The Story Of Popular Music Ep. 2 - I Can Hypnotise 'Dis Nation': Ragtime (Scott Joplin Documentary)

[Music] two [Music] foreign [Music] uh uh [Music] this gloomy building dilapidated and in a ruinous condition is where the last days of ragtime's greatest composure scott joplin was spent it's a part of the manhattan state hospital which is a hospital for the insane he had been committed in 1916 by his wife suffering from the effects of a long delusion that a black man could get a grand opera stage he consumed his last years obsessively working on this opera until finally he began to show the effects in the ravages of syphilis and the madness it culminates in the building is directly under a giant causeway and the background noise that you hear is that of automobiles going back and forth but for anybody who loves ragtime this building is a building of real significance for here scott joplin died and without joplin we simply wouldn't have ragtime as we know it he more than any other single person was the man who made it possible for ragtime to become a music of lasting significance in so doing he really laid the cornerstone of what many of us now think is american music there's many different styles of music that all come under the heading of ragtime and they all have well i can't say all generally they have one thing in common and that's syncopation and what that means is a regular beat superimposed over top of an irregular beat and the piano players usually do it this way the left hand maintains a regular 2-4 that's sometimes called a boom chick pattern boom check boom boom it's sometimes called um in certain circles and over the top of that is a syncopation that's putting the accent where it ordinarily doesn't fall so it'd be something like this and that's the essence of ragtime i'm 92 years old and if you tell me where it comes from i can make a living i don't know i heard it all my life i don't know yes it does you know this right franclist but when he does it that's right time that's the list because the the kings can do no wrong but that's ragtime soon as you syncopate listen all god's children got shoes that's right time and that was in the church that's right but they didn't call it right time it's a negro spiritual but they function everybody talking about having born there i'm doing it in dialect my my color people will be mad with me about this but we're not supposed to do dialect we're the only race of people in the world sir that throw away heritage [Music] the real problem was that negro music in its purest form was too strong for white acceptance [Music] worked hard all my life now being twisted around [Music] the first instance that i know of when black music passed into white society came soon after emancipation with the blackface cork minstrels as it was called had been around since the 1850s although it was just a white imitation of black music and dancing it became the first original american theatrical thought my good man where is the stage dog back in the alley thank you thank you very much [Music] even in those days billing meant everything to an actor and how spirits dropped when he found his name way down at the bottom of the list [Music] excuse me is you one of them active fellas in the show why yes [Music] you know i always did want to meet up with some show folks really yes hey mister hey i guess if i was quite supposed like you i'd be in a show too well that's very flattering yeah here's something for you oh thank you sir we are about to turn about to just so every time i wheel about a young jim dinner aren't you oh yes sir yes rice who's your friend well come inside are going to start rehearsal i want you to help with the bank hey i have an idea yes you'll be around here about a half hour before the show you mean you're gonna let me watch your clue jim crow you'll practically be right on the stage [Music] thus came a milestone in the theater with the first use of burnt court every time i turned a better jump you know i sure look funny yeah i sure hope i'll be funny in this come listen all you gals and boys i'm just from tucker hole i'm going to sing a little song my name's jim crow wheel about and turn about and do just so every time i wheel about a jumping pro i went down to the river i didn't mean to stay but there i saw so many gals i couldn't get away wheel about and turn about and you [Music] and from this humble beginning they're swept over the length and breadth of our nation a new era in the american theater the grand old minstrel day hey ladies and gentlemen wait a minute mr interrogator uh uh how do you like my clue they're very nice but what's remarkable about them well i chose these clothes by pussyfoot i thought your wife always picked your clothes no only the pockets [Applause] but i can't afford to buy no more so you believe that money talks brother if money talks it in on in terms of me all that going around with the banjos and you know what you call making bladder fishing bill jackson and his yellow girl the head falling out last night you don't have to do that anymore or bladder facing all like that oh oh [Applause] and an interlocutor he was or everybody was white but he didn't put on call and they all dressed in full dressed clothes and they said well mr mr so-and-so what so and so and he said well i'll tell you just like this you all know that the negroes don't talk that way on my lamp mr bones just a moment mr bones what is this mr lochter why do widows get married so easily somehow it never failed that evening mr lochter it caused dead men tell no tale [Laughter] ladies and gentlemen may i present to you our silver throat antenna in songs both old and new the songs that will bring back the past when you sing will live when all others the minstrels were the first popularizers of american song and writers like stephen foster became famous throughout the land thanks to these traveling road shows awake unto me starlight and new drugs are waiting for thee you came down late and sing this song although their effect was to make the black man look ridiculous most blacks at the time seemed to have enjoyed the mystery shows almost as much as fights anyway before long the blacks started their own shows in other words they saw for the first time that it was possible to reach