Mel Bay Presents Complete Works of Scott Joplin: 52 Piano Rags, Waltzes & Marches Transcribed for Guitar Solo
Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
  • Halfway There...
  • Complete Works of Scott Joplin
Mel Bay Presents Complete Works of Scott Joplin: 52 Piano Rags, Waltzes & Marches Transcribed for Guitar Solo
Giovanni De Chiaro
Manufacturer: Mel Bay Publications, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0786632798

Product Description

The piano rag is musical form unlike any other. Although melodious, ragtime's excitement and appeal derives from its syncopated rhythms. Ragtime music achieved notoriety through its greatest composer, Scott Joplin (1868-1917). At an early age he studied with an old German musician who introduced him to the piano and music theory. While still in his early teens he earned his way playing piano in the honky-tonks of villages and towns in the Mississippi Valley. He was intrigued with the folk music of his people and the "jig piano" style of the self-taught pianists with whom he worked. Take a musical journey through Scott Joplin's prolific career and perform these time-honored ragtime piano pieces as they are transcribed here for solo guitar. Written in standard notation only with fingerings and historical/ performance notes.

Customer Reviews:

3 out of 5 stars Halfway There..........2007-04-14

De Chiaro is to be admired for his gumption to transcribe so many of Scott Joplin's works for the guitar. The introduction given to each piece -- placing them in the historical / emotional context of Joplin's life -- is priceless, as tools for creating your own informed interpretation of the music. And its excellent sight reading practice for those of us who've mostly learned Blind Blake & Gary Davis tunes in tablature.

So I have two chief complaints about this extensive collection: 1) Damn near every transcription is in G. and 2) The approach is a little too bland for my tastes. De Chiaro gets what lots of performers don't about Joplin's rags, so there's a lot of "not too fast" tempo notations at the beginning of the pieces. But speed restraints don't mean the rag can't swing, and its a real task to get bass notes to thump & grind on nylon strings. So if you're a guitarist interested in studying ragtime, the De Chairo's book / recordings are excellent starting resources to get the theory behind Joplin's sense of harmony & melody, but also enrich your ears & mind with old piedmont blues artists, early New Orleans jazz pianists, and the Crumb soundtrack (with David Boeddinghaus and Craig Ventresco). You could even study Bach for the similar counterpoint ideas -- whatever helps you learn. Chances are you'll start swingin' those eighth-notes, push the voice & range of your guitar, get a better sense of ragtime rubato, and in general, become more confident with your performances and improvisations on Scott Joplin's indelible masterpieces.

5 out of 5 stars Complete Works of Scott Joplin.......2002-11-26

This is an excellent book if you want to play Scott Joplin on guitar. There is no tab in the book so you need to know how to read standard music notation to learn the pieces. An added bonus is that Prof. de Chiaro has recorded all the pieces in the book on a set of 4 CDs from Centaur Records, so you can use the CDs to help you to learn to play the pieces. I am currently learning "Maple Leaf Rag" from the book and I am very happy with the results (after previously trying other, inferior transcriptions). Unreservedly recommended!
Treemonisha Vocal Score
Average customer rating: Not rated
    Treemonisha Vocal Score
    Scott Joplin
    Manufacturer: Dover Publications
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback

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    ASIN: 0486416887

    Book Description

    Praised by The New York Times as gently imbued with ragtime, but aspiring "to genuine operatic richness," Scott Joplin's energetic opera tells of a confident young woman whose life, in many respects, paralleled the composer's. The pioneering work appears here in a handsome and inexpensive edition, sure to delight soloists, rehearsal pianists, and Joplin enthusiasts.
    Joplin - Complete Rags for Piano (Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics) Vol. 2020
    Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    • a must have for ragtime lovers
    • Love it!
    • The real McCoy
    • Serious Pieces!
    Joplin - Complete Rags for Piano (Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics) Vol. 2020

    Manufacturer: G. Schirmer, Inc.
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback

