Scott Joplin
(Courtesy commonswikipedia.org)
(Note to reader: I wrote this paper as part of a class I took for my program in American Studies on Southern Hip-Hop. This was in the fall of 2019, before the pandemic began. I attended this class in person on the Kennesaw State University campus in Kennesaw, Georgia. I have a love of ragtime and can play it on piano, especially if it is Scott Joplin. My most recent Podcast on Joplin and Southern Hip Hop, completed earlier this year, goes along with this final paper. I left in all of the Chicago style citations and sources at the end.)
“Both Jiles and Florence were musically inclined and talented. Jiles was a violinist and Florence played the banjo and sang. Both parents encouraged musical interest in their children, for music was the lifeblood of Southern blacks, the safest and most profound medium for expression of their feelings. In black Texarkana, music was as integral a part of life as breathing. Indeed, it might be considered one reason why black people in the 1870’s were breathing at all.” (Haskins 1980, 46-47) This quote describes a special African-American family in the southern United States who was musically inclined and bore a child who became a world renowned composer, sixty years after he died.
One of the most influential African-American composers of the twentieth century was Scott Joplin, known as the king of ragtime. He gained world-wide prominence decades after he died of syphilis in 1917, this recognition coming many years too late for an African-American composer who so much wanted to be known as a great American composer during his lifetime. My intention is to focus on the correlations between the “strenuous life” of Scott Joplin and the ragtime era that he lived in and compare events in his life to the subject of modern day Southern Hip Hop music and culture. Arguments within will show that situations of southern life during the era of Scott Joplin are remarkably similar to situations that occur during the lifestyles of modern southern Hip Hop culture.
Scott Joplin was born on November 24, 1868 in Texarkana, Texas. (Haskins 1980, 32) His mother, Florence Givens Joplin, washed clothes for white families and his father, Jiles Joplin, worked on the railroad. Florence supported Scott’s desire to learn piano as a young boy and hired a white German piano teacher named Julius Weiss. Weiss himself was Jewish and knew what it was like to be ridiculed because of his religious beliefs so he felt for the young African-American boy whose race was also ridiculed because of their skin color. Florence died when Joplin was a teenager and he then decided to leave home at the age of 16 and traveled throughout the south playing in different brothels. These brothel piano players were known as “professors”. (Kagan 1977)
Three correlations spring to mind in the previous account of Joplin’s parents and relating it to the southern Hip Hop culture. First of all, the fact that Florence Joplin washed clothes for white families in Texarkana when her son Scott was young is very reminiscent of Jesmyn Ward mentioning in her book Men We Reaped that her mother cleaned for an affluent white family. (Ward 2014, 201) If I had to imagine poor black women in the south back in the late 1800’s I would assume that most were probably servants for white families, whether they did cooking, cleaning or washing clothes. Of course African-American life in general was quite different in the late 1800’s as opposed to the past twenty-five years since Southern Hip-Hop and the culture have gained a foothold. Racism was prevalent in both times but education for African-Americans has become more prominent in today’s time.
The second idea that comes to mind is the fact that Scott Joplin’s father Jiles worked for the railroad, which was hard, backbreaking work. I can see parallel’s to the Hip-Hop culture concerning the south in which many African-American men went from job to job trying to find employment and were not treated the same as white men when it came to job opportunity and the work force. Two perfect examples from Jesmyn Ward’s book is the fact that both her father and her brother Joshua moved from one job to another because of the inequalities between African-Americans and white people in the south concerning job situations.
I don’t know how accurate this is but the 1977 movie Scott Joplin starring Billy Dee Williams as Scott Joplin mentions that Jiles believed that music was related to the church and didn’t think that a man could make a living in the music profession. (Kagan 1977) But Scott would prove his father wrong, no matter how unorthodox Scott Joplin made his living.
Jiles Joplin left the family in the early 1880’s for another woman and Florence was forced to support her children through doing more domestic work. The differences between the marriage of Jiles and Florence was that she supported her son and his strive for musical knowledge whereas Jiles wanted the boy to work for the family so he could supplement the family income. (Curtis 2004) The fact that Jiles Joplin left his family for another woman and that Florence Joplin supported her children by washing clothes for white families parallels both events to Ward’s book, which stated that her father left the family for his teenage lover and her mother was forced to find work, at one point, for a white affluent family doing cleaning chores.
