Good to see ya!
Ragtime was not yet on the nations radar, but all that changed in 1896. Ragtime arrived in New York and took the city by storm, and the new sound quickly went nationwide. Joplin sat down and wrote another rag, but composing it and getting it published properly were two different things. He needed a white advocate, one he could trust not to rip him off.
His name was John Stark. An abolitionist in his youth, he was the leader of the Sedalia music scene on the white side of the tracks and owner of the local sheet music store. One hot day in 1899, the 58 year old Stark dropped in at the Maple Leaf Club for a cold beer and heard Joplin playing piano. The two men knew each other by sight, and when Joplin was done, Stark greeted him.
Hello, Joplin. Thats a good number. Is it yours?
The next day Joplin dropped in at Starks store and sold Maple Leaf Rag for $50 plus royalties.
First it sold out in Sedalia. Stark set up sales contracts through Missouri, then regionally, then nationally. Sales snowballed, first hitting 75,000 and then plowing forward rapidly to the million mark. (Thats the 1899 equivalent of a Gold Record, folks!) This was the piece that made Joplin the King of Ragtime and sent him on his way as the great exponent of the new music. Soon Joplins ragtime was being played in every parlor in America, white and black except perhaps on Sundays.
This is the famous 1971 recording by Joshua Rifkin, who was responsible for the Great Ragtime Revival of the Seventies. I saw Rifkin do a benefit concert of Joplins music at UCLAs Royce Hall in 1980. Martin Bernheimer, dean of music criticism at the Los Angeles Times was scathing, writing that it was a waste of time for a fine classical pianist, teacher and Baroque Era scholar to fiddle at the piano with ragtime. But the hall was sold out, and the audience loved it.
Note that Rifkin doesnt play it all that fast. Notice! Dont play this piece fast. It is never right to play ragtime fast, Joplin wrote famously, and this recording honors that. Note the format of a piano rag: AA-BB-A-CC-DD. The C section is usually in the subdominant key, rather than the tonic key. (Subdominant D-flat, rather than tonic A-flat in this piece.)