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    1. Complete Piano Music of Scott Joplin Complete Piano Music of Scott Joplin
    2. Scott Joplin: Piano Rags Scott Joplin: Piano Rags
    3. Chopin - Complete Preludes, Nocturnes and Waltzes: 26 Preludes, 21 Nocturnes, 19 Waltzes for Piano (Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics) Chopin - Complete Preludes, Nocturnes and Waltzes: 26 Preludes, 21 Nocturnes, 19 Waltzes for Piano (Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics)
    4. 18 Rags in Easier Versions: Piano Solo 18 Rags in Easier Versions: Piano Solo
    5. Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises - Complete: Piano Technique Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises - Complete: Piano Technique

    ASIN: 0793567734

    Book Description

    American popular music at its classical best! This is a complete edition of these wonderful piano pieces, all newly engraved. 42 of Joplin's most famous rags in one comprehensive collection, including: Bethena * The Easy Winners * The Entertainer * Eugenia * Maple Leaf Rag * Original Rags * Solace * Something Doing * and many more.

    Customer Reviews:

    5 out of 5 stars a must have for ragtime lovers.......2007-09-01

    this product is a great convenience. It compiles all of Joplins rags in an easy-to-read format with authentic tips for playing each individual piece. It is definitely worth every penny; it's a great addition to any collection. Another interesting thing that this edition includes is the date that the piece was composed. If you want to find some awesome, fun music to play, you can never go wrong with Joplin.

    5 out of 5 stars Love it!.......2007-03-09

    I purchased this for one of my piano students. He plays one or 2 a week for his lessons because he loves them so much.

    5 out of 5 stars The real McCoy.......2007-01-09

    These are the real McCoy, right down to Joplin's own tempo recommendations (the famous "Not too fast" adornes the Peacherine Rag, as in the original). If you want to tackle the master's own works, this is the place to go. Schirmer does a fine job in cataloging these masterpieces, and these are re-engravings of the original scores--crisp, clear and easy to read. This book also contains Joplin's syncopation exercises, helpful in understanding his work.

    5 out of 5 stars Serious Pieces!.......2006-07-07

    This is the greatest book I've ever seen on Joplin pieces. These are not for beginners!
    The Life and Times of Scott Joplin (Masters of Music)
    Average customer rating: Not rated
      The Life and Times of Scott Joplin (Masters of Music)
      John Bankston
      Manufacturer: Mitchell Lane Publishers
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Library Binding

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      ASIN: 1584152702

      Book Description

      As a member of the first generation of African Americans who were born just after the end of slavery, Scott Joplin faced a world of unique challenges. His musical family scraped out a living by sharecropping and cleaning houses—but Scott was exceptionally gifted, and his mother made sure he got piano lessons. Classically trained, he spent several years playing in churches and saloons. While for a time he wanted to compose classical music, he was drawn to ragtime, an early form of jazz that featured African folk tunes and syncopated rhythms. After his first composition, "Maple Leaf Rag," was published in 1899, Scott Joplin was able to keep ragtime popular for the next two decades. In fact, ragtime influences can be heard in later forms of music, such as jazz, blues, and even rock and roll.

      Scott Joplin, the Father of Ragtime, whose compositions cut across geography, race, and class, was truly a Master of Music.
      Complete Piano Rags
      Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
      • Very nice collection...
      • Hijacked Title!! Get the original copy instead!
      • Fantastic Scott Joplin Book!
      • Excellent but Inexpensive Edition
      • good complete must have score
      Complete Piano Rags
      Scott Joplin
      Manufacturer: Dover Publications
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Paperback

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      4. Joplin - Complete Rags for Piano (Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics) Vol. 2020 Joplin - Complete Rags for Piano (Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics) Vol. 2020
      5. Complete Piano Music of Scott Joplin Complete Piano Music of Scott Joplin

      ASIN: 0486258076

      Book Description

      All 38 piano rags by the acknowledged master of the form, reprinted from the publishers' original editions complete with sheet music covers. Introduction by David A. Jasen.

      Customer Reviews:

      4 out of 5 stars Very nice collection..........2007-04-11

      This book is exactly what it says it is -- the complete rags. If you're looking for any other of Scott Joplin's pieces(serenades, for example), you won't find it here.