A third idea springs to mind when observing that Scott Joplin tended to move from one place to another when he left home. A biography of Joplin titled Scott Joplin: The Man Who Made Ragtime by James Haskins mentions that the Joplin family in general tended to be on the go. “The Joplins were not a close family. Most of the Joplin men seemed to have traveling in their blood.” (Haskins 1980, 1) It makes one wonder whether this was true or not. Of course, many poor African-American families moved frequently during this time period but was the Joplin family movements the result of hardship or because they really had traveling in their blood.
Was their movement because jobs were unstable and families had to move to get to the next job opportunity or was it because some families might have been kicked out of their homes because of non-payment of rent, or both? In Ward’s book it is observed that Ward’s mother and father are frequently apart because of her father’s infidelities and her mother moves frequently to acquire better job opportunities. Even though there isn’t evidence of Joplin committing infidelities against his three wives we do see problems associated with all three of his marriages, whether intentional or not. In his first marriage to Belle Hayden we see the death of an infant girl, the tragic death of his second wife Freddie Alexander and the unromantic relationship with his third wife Lottie Stokes.
Joplin decided to settle down in Sedalia, Missouri and attend George Smith College in 1896. (Haskins 1980, 107) It was in Sedalia that he wrote some of his first compositions. He met John Stark, a white music publisher who had his business in Sedalia, and they grew to have a prolific relationship and Stark published much of Joplin’s music, including Maple Leaf Rag in 1899, which was Joplin’s biggest selling piece of sheet music during his lifetime. Maple Leaf Rag sold 75,000 copies its first year and then eventually was the first piece of sheet music to sell a million copies. (Parney 1999) Although it is said that Maple Leaf Rag was the first composition to sell a million copies I have heard snippets of information that ran contrary to that. Maybe over an extended period of time it eventually sold a million copies but it seemed, by the way that most historians thought, that the piece sold a million copies almost immediately.
In 1899, Joplin married his first wife, Belle Hayden, who was a sister of a fellow contemporary and ragtime composer named Scott Hayden. In 1900 John Stark decided to move his publishing company to St. Louis and Joplin followed. Joplin and Belle Hayden were happy in St. Louis at first but when an infant girl died, the marriage fell apart. By 1903 they were divorced. (Haskins 1980, 135) Another problem plagued the marriage. Belle Hayden was also an amateur violinist whom Scott became irritated with because of her poor playing and disinterest in music. I always thought that his first signs of syphilis came out in the form of irritation that he showed towards his wife.
Around this time his first opera, A Guest of Honor, was toured around the country and performed. It is believed that the opera was a fictionalized version of the true story of President Theodore Roosevelt inviting Booker T. Washington to the White House for dinner in October of 1901, (Berlin 1996) which was an event that was taken in different strides, depending on the opinion of the person. African Americans saw this event as a step forward in gaining the rights and privileges they had deserved for so long. Some white people, in their white supremacy ways, saw this event as frightening.
Scott Joplin began working on A Guest of Honor by the end of 1901 to early 1902. He completed the opera by February of 1903, in which he filed an application with the Copyright Office, but never sent a copy of the score. As a result, the musical score for the opera is lost to this day. It is believed that Joplin was anticipating John Stark to publish it soon. Joplin then formed a touring company and began rehearsals during the summer of 1903 and began the tour in August. Bookings were made in towns throughout the states of Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. Very few of these performances were filled to capacity though. Then a tragic thing occurred. (Berlin 1996)
During the tour someone from the touring company stole the box office receipts in September of 1903 and the company had to disband as a result. Soon after Joplin had to leave a trunk of his possessions in a Baltimore rooming house because he didn’t have money for rent and had to give up this trunk as collateral for the non-payment of this rent. (Haskins 1980, xiii) Joplin never returned to acquire the trunk. In this trunk was supposedly a full copy of the score of A Guest of Honor. It is a big mystery to this day whether the items of the trunk were destroyed or were saved. (Berlin 1996) Maybe one day the music of A Guest of Honor will be found in this Baltimore rooming house, if it still exists. (Haskins 1980, xiii)
Like I had mentioned previously, because of the lifestyles of poor African Americans during the late 1800’s into early 1900’s many had to move from one place to another because of job situations and non-payment of rent or mortgages due to loss of income. Joplin’s non-payment of rent to a Baltimore boarding house as a result of stolen box office receipts is a perfect example of situations that African American people had to deal with, not only then but during the Southern Hip-Hop era. In looking through Jesmyn Ward’s book, it is obvious to see the correlations between poor African-American migration due to loss of employment income and poor African-American migration in the late 1800 to early 1900’s due to the same problem.
