Stark didn’t just limit his classic rag roster to Joplin, but to other accomplished names like James Scott and Joseph Francis Lamb, as well as several of Joplin’s protégés.
Ragtime was a largely Black genre, and, predictably, Stark did not want to be seen as someone who particularly uplifted Black voices, and said that he “ no class of music”, but alternatively a publisher popular music and anything he thought to be “interesting or useful”, and ragtime just so happened to fit into those boxes. With Joplin’s massive success, Stark decided that if he were going to sell more ragtime music, he would focus on publishing classic rag. The “Maple Leaf Rag”, Joplin’s first work published by Stark, is considered one of the first hit songs on sheet music and sold over 500,000 copies in the first 10 years of its publication (4). For Stark, this was the first Black and first ragtime composer he conducted business with (3), and this proved to be extremely profitable. In 1898, he first began submitting scores to publishing companies, but it wasn’t until meeting John Stillwell Stark, a white music publisher and music store owner, and playing for him in his store in 1899 that he entered a publishing contract. Like many composers of classic rag, Joplin was initially a jig pianist who then ventured into classic rag. Cover art and first page of Stark Music Co.’s version of Joplin’s “Rag-Time Dance”. Arguably the most famous classic rag composer was Scott Joplin, with his “Maple Leaf Rag” being the most popular of his works (3). Classic rag was published as sheet music and was not intended to be improvised off of it was designed to be played exactly as written. It wasn’t until 1895 when the first ragtime tune, “La Pas La Mas”, was transcribed and actually published, starting a new subgenre within ragtime known as classic rag (2). As a result, they would play in the clubs, saloons, and other social spaces around the perimeter of the fair, which is where their music thrived (1). During the Chicago World Fair, many Black jig piano players were hired to play music written by white composers at Fair events, but they were not allowed to play their own music. This early ragtime was referred to as jig music, and was all but shunned by white populations. Known by such a name due to its highly syncopated nature (which was originally referred to as “ragging the time”), ragtime emerged initially in the Mississippi Valley as bar, cabaret, and club music played by “piano-thumping… black piano professors” (1) that was mostly improvisatory. Ragtime is a genre of music created by Black pianists that was popular between 18.
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