One of the more interesting aspects of this arrangement, along with that of the Harlem Rag, is that B and C sections are written out in full to provide both the first iteration of each and a composed variation as well.
These portable devices reproduced their music from either cylinders or continuous rolls of stiff paper.
The best known of the melodies is in the C section, supposedly taken from a tune heard on street organs in St.
Such is the case with this second of Turpin's pieces. However, many of the melodies used in rags had been established for some time. Printed ragtime was still relatively new in 1899. Note that the repeated variations of the B and C sections are actually written out in this score, a rare practice once ragtime formats and generally accepted ragtime composition and performance protocols were established.
While Harlem Rag is a conglomeration of folk styles and folk melodies, Turpin was able to give it a coherence that made it the strongest entry into the rag market at that time. The edition represented here is the first St. This time, the A section was excised, and the remainder of the rag simplified for easier playing. Stern & Company in New York purchased the copyright, this third release being arranged by staff composer/arranger William H. Through some unknown editing change, the C section in the revised version was entirely different from the initial publication. The initial 1897 edition and one that followed were both published by Robert DeYong & Company of St. According to legitimate sources, it was composed and being played as early as 1892, before the pivotal Chicago Exposition of 1893 where ragtime was allegedly heard in public for the first time. In the first of its incarnations, Turpin's Harlem Rag stood alone as the first true published piano rag by a black composer, and one of very few published anywhere in ragtime's fledgling first year. In the 1920s he served as a deputy constable for the African American community of Saint Louis, then a Justice of the Peace. In 1916 he opened the Jazzland Cafe which had a short run. Washington Airdome vaudeville theater and his Eureka Club, established in 1910. Tom then ran various dance halls and brothels for the next several years, as well as the Booker T. However, after the Lewis and Clark Exposition and World's Fair of 1904 folded, the Rosebud was not far behind, going out of business in 1906. A large man at 300 or more pounds, he had a piano raised up on a platform in the center of the room to better facilitate him playing it. In 1900 Tom opened his own venue, the Rosebud Cafe, which hosted a wide variety of performers over the next several years, and was a social center for black Saint Louis. In 1897 he became the first black composer to have a ragtime piece published, which was his Harlem Rag, although it was arranged by other musicians, and no less than three times over the next few years. Back in Saint Louis in the early 1890s, Tom's reputation as a pianist and a host grew, as did his capabilities in syncopation. In the late 1880s Tom and his older brother Charles had an investment in the Big Onion mine in Searchlight, Nevada, which did not pan out. Tom was a gifted musician, although not formally trained. The family moved to Saint Louis, Missouri, around 1880, and from that time forward they were engaged in the saloon and entertainment businesses, as well as running a livery stable. Unsupported> Tom Turpin was a native of Savannah, Georgia, the son of freed slave "Honest John" Turpin, a political insider in town.