an audience and a white audience at that but at a cost to their pride i came from alabama with my bando on my knees i'm going to louisiana my height to love for the season it rained all night today i left the weather it was dry the sun's so hot i froze your death susanna don't you cry [Music] from the beginning however scott joplin was determined he was not going to imitate anyone his music was going to be altogether different he was born in texas the son of an ex-slave and seems to have played the piano from an early age before long he attracted the attention of an old german music professor who imbued the young joplin with a profound love and admiration for classical music but like all blacks he needed to get a job and so in these early teens and on into his 19 into his 20s scott joplin traveled through what was what was later called the ragtime circuit that these are the states of the middle west from um missouri southern illinois on down through canada to kansas arkansas oklahoma texas on as far as new orleans that's that's the cradle of what we now call classic ragtime joplin's training therefore was that of an itinerant professor of music as they were then called he played in body houses in honky tonks gambling casinos in other words the underworld to which this country consigned early ragtime and its originators the problem was that the only truly open society of the 1890s was in the so-called tenderloin districts it was there that men and women black and white and all shades between mixed freely without the usual troubles of racial discrimination but to play in body houses brought its own problems even for blacks and i'm playing my left music there i turn around and i turn around and let my mother stand in the back the first thing she said take that right time out of my house don't you never let me hear you play right time in my house you want to play it you play at the street don't play it in my house it's the worst music that's from it's not god's music because my mother were over religious see too much religion and she hated right time most all the people i'm talking about when i was young men not now they didn't like right times you're going to a high class negroes home they say oh mr blake placer if you play that's what they would do at you they wouldn't insult you but their facial expressions would teach you to let you know that they didn't like that kind they want to hear joplin finished up in sedalia missouri sedalia at that time was a rapidly growing midwestern town it was a little louder than most because it was not primarily an agricultural town but a railroad center it's not a place where everybody plowed the fields and then went home to bed early but it had a roaring night life [Music] it was small enough that all the people in the right kind of scene could know each other comfortably and yet big enough and lively enough to support new music the fact that sedalia also had a new college founded by george r smith specifically for blacks made it a perfect place for joplin by day he could study advanced counterpoint by night he could earn money playing in the numerous bars and casinos the most notorious of the clubs was called the maple leaf club on east main street and one day a rather distinguished looking older man called john stark happened in for a glass of beer stark former ice cream salesman was now owner of a music store and he cherished the ambition to become a publisher when he heard scott joplin playing he walked over and introduced himself and said i'm interested in that piece of music you just played is it your own he said yes it's my own he said come in and talk to me about it at my store in the morning will you chop it said yes scott joplin was a man to follow up on an opening he took john stark at his word and appeared early the next morning at the john stark music company in sedalia stark said i'll take the way joplin signed a good contract with a royalty basis plus a down payment and stark immediately published the maple leaf ray it's now a matter of history that it took off almost immediately without advertising and became the first big huge popular music success in america selling a million copies within the first five or six years stark thus became the one white man indispensable to the black man's vision because joplin had in mind nothing less than the creation of a music acceptable to both black and white that might be classical in this development anyway the first six months sales of maple leaf were enough to decide john stark's next move to metropolitan st louis joplin followed but not before marrying belle hayden he and bell took quarters at 2658 a morgan street where they remained until 1903. joplin's new life took on a new pattern more his liking than traveling around the honkytonk circuit and more in accord with his serious nature partly supported by the maple leaf royalties as he was hence forced to be by his numerous compositions joplin was able to set himself up as a teacher [Music] [Applause] do [Music] scott joplin was a very moderate means until the success still his first big hit rank which was a maple leaf rag that hit came in 1899 when scott joplin was 31 years old and droplets reputation spread rapidly and even attracted the attention of the most famous brass band leader of that day john phillips [Music] joplin had played coronet in a brass band in sedalia and its particular sound had affected him considerably but again joplin's imagination was ahead of his time when he had first gone to see stark he'd taken with him a little black boy for reasons that did not become apparent until he sat down and began playing the maple leaf ray whereupon a little black boy got up and began dancing to it joplin had always first conceived of his music as music for dancing so it was no surprise to him that the american public discovered wag time his creation through a dance craze the cakewalk his music fitted perfectly and yet the sad thing was socially he put the opposite of what joplin wanted it started out as blacks who were on the plantation who were imitating whites inside the mansions doing their great european dances and so it became a caricature of those dances so what you had was blacks imitating whites then you had a thing called the minstrel show and the cake walk