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The Maple Leaf Rag Research Paper

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In the early 1880’s, Scott Joplin traveled as a teen musician and played in many bars. Throughout this time, Joplin spent many days Sedalia’s Lincoln High School. After a few years, Joplin traveled to Chicago for the World Fair. While there, Joplin fronted a band as a cornet player and met Otis Saunders. Saunders begun to inspire the idea of Joplin’s works being publicized. In 1894, Joplin moved back to Sedalia, Missouri and joined the Queen City Cornet Band. With this, and many other groups, Joplin traveled the country and played at various clubs. In 1896, Scott Joplin decided to go back to school and started to attend Sedalia’s George R. Smith College for Negros. Once there, Joplin studied how to transfer played music to sheet music and served as a teacher and mentor to other ragtime musicians. Joplin soon begun to write songs with other local musicians, such as Arthur Marshall. …show more content…

With John Stark as Joplin’s publisher, the sales of “The Maple Leaf Rag” started slow. However, “The Maple Leaf Rag” went on to sell over a million copies and became a model of ragtime music. After writing this, Joplin started to write even more ragtime songs, and become to be known as the “King of Ragtime”.
In 1901, Scott Joplin and Belle Jones, Joplin’s first wife, moved to St. Louis. Joplin brought others as well, such as John Stark and Arthur Marshall and hoped to become more successful. While in St. Louis, Joplin composed several new pieces, taught music lessons,

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