      1 out of 5 stars Hijacked Title!! Get the original copy instead!.......2007-02-02

      At the search box copy and past these ISBN for the original books: 0871042762 "Complete Works" or 0871042428 "Collected Works". You get twice as much Joplin music plus loads of biographical and other information!! They were first published by the New York Public Library by Vera Brodsky Lawrence.

      4 out of 5 stars Fantastic Scott Joplin Book!.......2006-12-16

      Absolutely love the book and agree with what most others have written. My only complaint is with the BOOK itself. It's incredibly hard to keep open - the pages and cover keep closing! When you fold it to the page you want, it just won't fold smoothly. Very annoying! I'm taking my pages out and binding it with a spiral machine. I wish more music companies would use spiral bound!

      5 out of 5 stars Excellent but Inexpensive Edition.......2006-06-30

      These are clear copies of original editions of a composer that was pivotal and key in the development of American Music. Above and beyond that, they are uplifting pieces that are fun to play and enjoyed by all.

      5 out of 5 stars good complete must have score.......2006-02-20

      With very brief basic introduction to rags.
      By practicing these short representative phrases, it made me easy to play Joplins score for the first time.
      Dancing To A Black Man's Tune: A Life Of Scott Joplin (Missouri Biography)
      Average customer rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
      • Cultural History
      • The Worlds of Scott Joplin
      Dancing To A Black Man's Tune: A Life Of Scott Joplin (Missouri Biography)
      Susan Curtis
      Manufacturer: University of Missouri Press
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Paperback

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      ASIN: 0826215475

      Book Description

      By using Scott Joplin's life as a window onto American social and cultural development at the turn of the century, this biography dramatizes the role of one brilliant African American musician in defining the culture of a still-young nation.

      "Dancing to a Black Man's Tune renders Scott Joplin as a man and an artist whose musical genius served as his weapon in the struggle toward a whole America. Susan Curtis's book is more than biography, more than cultural history. It is a skillfully interwoven telling of Joplin's story within the mosaic of America's social and cultural evolution at the turn of the century."--John Hope Franklin

      "If one is to know American culture and the place and 'trials and tribulations' of African American music in setting the foundation and flavor of American music, Dancing to a Black Man's Tune is, to date, the primary source."--Journal of American History

      Customer Reviews:

      3 out of 5 stars Cultural History.......2006-08-29

      Susan Curtis's passion is more for cultural history than for Scott Joplin. She says as much in her preface where she describes Scott Joplin as "the perfect vehicle for the questions I wanted to ask." I felt I was reading her cultural theories rather than a biography of Joplin. She pays little attention to his music. There are no musical examples. And most of his rags are not even mentioned.

      As a book on the culture of his day this is a good read. However, for those who would prefer a book on and about Scott Joplin I would recommend Edward A. Berlin's book 'King of Ragtime'.

      4 out of 5 stars The Worlds of Scott Joplin.......2005-01-20

      Scott Joplin (1868 -- 1917)was a great composer of the unique American music known as ragtime. Ragtime flourished from roughly 1900 -- 1920 when it faded into obscurity with the advent of jazz. It enjoyed a revival beginning in the 1970s with the movie "The Sting", several popular recordings, and the production of Joplin's opera Treemonisha. Ragtime is an enchanting American music, both lyrical and strongly rhythmical that has components of both classical music and jazz. I greatly enjoy playing Joplin's rags on the piano as well as the rags of his lesser-known but gifted colleagues, James Scott and Joseph Lamb.

      A full account of ragtime and its place in American culture remains to be written. Susan Curtis's book, "Dancing to a Black Man's Tune: A Life of Scott Joplin" is a start. Dr Curtis is Professor of History and American Studies and Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at Purdue University. It is thus understandable that her book draws widely on American history and on relationships between African Americans and whites in attempting to understand Scott Joplin and ragtime.

      Dr. Curtis discusses the important stages in Joplin's life and relates them to ongoing events in the United States with an emphasis on how African American - white relations impacted his music. She emphasizes, and necessarily so, the effects of slavery (one of Joplin's parents had been a slave) and of Reconstruction and Jim Crow. Dr. Curtis describes how African Americans remained on the outside of white America to a large extent. Still, African American music, ragtime in particular, had a great appeal for white Americans and led to the ideal of an inter-racial American culture.

