Elite Syncopations

Joplin, Scott

album cover

The Rag Legend's Rolls

The artist listed on this collection, and a corresponding one called The King of Ragtime Writers, is Scott Joplin. Alert historians will argue that this can't be: The famous pioneer of ragtime did most of his work between 1899 and 1917, the era before recording, even before electricity. To supplement his publishing income, Joplin did, however, document several of his famous rags on piano rolls designed for player pianos. A few of the six surviving original Joplin rolls—which capture only the sequence of notes, not nuances of performance or dynamics—appear on each of these recordings; the remaining selections on each disc are taken from piano rolls made by other musicians, who followed Joplin's original notation.

The lure isn't the performances—they're as dry and mechanical as you'd expect from an ancient technology. It's the tunes themselves, sweeping and joyous pieces that show Joplin as a composer for the ages, the man who laid several cornerstones in the foundation of jazz. The chords move at a boom-chinking clip, but there are also stark, disarmingly lyrical melodies on display, many of which carry a sweetly sad undercurrent that expands the jovial stereotype of ragtime. Joplin always wanted to move beyond rags—he wrote several unsuccessful operas, and other "legitimate" pieces, but the ragtime sheet music paid the bills. He's been rediscovered many times over the years, most notably when Marvin Hamlisch interpreted "The Entertainer" and "Maple Leaf Rag" in the 1973 period film The Sting. What's nice about this disc is there's no extra gauze of nostalgia, no period kitsch; all that's here is the gleeful good-timey style Joplin created.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 1987, Shout Factory/Biograph
Key Tracks: "Maple Leaf Rag," "A Real Slow Rag."
Catalog Choice: The King of Ragtime Writers.
Next Stop: Dick Hyman: Some Rags, Some Stomps, and a Little Blues
After That: James P. Johnson: Carolina Stomp
Book Pages: 411–412