After the disaster of touring A Guest of Honor, Joplin decided to go back to Arkansas to visit relatives in early 1904. While there he met Freddie Alexander, a 19-year-old woman whom he was to fall in love with. Joplin dedicated a ragtime piece to her that he wrote called The Chrysanthemum: An Afro-American Intermezzo.
Alexander was African American but very light-skinned. They were married in 1904 and she died within a couple of months after their marriage of pneumonia and Joplin was heartbroken. The first piece published after her death by Joplin was Bethena: A Concert Waltz, which featured a cover photo of Freddie on their wedding day. This piece, when played properly, depicts the anguish Joplin was feeling at the time. (Berlin 1996)
There is a reason why I mentioned “properly”. One controversy that has occurred with the performance of ragtime is the fact that the music in general was known to always have been played too fast. In fact in about half of Joplin’s compositions he states on the first page, in the area of the tempo marks, to play the piece “not fast”. Joplin writes in the tempo mark area of his composition The Nonpareil – A Rag and Two-Step that the performer should play the piece in this way: “Do not play this piece fast. It is never right to play Ragtime fast.” Although performers do see these markings in the music, they are neglectful and still play certain ragtime pieces fast. My personal opinion for the reason of this is because of the syncopated rhythms and especially because of the almost constant use of eighth and sixteenth notes, which tend to drive the music faster.
Of my thoughts on the beautiful piece that Joplin wrote for Freddie Alexander, Bethena, I have heard this piece butchered by pianists, who play it way too fast. It is obvious that if this piece is played somewhat slowly and the performer understands the history behind this particular piece of music, that they would understand to be more delicate and give it the proper performance that it deserves.
Every genre of music morphs from one to the other through changes over time. The main difference between ragtime and jazz is that ragtime was a more structured form of syncopation and jazz was improvised. To understand the change, it is important to study the works of Jelly Roll Morton, who claimed he invented the word “jazz” when really the origin of the word is lost to history. Morton did more improvisation, but his compositions have the syncopation of ragtime.
Southern Hip Hop had similar changes of composition, just like any other music. American Hip-Hop music became popular in two different major cities, Los Angeles and New York City, which caused the Los Angeles Hip Hop scene to be called the “West Coast” and the New York City Hip Hop scene to be called the “East Coast”. In the late 1980’s southern Hip Hop started to become popular with the Geto Boys, from Houston, releasing their second album Grip It! On That Other Level. (Westhoff 2011) Other Hip-Hop artists to come out of the south during this time were M. C. Shy D. from Atlanta and 2 Live Crew from Miami. It seems to me that early Hip Hop was more tame in its lyrics and more associated with expressing love or sex and as Hip Hop music went into the 1990’s that a more intense form of Hip Hop was generated in the lyrics, involving more deep topics of the drug culture, racism and violence.
One similarity that I have noticed between the origins of certain artists between ragtime and Southern Hip Hop is that the music was transported throughout the south, and in the case of ragtime, into the northern centers of Chicago and New York City. Some ragtime music did develop in smaller towns, just like some Southern Hip Hop music. In the state of Georgia Southern Hip Hop groups formed in small towns like the Albany, Georgia group Field Mob and the Hip Hop artist Bubba Sparxxx from LaGrange, Georgia. These groups ended up incorporating country music stylings into their Hip Hop music, especially Bubba Sparxxx.
