60 Fun Facts About Ragtime

Which rhythmic device gives ragtime its distinctive 'ragged' feel?

Syncopation: Joplin's 1908 manual School of Ragtime drilled pianists in it through six exercises, just as quick-study ragtime schools were springing up across America.

Which strutting dance, a forerunner of ragtime, began as contests among Black Americans on Southern plantations?

Cakewalk: the couple with the most elaborate steps won a cake as the prize, and many of the earliest published rags were written for the dance.

Ragtime's steady left-hand bass was borrowed from the marches of which American bandleader?

John Philip Sousa returned the favour: his band's 1900 European tour, which played the Paris Exposition, probably gave Europeans their first taste of ragtime.

Rags were usually written in 4/4 or which other time signature?

2/4, the metre of the marches that rags grew out of: the left hand plays bass notes on the strong beats and chords on the weak ones.

James Reese Europe's regimental band took ragtime to France in 1918 with the 369th Infantry, a unit nicknamed what?

The Harlem Hellfighters: the band's 1918 tour of France drew great enthusiasm and helped spread the new American sound across Europe.

Tom Turpin's Rosebud bar, where Scott Joplin and other pianists gathered, was the hub of ragtime in which city?

St. Louis: by its pianists' standards Joplin was no virtuoso, so after moving there in 1901 he concentrated on teaching and composing instead of playing the saloons.

Which 1893 event, attended by 27 million people, is widely credited with spreading ragtime nationwide?

The Chicago World's Fair: pianists from across the country met in the saloons and cafés around the grounds, traded regional styles and took the new music home with them.

Which composer was the only white member of ragtime's 'Big Three', alongside Scott Joplin and James Scott?

Joseph Lamb met his idol Joplin by chance in a publisher's office in 1907, and Joplin liked his rags enough to get the first one into print.

Which 1899 Scott Joplin piece became his biggest hit and the model for countless later rags?

Maple Leaf Rag: unusually for the time, Joplin's contract paid him a royalty on every copy sold, and steady sales supported him for the rest of his life.

To which Missouri town did Scott Joplin move in 1894, teaching piano and playing in its social clubs?

Sedalia: his most famous rag was probably named for a social club there, and the town bills itself as the 'Cradle of Ragtime'.

Which music-store owner bought Scott Joplin's 1899 hit and went on to become his most important publisher?

John Stark paid $50 plus royalties at a time when most composers got only a small flat fee, and the hit let him turn his music shop into a national publishing house.

Under his 1899 contract, what royalty did Scott Joplin earn on each copy of his most famous rag?

One cent a copy: small, but any royalty at all was unusual in 1899, when composers normally sold a piece outright for a small flat fee.

Scott Joplin's own playing survives only in which form, all made in 1916?

Piano rolls: he never made a sound recording, and his playing on the 1916 rolls is so uneven that biographers hear his failing health in it.

Scott Joplin died in a Manhattan mental hospital in 1917 from the late stage of which disease?

Syphilis: it wrecked his coordination and then his mind while he was still sketching a ragtime symphony, which vanished along with his other late manuscripts.

Scott Joplin's 1902 rag 'The Strenuous Life' paid tribute to which US president?

Theodore Roosevelt had preached 'the strenuous life' in an 1899 speech urging Americans to embrace hard effort; Joplin's rag followed soon after he became president.

Which Scott Joplin opera, about a woman who leads her community against conjurers, was not fully staged until 1972?

Treemonisha: the only performance Joplin managed was a bare run-through with himself at the piano, no orchestra and no costumes, and it attracted no backers.

Scott Joplin's lost first opera, A Guest of Honor, is thought to portray which Black leader's 1901 White House dinner?

Booker T. Washington: Joplin took the opera on tour in 1903, but the takings were stolen, the company was stranded and the score, seized for unpaid bills, has never been found.

Which honour was Scott Joplin awarded posthumously in 1976?

Pulitzer Prize: the special citation came 59 years after Joplin died sick, poor and discouraged, having failed to get his opera properly staged.

The 1977 biopic Scott Joplin starred which actor as the composer?

Billy Dee Williams played Joplin three years before becoming Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back; the film was shot for television but released in cinemas instead.

Joshua Rifkin's 1970 album of Scott Joplin rags was issued by Nonesuch, a label then known for which music?

