Scott Joplin - Life in The Southern States and Chicago

Life in The Southern States and Chicago

In the late 1880s, having performed at various local events as a teenager, Joplin chose to give up work as a laborer with the railroad and left Texarkana to become a traveling musician. Little is known about his movements at this time, although he is recorded in Texarkana in July 1891 as a member of the "Texarkana Minstrels" in a performance that happened to be raising money for a monument to Jefferson Davis, President of the Southern Confederacy. He was soon to discover that there were few opportunities for black pianists, however; besides the church, brothels were one of the few options for obtaining steady work. Joplin played pre-ragtime 'jig-piano' in various red-light districts throughout the mid-South, and it has been claimed he was in Sedalia and St. Louis during this time.

In 1893 Joplin was in Chicago for the World's Fair. While in Chicago, he formed his first band playing cornet and began arranging music for the group to perform. Although the World's Fair minimised the involvement of African-Americans, black performers still came to the saloons, cafés and brothels that lined the fair. The exposition was attended by 27 million Americans and had a profound effect on many areas of American cultural life, including ragtime. Although specific information is sparse, numerous sources have credited the Chicago World Fair with spreading the popularity of ragtime. Joplin found that his music, as well as that of other black performers, was popular with visitors. By 1897 ragtime had become a national craze in American cities, and was described by the St. Louis Dispatch as "a veritable call of the wild, which mightily stirred the pulses of city bred people."