During the era of ragtime most compositions were composed solely for piano. Most of Joplin’s music followed this format. Some of the pieces he wrote were accompanied by voice including early songs that he wrote, both in 1895, called Please Say You Will and A Picture of Her Face. An example of the lyrical chorus of Please Say You Will, written by Joplin, is below.
Must I plead, must I kneel and you not forgive
Has your heart love been sealed, do you love me still
You have always been true now why not forgive
I don’t have none but you, please say you will.
(Please Say You Will 1895 lyrics)
The ragtime era was also marked by pieces transcribed for other instruments. In fact, well after the ragtime craze was over in the late 1910’s, ragtime guitar was carried on all the way into the 1930’s. I wouldn’t say that Southern Hip Hop changed instruments in the way that ragtime did but certain formats of creating sounds and drum patterns changed. One thing that Hip Hop in general was known for was the art of record-scratching, the use of a turntable and a vinyl record upon it and moving the record back and forth at a certain speed on a certain groove.
During the time that Freddie Alexander died, the St. Louis World’s Fair occurred. John Philip Sousa was the highlighted star of the opera. Joplin performed at this fair also and had his own booth. He wrote his ragtime piece The Cascades for the fair but he failed to gain a prominent name at the fair because of bad publicity and the fact that Joplin’s music was considered “coon” music because he was of African-American origin. (Kagan 1977)
I believe that Southern Hip Hop gained a similar distinction, even from their fellow African American Hip Hop artists on the east and west coasts. The event that caused these feelings to be felt was the Hip Hop Source Awards in which Andre 3000 of Outkast said that “the South got somethin’ to say”. (Jackson 2018) My feeling on Hip Hop in general is that some white people don’t understand the culture of Hip Hop and, as a result, don’t understand the music of Hip Hop. They neglect to pay attention to the music and its history. Some, I observe, don’t care because they have a racist element in their personality and couldn’t care less about Hip Hop music and where it came from.
In 1907 Stark moved to New York City and Joplin followed him there. He married his third wife Lottie Stokes in 1909 (Haskins 1980, 147) but it wasn’t a romantic relationship. Lottie took care of him in his advanced stages of syphilis. During their marriage Lottie started to see marked deterioration of her husband’s motor functions. He developed strange tics of his facial muscles, loss of hand control, handwriting deterioration and speech problems. He appeared physically weak. (Haskins 1980, 192)
Eubie Blake, an accomplished pianist in his own right, met Joplin when Blake was a young man. Joplin, by this time, was in his advanced stages of syphilis. Blake recalls that people were chanting “We want Joplin. We want Joplin!” to which Joplin replied “Fellas, I don’t play.” Blake said of Joplin’s health “He could hardly talk – he was sick – his health was gone, he was very ill.” (Waldo 1976, 56)
Lottie and Scott Joplin’s main sources of income in New York City was Lottie renting out rooms to various musicians including Willie “The Lion” Smith and Jelly Roll Morton and Scott himself teaching piano lessons. But Joplin started losing students because of his irritability towards them, a side-effect of the syphilis which would eventually kill him. Joplin also brought in some money by releasing three numbers from his second opera Treemonisha in single sheet music form, which were Prelude to Act 3, Frolic of the Bears and A Real Slow Drag.
In New York City Joplin continued writing rags and published Treemonisha in 1911. He staged a performance of the opera that was more of a dress rehearsal at the Lincoln Theater in Harlem. (operaam.org.) No scenery existed and Joplin hired amateur actors and played all the parts on the piano himself. Seventeen people showed up. He did invite a critic to attend but whether the man showed up is not known because he never wrote a review for the newspaper he worked for.
Treemonisha was a very influential opera and the libretto was way ahead of its time. It is referred to in many circles as a “ragtime opera” but it is quite far from that. He wrote the opera along the style of a European opera, which included arias and choruses. Joplin did use some hints of ragtime and other forms of earlier African-American music such as spirituals, using it “to convey racial character”. (Scott and Rutkoff 2001, 37) Treemonisha is seen as a record of such rural Southern black music from the late 1800’s.