      But Dr. Curtis's book shows, I think, that African American -- white relationships resist any simple summary. Joplin surely suffered from the effects of slavery and the rise of Jim Crow and from discrimination throughout his life. But Dr. Curtis also points out the ways in which black and white people worked together, how white people helped Joplin, and how Joplin encouraged the work of white composers of "negro" music. Joplin received piano lessons as a child from a German immigrant who recognized his talent. His music gained attention, probably, at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 even though it lacked official status. There was substantial efforts at inter-racial harmony in Sedalia, Missouri where Joplin settled after a lengthy period as a wandering musician. His music was published and supported by John Stark, a white entrepeneur and he received encouragement from other white critics. When he moved to New York City, Joplin befriended and assisted in the publication of rags by Joseph Lamb, a gifted white composer of the music. Thus there was a great deal of complex interaction between black and white people in the origins and development of ragtime.

      The book includes considerations of Joplin's childhood in Texas, his years as a wandering musician, his life in Sedalia which saw the publication of "Maple Leaf Rag" and other early successes, and his final years in New York. The discussion is informed by a great deal of consideration of American history which sometimes causes the book to lose focus. Dr Curtis shows well how Americans were fascinated by ragtime, although the music was subjected to severe and frequently racist opposition, due to the vicarious opportunity it offered to escape late 19th Century Victorian conventions, particularly those sexual in nature, and to liberate oneself.

      I found the most insightful sections of Dr. Curtis's book were those that discussed Joplin's relationship with the African American community of his day. When he experienced a degree of success, Joplin moved to New York City but failed in his efforts to gain acceptance by many of the African American musicians and intellectuals in Harlem. Dr Curtis suggests that Joplin had experienced for himself the poverty and difficulty of life in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War while many of the Northern African American leaders, such as W.E.B. DuBois, had themselves received excellent educationas and knew this life only at second-hand. The best section of the book for me thus was Dr. Curtis's treatment of Joplin's failed opera Treemonisha, on which he lavished a great deal of attention following his move to New York. This folk-opera, in dialect (Joplin wrote his own libretto) was probably autobiographical in nature and described life in the rural South following the Civil War. It was out-of step with the then-beginning Harlem Rennaisance. Dr Curtis shows how ragtime showed disagreements within the African American community as well as occupying an ambiguous position in promoting black and white relationships.

      The tone of the book is rather dry and academic. I found this unfortunate, scholarly as the book is, in that any book on ragtime or on music, scholarly or not, needs to sing to be effective. I found Dr. Curtis gave too little attention to the purely musical aspects of ragtime. The book has an extensive bibliography, good notes, and shows thought. Dr. Curtis sees ragtime as a step in the direction of an American culture which transcends racial lines and is shared by all Americans. She points out that this is a goal and ideal which has proved elusive and is worth pursuing by Americans today. By writing seriously about Scott Joplin and about ragtime, Dr Curtis's book may take a step in that direction.
      The Sting: Piano Solo
      Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
      • Great ...a true classic!
      The Sting: Piano Solo
      Marvin Hamlisch
      Manufacturer: Hal Leonard Corporation
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Paperback

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      ASIN: 0881886149

      Product Description

      Piano selections from the music of this award-winning movie, including: The Easy Winners The Entertainer Gladiolus Rag Luther Solace and more.

      Customer Reviews:

      5 out of 5 stars Great ...a true classic!.......2007-06-04

      I gave this sheet music as a birthday present to a dear friend who plays piano (I don't). She absolutely loves it (and ragtime in general). She now plays it for us when we are visiting at her house...everyone really enjoys it!
      18 Rags in Easier Versions: Piano Solo
      Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
      • Easier to play, but not easy
      • Good. In fact, better than me.
      • Greatly arranged!
      18 Rags in Easier Versions: Piano Solo

      Manufacturer: G. Schirmer, Inc.
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Paperback

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      1. Joplin - Complete Rags for Piano (Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics) Vol. 2020 Joplin - Complete Rags for Piano (Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics) Vol. 2020
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      4. Complete Piano Music of Scott Joplin Complete Piano Music of Scott Joplin
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      ASIN: 0793546214

      Product Description

      "The Entertainer", "Maple Leaf Rag" and other ragtime classics specially arranged for the student or intermediate pianist. With a minimum of musical adjustment we've made them a lot easier to play.