became a part of the minstrel show and these were generally whites before the civil war so we had white people who were in the in the minstrel shows imitating blacks who were imitating whites and then of course after the civil war we had many blacks who moved into the minstrel shows themselves and imitated the people who had been doing the minstrel shows so we finally got around to the blacks and the minstrel shows who had been imitating the whites in the minstrel shows who had been imitating the blacks on the plantations who had been imitating the whites so that's the history of the cake walk and it became a craze with a ragtime era was given some syncopation generally around 1895 there was a big vogue here's a cake walk that was written in 1896 called sadie green's cakewalk so it's ragtime i don't care what you say it's right it's our music so we can name it anything we want a name i'm sorry they named it ragtime what huh why are you sorry well because it's it's a kind of a downgraded word rag ragtime see but it doesn't seem that way to me but my people don't like it i had a lady to say to me the other day she says you know you'll be i'm sorry you're stymied with only playing ragtime but again the problem was that ragtime was technically too difficult for the average pianist they were just not up to it so that brought in a new breed of entrepreneurs in the flag time scene the people who advertised in the papers learned ragtime in five easy lessons and get the girl you want or be a hit in society or whatever it was and they and so there were schools and ragtime developing everywhere all over the country ragtime in five easy lessons like time and ten easy lessons the man who made a big thing of that was a swedish immigrant by the name of axel w christensen who established a school for ragtime which was so successful that he then published a textbook and opened branch offices and at one time there were over 50 or 60 or maybe more actual christians in school the right time all through america even over to the hawaiian islands [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] this [Music] foreign [Music] amid this bedlam john stark publisher opened a new york office he made only one mistake but that was fatal he brought with him real music instead of musical merchandise new york tin pan alley and the music business didn't understand and didn't care for the subtleties of joplin's delicate music they wanted product and quickly trouble rag sweet pickle drag jungle town rag chocolate creams rag ragtime insanity the goose step rag mop rag and alexander drag time band [Music] when he wrote that uh he he couldn't read music now they say you can read music i i i don't i don't know because the fellas that is the cause of berlin being berlin like he they wanted to give him music and he said if it gives music it'll kill his killing it'll kill his style he'll have to go according to mozart and beethoven and those guys so he's so they didn't he didn't take music but now i hear that he can read music i i doubt it i don't know for black composers the sound was a nightmare the success of a song like alexander's ragtime band left them with the feeling that somebody had sneaked up in the dark and picked their pockets to be really frank about it alexander's ragtime is not much of a melody and yet it became a great hit joplin who had recently arrived in new york was disgusted and made him more determined than ever to be a serious composer this ranked time which american public said it loved and nothing to do with his wag time [Music] joplin had always been interested in the musical theater at one of his earliest attempts at a large-scale work had been something he called the ragtime dance [Music] like his other music some critics claimed that joplin was merely writing down what all his fellow blacks were playing and singing but what he had in mind was a folk ballet to ragtime rhythms which is quite different from country jug bands or mental shows or anything like that somehow the use of joplin's music by the royal ballet in london recently has seemed the fulfillment of joplin's vision over 80 years ago [Music] do ballet was not the only large-scale work joplin had in mind earlier in 1903 when st louis had planned to open its gigantic world's fair scott joplin had obviously intended to produce a grandiose work to celebrate the event and consolidate his reputation to this end he had worked night and day upon an opera [Music] oh [Music] oh no one knows if it was his first opera certainly he was not the only black composer who had wanted to write an opera nonetheless the handwritten orchestral parts had represented weeks of unremitting labor sadly the opera got nowhere the world's fair was postponed and the opera never performed in the files of the copyright offices in washington dc a car dated february 18 1903 reads a guest of honor published by john stark and son copyright by scott joplin a handwritten notation adds copies never received all trace of the original manuscripts has vanished joplin destroyed them so great was his [Music] disappointment [Music] uh meanwhile joplin's home life was disintegrating a baby girl had lived only a few months joplin and his wife separated and joplin dismissed his pupils he no longer had the energy even to compose for long months no melodies would flow it seemed he might have to return to the world of the honky tonk and the saloon in a borrow houses of ill repute on both sides of the street nobody in there but gentlemen of leisure they have another name i don't say that on the air ladies of the evening and gentlemen of lazy you know who i'm whom i'm speaking but we had to take off our hats and they was nothing but ignorant well i'm gonna use the word pimps that's what they were long as ragtime was just the music of the burlesque and body house of course it was bound to attract the wrath of a righteous musical establishment the magazine musical america for instance condemned ragtime absolutely it exalts noise rush and street vulgarity it said another magazine said ragtime's days are numbered we're sorry to think that anyone should imagine that ragtime was of the least importance it is a popular wave in the wrong direction but the underworld was a doomed bohemia for those who remained in it if the