MAPLE LEAF RAG

The “Maple Leaf Rag” is an early ragtime composition for piano by Scott Joplin. It was

one of Joplin’s early works, and is one of the most famous of all ragtime pieces,

becoming the first instrumental piece to sell over one million copies. Joplin wrote the

Maple Leaf Rag circa 1897, in honor of the Maple Leaf Club, a black social club that

existed briefly during the late 1890s in Sedalia Missouri. Shortly after its completion,

Joplin told fellow ragtime composer Arthur Marshall that “the Maple Leaf will make me

King of ragtime composers. It was published in September 1899 (finally after Joplin

submitted the rag to three publishers) on sheet music by John Stark & Son, after and in its

first six months sold 75,000 copies, becoming “the first great instrumental sheet music hit

in America. Over 1 million copies of the sheet music were eventually sold, making Scott

Joplin the first musician to sell 1 million copies of a piece of instrumental music. In

addition to sales of sheet music, it was also popular in orchestrations for dance bands and

brass bands for years.

(INSTRUMENTAL)

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