Scott Joplin

Texarkana

1868 – 1917

Scott Joplin became known around the world as the “King of Ragtime,” but the foundations of his musical life were laid in Texarkana. Born in Texas, Joplin moved with his family to Texarkana while still young. His mother worked in domestic service, and Joplin practiced piano in some of the homes where she worked. Among the musicians who taught him was Julius Weiss, a German-born instructor who introduced the young pianist to European classical music and opera. Those influences would eventually merge with African American musical traditions in Joplin’s distinctly American compositions.

Joplin became the defining composer of ragtime. His “Maple Leaf Rag,” published in 1899, sold more than a million copies and helped turn ragtime from a regional form into a national phenomenon. “The Entertainer,” written a few years later, became another enduring standard and returned Joplin’s music to popular culture decades after his death through the film The Sting. In all, he wrote more than forty published piano rags while insisting that ragtime be regarded as serious composed music rather than novelty entertainment.

His ambitions reached beyond the piano. Joplin’s opera Treemonisha draws directly on the landscape and Black communities of the Red River region and is set near Rondo, north of Texarkana in Miller County. The work combined European operatic form with African American musical traditions and used education, leadership, and community self-determination as central themes. Joplin never saw the opera fully staged during his lifetime, but later productions helped establish its importance in American music.

In 1976, Joplin received a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his contribution to American music. The rhythms that made him famous traveled around the world, but part of the story begins in Texarkana, where a young pianist first encountered the musical worlds he would bring together.