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My name is Scott Joplin. The year was 1895, four years before my hit piece “Maple Leaf Rag.” I created songs like “Please say you will” and “A picture of her face.”

As a boy, I was one of six siblings along with my beautiful mom and dad. I grew up in a musical family full of railway laborers from Texarkana, Arkansas. In 1899, I decided to create something that would become one of my most well-known pieces of all time. “Maple Leaf Rag” was made to pay homage to the Maple Leaf club in Sedalia, Missouri. I remember getting awarded by the Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for my work, even getting nicknamed “The King of Ragtime.”

It may come as a surprise but I did music before making ''Maple Leaf Rag". At the age of 16 I started making music. I performed a vocal quartet with three other boys.