Who knows, perhaps someday Joplin’s famous lost opera, A Guest of Honor, will be found in some obscure place, or the trunk full of belongings that Joplin is said to have left in a Baltimore rooming house over fifty years ago will be discovered, or his mother’s background will be documented. I welcome such discoveries, for I have never intended this book to constitute the “last word” on the life of Scott Joplin, and I encourage others to utilize this book in the further and hopefully never-ending “search for Scott Joplin.”
Jim Haskins, 1977