whorehouse and the saloon provided a haven for unrecognized genius they provided the lotus blossom too it was easy too easy just to drift he says to me now this i'm imitating his voice hi hi you me i always i heard a lot of talk about you i said yes scott i heard a lot talk about this is the first time we ever met he says you know i i can't play anymore i said i don't think so he was what he was doing breathing i don't know the man was he was gone he was finished see he he but he lived 17 years after that eventually sick of the cutthroat competition in the new york realtor john stark wrote off his manhattan venture and closed his office he went back to st louis and to the printing press that the maple leaf rag had bought for him so [Music] but joplin and stark had come to the parting of the waves before this and their quarrel had been symptomatic of something deeper a serious change in joplin himself was beginning to worry his friends once a man of remarkably even temperament joplin had become more and more subject to alarming changes of mood and in his periods of depression his skills seemed to desert him they sang we want joplin we want joplin so they asked him to play the maple leaf rag i am now imitating the man was what he was living i'll never understand how he lived you being that yeah listen this is a white player [Music] so that's the way he couldn't play the man couldn't play anymore i never heard him when he could play see they say he made uh piano rolls but i never heard any of them he must have played better than that he sounded like a child plant [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] remember [Music] it's good since the collapse of his st louis world's fair opera joplin had become obsessed with the composition of a large-scale work which would affirm the coming of age of the black race for years he had toiled away at its composition by 1911 the piano and vocal version which runs to 230 pages was ready it was called tree minisha john stark had turned it down in fact prima nisha had obsessed joplin for 20 years it was a story that is concerned with his race with with the black race and with the joplin's very advanced idea that to achieve his proper place in the american democracy the black man must educate himself be less superstitious and learn self-respect the story concerns a young black girl who as a baby was found under a tree and yet becomes the leader of her race she tells them they must give up all the magicians and sorcerers who have misled them the joplin the moral was inescapable in other words the opera is a didactic piece it aims to teach as well as to entertain [Applause] [Music] him [Music] always aim to speak [Music] you love all your neighbors [Music] joplin was constantly trying to get it performed constantly revising it but always with frustrating results there would be somebody apparently ready to produce it but then it would be dropped of course one doesn't mount a grand opera at any time for nothing it takes money and backing neither of which joplin being black could find a walk-through performance finally took place at a hall in harlem in 1915 joplin played all the orchestral parts himself on the piano it made virtually no impression without scenery costumes lighting or orchestral backing the drama seemed thin and unconvincing tree minisha was a disaster [Applause] [Music] him [Music] joplin never recovered it crushed the hopes of a lifetime the progress of his infirmity accelerated as though his inner resistance was gone then came the madhouse and death and oblivion [Applause] [Music] joplin's death certificate uh says in this in these many words uh cause of death uh syphilis dementia paralytica which is the dread third stage of syphilis in which the motor coordination is lost and of course in the case of joplin he completely lost his ability to play he would fumble around and make mistakes and it was a terrible thing to hear but um and it is one thing to say that he died of this disease which of course clinically is true but to my way of thinking by the time 1917 had come on it was all one anyway because the heart that stopped that stopped beating then was already broken if ever a man died with a broken heart of scott joplin [Music] oh a legend grew up that on the day of his funeral the mourner's carriages each bore a banner with the name of one of his compositions but like many legends in harlem it was not true in fact it was a gray and windy day and finally the body was buried far out on long island in st michael's cemetery here's a maple leaf tree a maple tree couldn't be more appropriate for the grave of an american composer whose big hit was a maple leaf rag i guess the tree has long here as scott joplin has been lying here that's since 1917 but the grave remained unmarked until two years ago when ascap the american society composer's office publishers decided to honor the unmarked graves he had died virtually penniless to all intents and purposes this is a pauper's grave which which scott joplin great american composer shares with two other unknown people anyway maple leaf belongs there so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] i was born in baltimore maryland seventh day of february 1883. i was born of slave parents everybody's he stole that from so-and-so he is he berlin irving i better say irvin urban berlin well i wouldn't call it stealing no no but right time wasn't considered anything it was it wasn't art you know people some people if they don't understand anything they cried down they don't give it a chance see i knew all my lifetimes that right time was art see [Music] do do do [Music] you

Channel: itsRemco

Views: 3,310

Rating: 4.9555554 out of 5

Keywords: exoticpianoman, Scott Joplin, Scott Joplin Documentary, Ragtime Documentary, Ragtime Piano, Ragtime, Ragtime Piano Documentary, King Of Ragtime, King Of Ragtime Documentary, The Life Of Scott Joplin, Scott Joplin History, Ragtime History, Ragtime Piano History, The Story Of Popular Music, I Can Hypnotise 'Dis Nation': Ragtime, Scott Joplin Band, Maple Leaf Rag history, Early Jazz Documentary, Piano Documentary, Black History, The Minstrel Show, The Minstrel Show documentary

Id: c0DXPP6mJgM

Length: 51min 30sec (3090 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 24 2020