      Customer Reviews:

      3 out of 5 stars Easier to play, but not easy.......2007-01-09

      Don't be fooled into thinking that these pieces are easy to play. While they are not nearly as difficult as Joplin's own syncopated masterpieces, they are still definitely intermediate pieces. Syncopation is a difficult art to master, and these can get an intermediate player moving in that direction.

      4 out of 5 stars Good. In fact, better than me........2006-04-21

      I've tried playing Joplin as he wrote it, and it's hard. The versions in this book are definitely easier, and they sound almost the same. They are simpler because they don't need as many fingers as the originals.

      These pieces are not simplified by changing key signature. This is why I've only been able to learn two of them so far. (My fault, not the book.)

      The music is great. I might have preferred a slightly different choice of 18, but overall I love the book.

      EDIT: All the pieces in this book can be played on a 55 key keyboard, a nice feature.

      5 out of 5 stars Greatly arranged!.......2004-09-10

      I am a ratime lover! I purchased cd's of Scott Joplin's work in the past and it really got me into wanting to play it. I knew that the original music by Joplin was way above my head so I bought this hoping that I could get the same richness as the originals but to be able to play at my own skill level. This book has done it very well! Buy if you are a student who has been taking for a few years or if you are intermediate. This book does the job, believe me!
      The Best of Scott Joplin: A Collection of Original Ragtime Piano Compositions
      Average customer rating: Not rated
        The Best of Scott Joplin: A Collection of Original Ragtime Piano Compositions
        Scott Joplin
        Manufacturer: Charles Hansen Music & Books
        ProductGroup: Book
        Binding: Spiral-bound

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        ASIN: B000733WZU
        Ragtime Kid, The
        Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
        • Larry Karp's latest book
        • Ragtime, Racism, and Murder
        • history of ragtime music makes this book outstanding
        • strong historical mystery
        Ragtime Kid, The
        Larry Karp
        Manufacturer: Poisoned Pen Press
        ProductGroup: Book
        Binding: Hardcover

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        ASIN: 1590583264

        Book Description

        Brun Campbell, a 15-year-old piano fool, gets to play Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" one 1898 afternoon in Oklahoma City. It's destiny calling. Though he tries for ragtime lessons, he's told no--"Ragtime is colored music" So Brun runs away from the family home in El Reno, Oklahoma, to Sedalia, Missouri, to persuade Joplin to take him on as a pupil. What Brun doesn't expect is to trip over the body of a young woman--he thinks at first she's a log and thoughtlessly picks up a couple of items before he rushes away.

        When Edward Fitzgerald, who befriended Brun his first night in town, is arrested for the woman's murder, Brun is certain he's innocent. But if the boy shows anyone the things he pocketed at the scene, things he now knows belonged to Scott Joplin, he'll point the finger at the composer--and himself.

        Caught in this dilemma, Brun decides to get Fitzgerald and Joplin—and himself—off the hook by finding the real killer, but for that he will need some grown-up help which he gets from the story's other linchpins: Dr. Overstreet, the alcoholic town mayor, and John Stark, a man pushing sixty and feeling it, who's been employing Brun at his music store.

        Sedalia is rife with suspects, some of them opportunists bent on stealing Joplin's music. And then there are the girls and women. Both are a mystery to Brun. A teenager seized with religious fever, a couple of mischievous prostitutes, and an attractive, ambitious young woman with a hint of scarlet in her past complicate the pursuit of the killer.

