Tidlige Jazz-Pianister Tidlige Pianister Armstrong, Lil Hardin Basie, Count Blake, Eubie Bloom, Rube Confrey, Zez Hines, Earl Johnson, James P. Joplin, Scott Lamb, Joseph Morton, Jelly Roll Roberts, Luckey Scott, James Smith, Willie "The Lion" Tatum, Art Waller, Fats Williams, Mary Lou Wilson, Teddy Joplin, Scott (b nr Marshall, TX, or Shreveport, LA, 24 Nov 1868; d New York, 1 April 1917). American composer. The circumstances of his training and early career remain obscure, but by 1896 he had settled in Sedalia, Missouri. There, after studying at the George R. Smith College for Negroes to improve his musical technique, he began to issue, with the publisher John Stark, the numerous piano rags on which his reputation as the ‘king of ragtime’ largely rests. Ragtime had been a predominantly improvised folk genre, but Joplin wished to elevate it to ‘classical’ status – a goal he pursued energetically throughout his life – and the idea of a ragtime opera was an early obsession. Almost operatic is The Ragtime Dance of 1899, a six-minute display of ragtime dance steps with sung narration by a ‘caller’ (after the fashion of square dances) and an orchestral accompaniment. In the wake of the success of Maple Leaf Rag (1899), Joplin married and moved (1901) to St Louis. There he composed A Guest of Honor (1903), a ‘ragtime opera’ in one act comprising 12 numbers, all rags. He formed the Scott Joplin Drama Company in April of that year, presenting a single performance of the opera in St Louis before taking it on tour. The renamed Scott Joplin Ragtime Opera Company, however, quickly collapsed, and the touring production was probably heard only in four small Midwestern towns. Stark proved reluctant to publish so ambitious a project, and the work is now lost. As late as 1950 there were still ‘many people’ who remembered the St Louis performance, but no reliable account of the opera’s plot or subject has survived, though the titles of two numbers are known. Joplin led an itinerant life until 1907, when he moved to New York with the express purpose of publishing and producing his next opera, the three-act Treemonisha (1908–11, orchestrated 1915). Unable to find either publisher or backers, he brought out the piano score (New York, 1911) at his own expense (attracting a single, laudatory review), and likewise mounted a poorly received concert performance with piano accompaniment. Three numbers were revised and issued separately in 1913 and 1915. Treemonisha was © Oxford University Press 2007, Side 1 af 48 Tidlige Jazz-Pianister not staged, however, until 28 January 1972, in Atlanta; it is published in The Complete Works of Scott Joplin (vol.ii, New York, 2/1981), but the original orchestration is lost. Joplin refrained from labelling Treemonisha a ‘ragtime opera’. The style of both text (by the composer) and music is an uneasy but effective combination of ragtime and operetta. The identification of ragtime as a pop genre and Joplin as a ‘minority’ composer has tended to obscure the fact that Treemonisha is the earliest music ally significant opera by an American (apart from Gottschalk’s one-act Escenas campestres, 1860), and the earliest in an identifiably modern idiom. In autumn 1916 Joplin, already seriously debilitated by his final illness, notified the New York Age that he had just completed a ‘music comedy drama’ entitled If; but this, if it existed, has vanished without trace. See also TREEMONISHA. BIBLIOGRAPHY SouthernB ‘A Musical Novelty’, American Musician [New York], xxvii/12 (1911), 7–8 R. Blesh and H. Janis: They all Played Ragtime (New York, 1950, 4/1971) A. W. Reed: The Life and Works of Scott Joplin (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1973) T. Waldo: This is Ragtime (New York, 1976) J. Haskins and K. Benson: Scott Joplin (Garden City, NY, 1978) A. W. Reed: ‘Scott Joplin: Pioneer’, Ragtime: its History, Composers, and Music, ed. J. E. Hasse (New York, 1985), 117–36 E. A. Berlin: ‘On the Trail of A Guest of Honor: in Search of Scott Joplin’s Lost Opera’, A Celebration of American Music: Words and Music in Honor of H. Wiley Hitchcock (Ann Arbor, 1990), 51–65 ANDREW STILLER Scott, James (Sylvester) (b Neosho, MO, 12 Feb 1885; d Kansas City, KS, 30 Aug 1938). American ragtime composer and pianist. His parents had been slaves and had come from North Carolina to Neosho, where Scott took music lessons from John Coleman. After moving to Carthage, Missouri, about 1901, his father bought him a piano, and Scott honed his pianistic skills by ‘sitting in’ between dance sets at the Lakeside Amusement Park and by performing in local saloons. In 1902 he began working for the Dumars Music Company and was soon promoted to sales clerk and song demonstrator. The following year Dumars published two rags by Scott, A Summer Breeze and The Fascinator. In 