The major problem that Scott Joplin had with making Treemonisha successful was that no one wanted to finance the opera because the libretto was a difficult subject matter to market during that time period. Joplin had even approached John Stark to back the opera but Stark couldn’t even begin to see how it would be accepted. Also Joplin was known as a ragtime composer and since this wasn’t a ragtime opera, it couldn’t be marketable because of his status as a ragtime composer. Also at this period in his life Joplin was very sick and his career was starting to deteriorate because ragtime was being taken over by the early elements of what would become jazz.
Joplin wanted to be known as an artistic composer and thought of on a higher class along with the great composers of American culture. Because he was an African-American man in the early 1900’s, Joplin had to fight racial hurtles when it came to everything in the life of a black man of the time. Even promoting his music to white audiences and critics wasn’t without its problems. Through the course of studying Southern Hip Hop music and culture, it is prevalent that Hip Hop artists still have to fight racial hurtles in today’s time. Although I believe that a bigger percentage of white audiences tend to be more open about African-American music today than they were during Joplin’s time.
In his later years Joplin was working on a ragtime symphony, a piano concerto and a third opera called If. It is believed he destroyed all of these uncompleted manuscripts in his time of depression because of his illness. Scott Joplin was admitted to Manhatten State Hospital on February 5, 1917. He was so weak and feeble that he couldn’t recognize friends that came to visit him. He died at the age of 49 on April 1, 1917. His wife Lottie stated that her husband died of disappointments not being able to successfully perform his operas. (Haskins 1980, 195) Joplin requested of Lottie that she have Maple Leaf Rag played at his funeral but Lottie couldn’t bring herself to fulfil this wish. (Haskins 1980, 196) Later in life, she regretted this decision.
Many years after his death Joplin finally was given the recognition he sought and deserved for so many years while he was alive. The 1973 film The Sting featured Joplin’s music, including The Entertainer and segments of his piece Solace. The Entertainer would go on to be the signature piece known to Scott Joplin, even though during his lifetime it wasn’t one of his more recognized pieces. His opera Treemonisha was successfully performed at Atlanta’s Morehouse College Department of Music on January 27, 1972. (operaam.org. "Treemonisha") In 1976 Joplin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music for Treemonisha, coming 65 years too late. (Haskins 1980, 16)
The libretto of Treemonisha talks about the conflicts in African-American culture in the southern United States at the end of the 19th century. At this point in time African-American society was trying to break into mainstream American society but the black culture tied to the old African culture seemed to keep the black people from accomplishing this.
The main character of Treemonisha wishes to lead her African American race out of ignorance, but she is kidnapped by a local band of conjurers, which can be paralleled with white supremacy. The conjurers of the opera can be seen as the white supremacists who attempt to keep education and self-thinking from the African-American race. Treemonisha is returned with some of the characters wanting to punish the conjurers. She persuades them to forgive and forget and let the conjurers go free.
The main theme of the opera focused on the importance of an education for the black race. Joplin, through the libretto of the opera, depicts “the need for education to eradicate prejudice, superstition, and ignorance.” (operaam.org. "Treemonisha") All elements of European opera exist, and Joplin merges these elements with hints of ragtime syncopation. A musical number from Treemonisha that is a perfect example is “A Real Slow Drag”, which comes as a last musical number at the very end of the opera.
Joplin’s Treemonisha was heavily based on Joplin’s own early life and it is believed that Freddy Alexander was the inspiration for the opera. The opera is set in September of 1884, the same month and year that Freddy Alexander was born. (Berlin 1996, 207-208) Another similarity is that Treemonisha receives her education in a white woman’s home. Joplin received his education in music during the same period from his white piano teacher, Julius Weiss. (Berlin 1996, 205) Lottie Joplin claimed that the character of Treemonisha wished to lead the fellow members of her race out of ignorance, just like Joplin himself wished to lead his race out of ignorance. (Berlin 1996, 207-208) Critics, years later, saw the opera’s main character as "a startlingly early voice for modern civil rights causes, notably the importance of education and knowledge to African American advancement." (Kirk 2001, 194)
Joplin was a rarity in many ways to the world of ragtime. The most important fact was that he was an educated African American composer that had attended college to further his musical knowledge when most African-American composers of that time didn’t have the opportunities that Joplin was afforded.