Classical: the record became a classical best-seller, fitting for a composer who had spent his life trying to lift ragtime to the level of concert music.

Students of which Boston music school won a Grammy for the 1973 Joplin album The Red Back Book?

New England Conservatory: its president, Gunther Schuller, formed the student ensemble in 1972 for a festival of American music, then took its period arrangements of Joplin into the studio.

Which Scott Joplin rag became a pop hit in 1974 as the theme of the film The Sting?

The Entertainer: published in 1902, it had been largely forgotten until the film made it a hit 72 years later, long after ragtime itself had gone out of fashion.

Who adapted Scott Joplin's rags for The Sting and won an Academy Award for the score?

Marvin Hamlisch's single of the film's theme reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1974, putting a piano rag from 1902 into the pop charts.

Which French composer wrote a ragtime into Parade, the 1917 ballet with sets and costumes by Picasso?

Erik Satie called the number 'Ragtime du paquebot', the steamship rag; it was later arranged for solo piano and became popular as a piece in its own right.

The Sting is set in 1936, when which jazz style ruled American dance floors?

Swing: the film's Joplin rags were two decades out of date for its Depression-era setting, yet its soundtrack took the 1970s ragtime revival to a mass audience.

Zez Confrey's 1921 hit 'Kitten on the Keys' popularized which flashy, speed-driven successor to ragtime?

Novelty piano: its showy, finger-twisting pieces came mostly from schooled white pianists, and Confrey's hit set off a fad that lasted through the 1920s.

Which piano style did James P. Johnson and Fats Waller build out of ragtime in 1920s New York?

Stride: the left hand leaps between low bass notes and chords higher up the keyboard, and unlike ragtime the music was meant to be improvised.

Jelly Roll Morton's 'Spanish tinge' borrowed the rhythm of which dance, also heard in Bizet's Carmen?

The habanera, a Cuban dance: Morton worked its rhythm into pieces such as 'The Crave' and maintained that jazz needed such Spanish touches to sound right.

Which ragtime pianist died in 1983, five days after celebrations marking what he said was his 100th birthday?

Eubie Blake always gave his birth year as 1883, but census, military and passport records published since 2003 all say 1887, which would have made him 96.

Which 1921 musical became a landmark all-Black Broadway hit and helped launch Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson?

Shuffle Along: its hit song 'I'm Just Wild About Harry' came back in 1948 as the campaign song of President Harry Truman.

Who wrote the 1911 hit 'Alexander's Ragtime Band'?

Irving Berlin's song is a march with barely a trace of ragtime rhythm, yet its worldwide success set off a fresh ragtime dance craze.

Which Russian composer wrote 'Piano-Rag-Music' in 1919 and put a rag in L'Histoire du soldat?

Igor Stravinsky first knew the style only from sheet music a conductor friend brought back from America; in L'Histoire a ragtime is one of the dances that cure a sick princess.

Who wrote the 1975 novel Ragtime, featuring Houdini, J. P. Morgan and Evelyn Nesbit?

E. L. Doctorow began it to beat writer's block: he started describing his own house, built in the 1900s, and let his imagination work outward into that era.

The 1975 novel Ragtime opens with a Scott Joplin epigraph warning that it is never right to play ragtime how?

Fast: Joplin printed the warning on his sheet music, part of his campaign to have ragtime played with care as serious music and not as a saloon stunt.

In the novel Ragtime, the unnamed family of Father, Mother and Younger Brother lives in which suburb?

New Rochelle: the author lived there himself, and modelled the family's house on his own home.

In the novel Ragtime, which pianist has his new car wrecked by a racist fire crew?

Coalhouse Walker Jr.: the name nods to Kleist's novella Michael Kohlhaas, whose wronged horse dealer likewise turns to violence when the courts deny him justice.

In the novel Ragtime, Mother's Younger Brother ends up fighting in which country's revolution?

Mexico: after lending his skill with explosives to the pianist's revolt, he flees south and dies fighting alongside Emiliano Zapata's rebels.

In the novel Ragtime, Father leaves home to join whose expedition to the North Pole?

Robert Peary's expedition keeps Father away for months, and he returns to a wife who has tasted independence and a marriage that is never the same.

In the novel Ragtime, Father dies aboard which ocean liner?

Lusitania: Father goes down when a German submarine torpedoes the ship in 1915, two years before America enters the war, and Mother is free to marry the immigrant artist Tateh.

