Artist: Scott Joplin

Scott Joplin was an American composer and  pianist. Dubbed the "King of Ragtime",  he composed  more than 40 ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas.

One of his first and most popular pieces, the "Maple Leaf Rag", became the genre's first and most influential hit, later being recognized as the quintessential rag. 

Joplin considered ragtime to be a form of classical music meant to be played in concert halls and largely disdained the performance of ragtime as honky tonk music most common in saloons. The combination of classical music, the musical atmosphere present around Joplin’s native Texarkana (including work songs, gospel hymns, spirituals and dance music), and Joplin's natural ability have been cited as contributing to the invention of ragtime: a new style that blended African-American musical styles with European forms and melodies and first became celebrated in the 1890s.  

When Joplin was learning the piano, serious musical circles condemned ragtime because of its association with the vulgar and inane songs "cranked out by the tune-smiths of Tin Pan Alley." As a composer, Joplin refined ragtime, elevating it above the low and unrefined form played by the "wandering honky-tonk pianists ... playing mere dance music" of popular imagination. This new art form, the classic rag, combined Afro-American folk music's syncopation  and 19th-century European romanticism, with its harmonic schemes and its march-like tempos.

Joplin's music was rediscovered and returned to popularity in the early 1970s with the release of a million-selling album recorded by Joshua Rifkin. This was followed by the Academy Award–winning 1973 film The Sting, which featured several of Joplin's compositions, most notably "The Entertainer", a piece performed by pianist Marvin Hamlisch that received wide airplay. 

In 1893, while in Chicago for the World's Fair, Joplin formed a band in which he played cornet and also arranged the band's music. The exposition was attended by 27 million visitors 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's Fair with spreading the popularity of ragtime. Joplin found that his music, as well as that of other black performers, was popular with visitors.

The "Maple Leaf Rag" served as a model for the hundreds of rags to come from future composers, especially in the development of classic ragtime. After the publication of the "Maple Leaf Rag", Joplin was soon described as "King of rag time writers", not least by himself on the covers of his own work, such as "The Easy Winners" and "Elite Syncopations".