Scott Joplin was known as the king of ragtime. He was born to a former slave on November 24, 1868 near Linden, Texas. He stayed in Texas until the 1880's when he moved to St. Louis. While studying there he formalized ragtime. This style can be described as a unique blend of European classical styles with a taste of African American harmony and rhythm. Throughout the 1890's Scott Joplin wrote some of his most famous songs in Missouri. Late 1916, he had an illness that affected his brain and was forced to be institutionalized. He stayed there for less than a year when he died in New York April 1, 1917.
Another Great composer of ragtime was James Scott, who was born in Neosho, Missouri. Known as the "Little Professor," he was a piano prodigy, blessed with perfect pitch. He took piano lessons from a local teacher in Neosho and was an accomplished pianist by the time his family moved to Ottawa, Kansas. Joplin's publisher, the Stark Music Company, took on James Scott and published "Frog Legs", one of his best-known compositions. He died in 1838 and was buried in an unmarked grave. Many years after his death, a group of ragtime enthusiasts found the grave and raised money for a headstone.
Joseph F. Lamb was born in Montclair, New Jersey. The youngest son in a family of four children, Lamb grew up in a strict Irish-Catholic neighborhood. At about the age of eight, he asked his older sisters to teach him the piano lessons they were taking. Years later he met Joplin, and demonstrated his own rags. Several evenings later, Joplin got Stark to publish them. From that point on, Stark took anything Lamb wrote as well. He died from a heart attack and four years later, his wife Amelia published the volume "Ragtime Treasures".
