Scott Joplin was born in 1868 in Texarkana, Texas, and was the son of a former slave. He taught himself to play the piano by the age of seven (Encyclopedia Americana, 164).
He left home at the age of fourteen and played the piano in various Mississippi Valley saloons. He played in a saloon called the Maple Leaf Club and met John Stark, a white music publisher. Stark heard Scott play a piano rag at the club and bought his piece called "Maple Leaf Rag" for fifty dollars (Jackson, 60). "Maple Leaf Rag" was a great success, and Stark and Joplin went on to publish many ragtime hits, making Joplin a household name. He became a leading composer of ragtime, a lively, rhythmic kind of music written chiefly for piano. Scott wrote more than sixty pieces of music, including the operas A Guest of Honor (1903, now lost) and Treemonisha (1911) (Jackson, 60). He was able to produce Treemonisha once in a hall without an orchestra, costumes, scenery, or lighting in 1915 and played the orchestral parts on the piano (Encyclopedia Americana, 164). The opera, however, was a failure with the few that saw it and read it. Scott became increasingly depressed because no one came to the performance of Treemonisha or published it. In 1911, Scott suffered from a nervous breakdown that he never fully recovered from and was admitted to a mental hospital in 1917. He died in the hospital from pneumonia but probably suffered from complications due to syphilis, which he was known to have had as well (www.ddc.com).
Scott Joplin's contribution to American music was not fully recognized until the 1970's, 50 years after his death with the republication of his music in 1972, and a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 (www.ddc.com).