        Customer Reviews:

        5 out of 5 stars Larry Karp's latest book.......2007-02-16

        I've just re-read Larry Karp's The Ragtime Kid, and just as you shouldn't play ragtime too fast, you shouldn't read Karp's book too fast, either, lest you miss the music of his prose and the nuances of the stories he tells.
        In this, his latest book, it's 1899, and young piano player Brun Campbell has run away from his rural home in Oklahoma to Sedalia, Missouri. He's only just heard ragtime for the first time, and hopes to learn this new music from the master himself, Scott Joplin. Arriving in Sedalia, and looking for a room for the night, he stumbles, literally, upon the body of a woman, and picks up two objects that will become vital to the solution of her murder. He finds employment at a music store, and begins studying with Joplin, but when a man he knows is innocent is arrested, Brun is, however unwillingly, drawn into the search for the real murderer.
        Though Sedalia is a town filled with music, it is only 30 years since the end of the War Between the States, and racism is very much a part of this story. Joplin insists on being taken seriously as a musician, and receiving royalties on the sheet music which will bear his name as composer, an unprecedented demand for the times. Thus, another plot line develops, as Joplin pursues his ambitions despite some unprincipled and amoral adversaries.
        The characters here are a mixture of real, from Joplin and Campbell and other musical figures, and fictional, to some of the townspeople. In skin color, they are black and they are white, and in character they are black and white, as well, but the two categories do not necessarily overlap. Brun himself is a fifteen-year-old, a musical Huck Finn in some ways, coming of age in a world more complex than he ever imagined, and he's learning, at first hand, what black and white are all about. As events unfold, Karp vividly captures the sheer awfulness of racial (and other) bias as it was then.
        Just as there are two plot lines, there are two narrative voices here, speaking in a gentle counterpoint. One voice is someone who knows Brun and tells his part of the story, occasionally noting that "Brun once told [him]" about one event or another. The other voice is an omniscient third-person narrator, who recounts Joplin's story, and the ongoing search for the murderer of the woman whose body Brun found. As Brun's music lessons commence, his plot and Joplin's intertwine, connected by some unscrupulous music promoters, and by his own efforts to absolve the innocent man.
        All the characters, and some of them are surprising, are vividly realized, and they all speak very much in their own voices. Those voices, moreover, are often eloquent. Early in the book, Joplin tells Brun that ragtime is like "a bright sunny day, just a perfect day, but . . . sooner or later, the lovely day will have to end." Even more moving is a grieving father's lament for the brutal death of his son, which he knows will not be investigated: "[We] was born slaves, and now we been set free, but I don't see the leas' difference. White men kill us on the plantation, they kill us now, an' it's no matter."
        From the geography of Sedalia to its weather, the sense of place in the novel is intense. It's a book that takes place in a hot Missouri summer, when the air is "close to drinkable," and we breathe in that heat and humidity as we follow Brun through the city. More characters appear, his life becomes more complicated, and as he puzzles out the solution to the murder, the action leads up to a triple denouement. First there's a violent confrontation with some brutal men, followed by an even more suspenseful encounter which culminates in the unmasking of a murderer. Then, in a shocking turnaround, Brun's own "lovely day" is over, and his life moves in a new direction.
        The Ragtime Kid is a scrupulously researched look at a time in America's musical and social past, a fiction that can, as Karp notes in the concluding pages of his book, tell "a truth more striking and wondrous than any historical reality." It's a book written with humor (and not a little irony), with occasional pathos, and always with generosity . Listen to some Joplin while you read it

        5 out of 5 stars Ragtime, Racism, and Murder.......2006-12-20

        Larry Karp writes books. He doesn't just write genre fiction; he writes each work as an individual, well-crafted, offbeat narration. Even in his Music Box series, published by the now-defunct Write Way, all three novels were entirely singular, and unique. So, too, is *The Ragtime Kid*, an outstanding piece of historical intrigue that focuses on the origins of ragtime music and is written within the murder mystery/crime literature category of fiction.

        Dr. Karp is a particularly fine writer, and his prose shines, but here, the story itself--and the characters--truly dominate.

        The protagonist of the book, young Brun Campbell, is so drawn by the allure of the new music craze, ragtime, that he runs away from home to study with the great Scott Joplin in Sedalia, Missouri. Just off the train, Brun stumbles over the body of a woman, Then, not long after, he has himself a job and becomes a student of the elegant black composer, Joplin, who very well might be a homicide suspect.