In the novel Ragtime, which real pair ride Coney Island's Tunnel of Love together?

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung: the scene plays on a real trip, the two having crossed to America together in 1909 for Freud's lectures at Clark University.

Which millionaire husband of showgirl Evelyn Nesbit shot architect Stanford White dead in 1906?

Harry K. Thaw shot White at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden, a building White had designed himself, and was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Who directed the 1981 film adaptation of Ragtime?

Miloš Forman took over after Robert Altman was dropped, and cut the sprawling story down to centre on the wronged pianist.

Which Hollywood legend ended 20 years of retirement to play the police commissioner in the 1981 film Ragtime?

James Cagney took the part to help his recovery from a stroke; it was his last cinema film, though he made one more television movie in 1984.

Which future Downton Abbey star earned an Oscar nomination for the 1981 film Ragtime?

Elizabeth McGovern played Evelyn Nesbit in only her second film; she later married a British director and moved to London, long before Downton cast her as an American-born countess.

Who composed the original score for the 1981 film Ragtime instead of reusing recordings from the period?

Randy Newman judged surviving recordings from the 1900s too tinny and scratchy to use, so he wrote new music in period style and earned two Oscar nominations.

Which later star of The Princess Bride played the street artist Tateh in the 1981 film Ragtime?

Mandy Patinkin's Tateh makes silhouette portraits on a Lower East Side street, then leaves New York with his daughter to start a new life.

Which songwriting team wrote the score of the 1998 Broadway musical Ragtime?

Ahrens and Flaherty won the Tony for Best Original Score, one of four Ragtime took home on a night when it missed the top prize.

Which playwright wrote the book of the musical Ragtime and won the 1998 Tony Award for it?

Terrence McNally was hired before any songwriters, then helped the producers choose the team that would write the score.

The musical Ragtime premiered in December 1996 in which city, more than a year before reaching Broadway?

Toronto was where producer Livent tried out its big musicals before Broadway; the company collapsed in an accounting scandal within a year of Ragtime's New York opening.

Who won the 1998 Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical as Sarah in Ragtime?

Audra McDonald won even though Sarah is killed before the interval; it was her third Tony in five seasons, after Carousel and Master Class.

Which baritone originated the role of Ragtime's vengeful pianist on Broadway in 1998?

Brian Stokes Mitchell lost that year's Tony to Alan Cumming in Cabaret, then won it two years later as the lead in Kiss Me, Kate.

Ragtime led the 1998 Tony nominations, but which show beat it for Best Musical?

The Lion King won six Tonys, including Best Musical, but Ragtime's writers beat it for both Best Book and Best Original Score.

In the musical Ragtime, the pianist's pride and joy, wrecked by a racist fire crew, is which automobile?

A Ford Model T: Henry Ford himself appears as a character, and the original Broadway staging featured a working Model T.

Which actor played the wronged pianist in Lincoln Center Theater's 2025 Broadway production of Ragtime?

Joshua Henry won the 2026 Tony for Best Leading Actor in a Musical for the role, his first win after three earlier nominations.

The 2025 Lincoln Center production of Ragtime won four Tony Awards in 2026, including which of these?

Best Revival of a Musical: the staging began as a gala run at New York City Center in 2024, then moved to Broadway with the same director and leads.

Scott Joplin grew up in a family of railway labourers in which Southern town?

Texarkana: his mother cleaned houses there, and one employer let the boy practise on the family piano while she worked.

Besides the piano, which instrument did Scott Joplin play in a Missouri town band during the 1890s?

Cornet: he played it in the all-Black Queen City Cornet Band while also leading a six-piece dance band of his own.

Scott Joplin's 1896 'Great Crush Collision March' marked a Texas publicity stunt in which two what were crashed head-on?

Locomotives: a railway agent named Crush staged the wreck before some 40,000 spectators, but the boilers exploded and flying debris killed people in the crowd.

Which dance form did Scott Joplin choose for 'Bethena', his first piece published after his young bride died in 1904?

A waltz: Freddie Alexander died of pneumonia within three months of the wedding, and the piece, one of Joplin's lesser-known works, later featured in the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Scott Joplin's last rag, 'Magnetic Rag', reached print in 1914 through which publisher?

His own company: Joplin and his wife Lottie had formed the Scott Joplin Music Company the previous December, and it also issued revised numbers from his opera.