1906 he reportedly journeyed to St Louis and met Scott Joplin, who is said to have introduced him to the publisher John Stark. That year Stark issued Frog Legs Rag, which proved popular, and thereafter his firm became almost the sole publisher of Scott’s works. During the 1910s Scott continued to write piano rags for Stark and to work for Dumars, and also travelled as far as Kansas City and St Louis to perform. By 1920 Scott had moved to Kansas City, Kansas, where he opened a teaching studio. He reportedly continued to compose, but his last rag was issued © Oxford University Press 2007, Side 2 af 48 Tidlige Jazz-Pianister in 1922. In the 1920s he played for silent films and then with pit orchestras in Kansas City, Missouri; when sound films displaced the theatre orchestras, he formed a dance band and continued to play until shortly before his death. Scott’s rags have a number of traits traditional to American music: pentatonicism, blue notes, call-and-response patterns and jazz-like breaks. They are generally structured around two-bar motifs, and demand greater virtuosity than the works of Joplin or Joseph Lamb. In Scott’s later rags his textures became richer and his bass lines more varied. He was not well known in his lifetime and his music had less circulation than Joplin’s: apparently none of Scott’s rags were recorded on discs before the 1920s, although a number were issued on piano rolls. In 1939 Jelly Roll Morton recorded his Climax Rag, and in the 1940s several of Scott’s other rags were recorded by dixieland jazz bands. A revival of interest in his works followed the publication in 1950 of Blesh and Janis’s They All Played Ragtime. WORKS (selective list) Pf rags: The Fascinator (1903); A Summer Breeze, march and two step (1903); On the Pike, march and two step (1904); Frog Legs Rag (1906); Kansas City Rag (1907); Grace and Beauty (1909); Great Scott Rag (1909); The Ragtime Betty (1909); Sunburst Rag (1909); Hilarity Rag (1910); Ophelia Rag (1910); Quality (A High Class Rag) (1911); Princess Rag (1911); Ragtime Oriole (1911); Climax Rag (1914); Evergreen Rag (1915); Honeymoon Rag (1916); Prosperity Rag (1916); Efficiency Rag (1917); Paramount Rag (1917); Dixie Dimples, ragtime fox trot (1918); Rag Sentimental (1918); New Era Rag (1919); Peace and Plenty Rag (1919); Troubadour Rag (1919); Modesty Rag (A Classic) (1920); Pegasus (A Classic Rag) (1920); Don’t Jazz Me (I’m Music) (1921); Victory Rag (1921); Broadway Rag (A Classic) (1922); Calliope Rag (1966) Other pf: Hearts Longing Waltzes (1910); Suffragette Waltz (1914); Springtime of Love Valse (1919) Songs: She’s my girl from Anaconda (Dumars) (1909); Sweetheart Time (Dumars) (1909); Take me out to Lakeside (I. Millet) (1914); The Shimmie Shake (C. Wilson) (1920) Principal publishers: Dumars, Stark BIBLIOGRAPHY GroveA R. Blesh and H. Janis: They All Played Ragtime (New York, 1950, 4/1971) B. Wright and T.J. Tichenor: ‘James Scott and C.L. Johnson: an Unlikely Musical Kinship’, Ragtime Review, v/Jan (1966), 7–8; repr. in Rag Times, vi/5 (1972), 4 W.J. Schafer: ‘Grace and Beauty: the Case of James Scott’, Mississippi Rag, ii/10 (1975), 7–8 M.L. Van Gilder: ‘James Scott’, Ragtime: its History, Composers and Music, ed. J.E. Hasse (New York, 1985), 137–45 JOHN EDWARD HASSE © Oxford University Press 2007, Side 3 af 48 Tidlige Jazz-Pianister Morton, Jelly Roll [Lamothe, Ferdinand Joseph; Mouton, Ferdinand Joseph] (b New Orleans, 20 Oct 1890; d Los Angeles, 10 July 1941). American composer and pianist. 1. Life. 2. Achievement. WORKS SELECTED RECORDINGS RECORDED COMPOSITIONS BIBLIOGRAPHY l 1. Life. Gushee’s essays of the 1980s are the definitive studies of Morton’s early years. He was born Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe, the son of Edward J. Lamothe, but his baptismal certificate misspells the surname as Lemott; an incorrect variant spelling, La Mothe, has appeared in jazz literature, and another misspelling, La Menthe, is often found. His mother later married Willie Mouton, and later, upon entering show business, he anglicized the name to Morton. While his baptismal certificate gives his date of birth as 20 October 1890, Gushee suggests that Morton may have been born in September; Morton had claimed 1885 as the year of his birth and evidently adjusted some of his stories accordingly, and these events have been corrected in Gushee’s chronology. Morton grew up in New Orleans, played guitar in string bands at around the age of seven, and started to learn piano when he was ten. By 1905 he was working in the bordellos of Storyville, performing ragtime, French quadrilles, and other popular dances and songs, as well as a few light (mostly operatic) classics. Nothing is known of his formal musical training, but his major youthful influence appears to have been Tony Jackson.