        Another great theme of the book is American racism. Although the Civil War has been over for a good long time, those who fought in the war--and many in Sedalia did--haven't forgotten--from one side of the great divide, or the other.

        Racism, ragtime, and murder are his topics, and Karp intertwines the three adroitly for the novel's readers, then throws in a little romance as a sort of seasoning. Male/female relationships are as complex in The Ragtime Kid as they are in real life.

        But perhaps the element that tickled me most about the book is the fine detailing of the time and place. Karp, a longstanding ragtime enthusiast, took the Scott Joplin biography and that of the real-life Brun Campbell, and without distorting the documented facts, wove a tale of what might have occurred. Behind that marvelous foreground though lies a backdrop lending the intoxicating particulars of the time: memories of the Chicago's World Fair in 1893, a young woman eager to perform in vaudeville, a spring-powered fan to drive away the heat, and yellow streetcars providing the Sedalia citizens their transportation.

        In short, Karp has created a darn good read, a compelling and literate story that entertains on many levels--as a novel, as a mystery, and as a chronicle of one stage in our national history--a tale peopled by very real and believable characters.

        *The Ragtime Kid* proves itself to be both a fun and an enlightening pastime.

        G. Miki Hayden, author of *Writing the Mystery* and *The Naked Writer*.

        5 out of 5 stars history of ragtime music makes this book outstanding.......2006-12-16

        We already knew that Larry Karp was a talented mystery writer, thanks to his previous novels. This latest work shows that he can write historical fiction and make it fascinating. Even though I started the book knowing nothing about ragtime music, by the end I wanted to learn more!

        His other strength is his ability to create characters that are so real, and so endearing, that the reader quickly begins to identify with and root for the protagonist(s). This makes the book a real page-turner, because you can't wait to read more about what "your" characters are doing!

        If you haven't read anything by Larry Karp yet, you're in for a treat!

        5 out of 5 stars strong historical mystery.......2006-12-03

        Brun Campbell loves to hear and play music. In Oklahoma city he listens to some musicians in a music store playing a tune by Scott Joplin and knows instantly that is what he wants to learn how to play. He runs away from home at fifteen and hops a train for Sedelia, Missouri in the hopes that he can get Mr. Joplin to give him lessons. On the way into town he runs across the body of a woman strangled to death and he takes a musical money clip that is nearby and a locket on her neck.

        In town he meets businessman Mr. Fitzgerald who stakes him to a room at the YMCA and money to buy food while he looks for work. Someone who hears him playing music recommends he ask music store owner Mr. Stark for a job. Mr. Stark listens to him play and offers him a job on the spot. He also auditions for Joplin who agrees to give him lessons. When Mr. Fitzgerald is arrested for the murder of the woman Brun saw the first day he was in town; he knows the man didn't do it. The money clip which belonged to Joplin could implicate him and Brun in the murder. Brun decides to find the killer with the unwitting help of the townsfolk as he maneuvers them in the direction he wants them to go for information relating to the murder.

        As historical mysteries go, THE RAGTIME KID is one of the better ones. The author doesn't only write a good who done it, he shows the readers how the plight of the black man had changed very little since Emancipation back three decades earlier. Scott Joplin takes a big risk to be paid in royalties with his name as the arranger of the music, something unheard of in the 1890's. The protagonist has a touch of larceny in him that helps him get what he wants but he is so adorable, readers will root for him in spite of his faults.

        Harriet Klausner

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        2. Moby-Dick (Bantam Classics)
        3. MY FATHER'S SECRET WAR: A MEMOIR
        4. My French Whore
        5. My Life So Far
        6. Natural Hormone Balance for Women: Look Younger, Feel Stronger, and Live Life with Exuberance
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        8. Off the King's Road: Lost and Found in London
        9. Once Upon a Time: Walt Disney: The Sources of Inspiration for the Disney Studios
        10. Playboy Interviews with John Lennon & Yoko Ono: The Final Testament

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