Ragtime: The Harlem Rag

Tom Turpin was a six-foot three, 350-pound black pianist with a bad leg who jacked his piano up on stilts so he could play standing up in the St. Louis speakeasies. He was also the bouncer. Picture him getting halfway through a ragtime piece and having to throw a couple of drunks out, then coming back and finishing. Picture the rowdy atmosphere, and listen to Harlem Rag, from 1897.

Ragtime is considered the first pure American genre of music. Its roots are in the gospel/spiritual music of the plantations, and the marches and dance music of the mid-19th century, such as the two-step, the cakewalk, and the waltz. Ragtime is composed on and for the piano, but it's been played on everything from a harmonica to the philharmonic.

Ragtime is not necessarily fast music. It's smooth music with lots of syncopation (unexpected accents and echoes). The syncopation gives it a ragged feeling, and that's how the term "ragtime" was born.