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Ragtime Is Alive At Joplin House

Project will restore a Delmar site where the composer lived and wrote

By Darrell McWhorter of the Post-Dispatch Staff

LIKE a composition in progress, the effort to immortalize the ragtime genius of Scott Joplin has moved beyond the first few bars.

At the heart of the effort sits a two-story brick residence at 2658 Delmar Boulevard, just west of Jefferson Avenue. At the turn of the century, in Joplin's "St. Louis period," the composer lived on the second floor of that building and turned out some of his most famous works.

Now the state is restoring the building to its "St. Louis period" style. Next door, the state is renovating another residence to house the only national museum of ragtime history.

Historic restorations are tricky projects, and rare is the project that comes off as planned or on time. The Joplin House will apparently be no exception.

"I'm not giving any completion dates," said Annette Bridges, who is coordinating the project for the Missouri Department or Natural Resources -- and who tried not to sound defensive.

"The trouble is," she said, "if I do give a date, then tomorrow I'm a liar. There's just too much to take into consideration when projecting a completion date on a project like this."

F0r now, this museum of the future sits behind fences, some of them topped with barbed wire. The building barely managed to escape the ravages of both time and urban neglect before it fell into the hands of the state.

In 1976, ragtime aficionados led a successful effort to have the house designated as a National Historic Landmark. That safeguarded it until 1984, when the state got the house as a gift from the Jeff Vander Lou Corporation, a North Side neighborhood group.

The state has set aside more than $1.2 million for the job, and the city chipped in $100,000 at the time the house was handed over.

Sometime in Bridges' vaguely foreseeable future, the building and its neighbor will be more than authentic examples of turn-of-the-century architecture. They'll also be a repository for original ragtime sheet music and piano rolls -- and a touch of the cultural millieu that gave birth to the music.

The second-floor apartment -- Joplin shared it with his first wife, Belle Hayden -- will be an authentic representation of what it looked like when he lived there, said Bridges.

No One Could Beat Joplin At The Whimsy Of Ragtime

NOT SURE what ragtime is? Think of "The Sting," with its signature syncopated piano music.

That movie, which won an Oscar as best picture of 1973, led to a revival of ragtime. The music used for its soundtrack was written by Scott Joplin before movies were invented; it was published at the turn of the century, when he lived in St. Louis.

To "rag" a tune is to change it whimsically, to make it different but still recognizable. Joplin was a genius at ragging. He had perfect pitch, and he never forgot a tune once he heard it.

Ragtime is easier to define than to trace.

"It has got to go back to the blackface minstrels playing the banjo," said Trebor Tichenor of St. Louis, plucking an imaginary minstrel's banjo.

Tichenor collects, plays and loves ragtime music. His home in south St. Louis overflows with ragtime memorabilia, and he teaches a ragtime course at Washington University.

Tichenor backed up his banjo theory by moving over to a baby grand piano in his living room and playing a quick ragtime scale.

"The sounds suggest that the banjo syncopations and broken chords were transferred to the keyboard," Tichenor said.

Other theorists note that ragtime's complex drum rhythms resemble West African drumming.

-- Darrell McWhorter

Fortunately, and quite necessarily, the state will provide a spot where ragtime music can be heard live. In the building next door, the state will revive the Rosebud club, which was a favorite spot for turn-of-the-century ragtime players. The Rosebud will also offer food and drink.

The restoration work has been going on since 1986. So far, the exterior of the two buildings has been restored. The rest of the work will start "soon," Bridges said on a recent tour of the buildings, which went up just after the Civil War.

When the project is done, it will represent "the only state-owned historical site that deals with an aspect of black culture in Missouri," Bridges said.

The state hopes to stabilize other buildings around the house in the hope that developers will take an interest in generating a cultural district in the area.

Ninety years ago, ragtime culture abounded there. Part of it, of course, was the presence of Joplin, not only the most accomplished and creative composer in the genre but also an excellent performer.

But a big help was the presence of John Stark, a publisher with a keen interest in the music that made St. Louis a ragtime center.

Back in Sedalia, Mo., Stark had been the first to publish Joplin's rags, making the composer a household name then. In turn, Joplin made Stark so successful that the publisher set up shop in St. Louis and published other local ragtime musicians.

Joplin always ranked first among them. He was born in Texas and reared in Arkansas in the Reconstruction Era. He left home in 1890 at age 22 and made St. Louis one of his first stops. But he took awhile to settle down. Between 1890 and 1900, he traveled frequently among Sedalia, St. Louis and Chicago.

In 1901, he married Belle and settled in St. Louis, where he stayed until about 1907, when he moved to New York City.

At the turn of the century, his apartment sat in the heart of a cultural cauldron for the westward-sprawling city. South of Delmar was an area called Chestnut Valley; there, tourists, musicians, merrymakers and fortune hunters, some of them headed west, would pause for an array of entertainment -- from quaffing German beer in the underground caves to dancing the "cakewalk."

Joplin frequented two bars in Chestnut Valley -- the Rosebud (which sat where Maggie O'Brien's now does business just west of Union Station) and the Silver Dollar Saloon (on South 12th Street). Joplin's friend Tom Turpin owned the Silver Dollar Saloon and is credited with being the first black to publish a ragtime composition in the United States, in 1897.

Nearly a century later, St. Louisans continue to write ragtime. One is Trebor Tichenor of south St. Louis, whose collection of ragtime memorabilia is ranked as the country's best.

Tichenor says that to him the piano was the dullest instrument in the world -- until he heard someone play "Maple Leaf Rag," the tune that made Joplin synonymous with ragtime.

Tichenor belongs to the Friends of Scott Joplin, a tightly knit group of St. Louisans who play and collect ragtime music. Bridges, the woman overseeing the restoration, founded the group to bring together ragtime fans.

The Friends of Scott Jpplin have spent the last couple of years raising money for the museum and playing host to parties and ragtime concerts to unearth more ragtime fans and spread the word about Joplin's music.

"It's a great group," said Bridges. "Joplin would be pleased."

Tichenor plans to lend his collection once the museum opens. He said he hoped the Joplin House Museum would make studying Joplin's music easier -- and would introduce black and white St. Louisans alike to an almost invisible part of their cultural history.

Joplin certainly thought of himself as a seeker of the common denominators in black and white American folk forms. He thought his music captured the spirit of the Victorian Age.

Another well-known St. Louisan of the day thought so, too. In 1901, Alfred Ernst -- the director of the St. Louis Choral Symphony, the forerunner of today's Symphony -- thought so highly of Joplin's music that he wanted to take Joplin to Germany to meet some of the important composers.

History is unclear on whether Ernst and Joplin ever made that trip. But Ernst's acceptance of what many highbrows regarded as a lowbrow form of music would be akin to Leonard Slatkin's embracing rap.

Which might not be so far-fetched as it sounds, if Bridges has her way. "I'm excited about being able to draw the cultural links between what Joplin was doing and what's happening in music now," she said.