The biggest tragedy of the ragtime era was Louis Chauvin, who was a fellow African-American composer to Joplin. Chauvin was known to have been an excellent pianist and composer, especially in the St. Louis area during the ragtime era, but the only piece that is known to him was a beautiful and haunting ragtime piece, co-written with Scott Joplin, called Heliotrope Bouquet. Unfortunately Chauvin never learned to write any of his compositions down on paper in order to be published, so as a result, all of his pieces are lost to history and went with him to his grave.
The drug culture is a big part of the Southern Hip-Hop culture but I am sure that comparable addictions existed during the time of Joplin. Alcohol was always prevalent, even in today’s time period. Popular drugs that existed during the era of Scott Joplin were probably along the lines of opium derivatives, such as laudanum. Even though laudanum existed to cure all kinds of ailments, such as headaches, it was a highly addictive medication and was outlawed in the United States by the time that Scott Joplin lived. I have found no evidence though that Joplin ever used drugs of this sort.
Louis Chauvin is an example of a ragtime composer who did get involved in the drug culture. Chauvin died of effects, like Joplin, of syphilis. But Chauvin drowned his disease and sorrow in alcohol and opiates. (Arwulf Arwulf) Southern Hip Hop artists and culture seems to have death knocking on their door by drug abuse. For ragtime artists it seems that the causes of death were more related to sexually transmitted diseases that couldn’t be cured at the time.
Melina Matsoukas, one of seven directors to become involved with directing Beyoncé’s visual film Lemonade, said this of directing Beyoncé segment titled “Formation”. “She wanted to show the historical impact of slavery on black love, and what it has done to the black family, and black men and women—how we’re almost socialized not to be together.” (Okeowo 2017)
The words that Melina Matsoukas says to Alexis Okeowo during this interview about directing Beyoncé’s video “Formation” harks back to the days of Scott Joplin, in especially thinking about his parents. Slavery had much of an impact on Joplin’s family and was fresh in the minds of many African-Americans. Joplin’s father Jiles was himself a slave and yet there are so many parallels to the Southern Hip Hop culture, mentioned earlier in this essay. It is not surprising that slavery is the pebble dropped in a pond and the expanse of the pond is time. Slavery has had a ripple effect on American society in the United States for the African-American man throughout time and it is still felt as strongly as it was back during Joplin’s time. The comparisons between the ragtime era and the Southern Hip Hop era prove this.
Southern Hip Hop artist Andre 3000 remark at the Source Awards in 1995 that “the South got somethin’ to say” can be applied to Scott Joplin. (Jackson 2018) Joplin had “somethin’ to say” by writing his ragtime pieces and, especially, by writing his more artistic forms of musical expression, such as his opera Treemonisha. Unfortunately he didn’t have the time to say it and for the public to accept it like he wanted to. But his spirit now will hopefully be at rest because the world realizes now that Joplin did have something to say.
Joplin wanted to elevate ragtime music on a level that existed for artistic music such as ballet or opera. He wanted the African-American race in the United States to prosper and for racism to end.
Many parallels exist between the life of Scott Joplin and the lives of Southern Hip Hop artists today. I have attempted to correlate many of the similarities with both eras by focusing on the writing of Jesmyn Ward’s book Men We Reaped with the life of Scott Joplin, as well as other scholarship learned through the course of our class on the Hip Hop South. The toil of hard work and the difficulty of southern life can be seen through the music of both Scott Joplin and the music of Southern Hip Hop.
Sources
Arwulf Arwulf. Louis Chauvin: Artist Biography. Allmusic.com. https://www.allmusic.com/artist/louis-chauvin-mn0002233120
Berlin, Edward A. (1996). King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era. Oxford University Press
Curtis, Susan. (2004). Dancing to a Black Man's Tune: A Life of Scott Joplin. Univ. of Missouri Press.
Haskins, James. (1980). Scott Joplin: The Man Who Made Ragtime. Briarcliff Manor, New York. A Scarborough Book
Jackson, Panama. (2018) Andre 3000 Said: ‘The South Got Something to Say.’ Aquemini, Which Turns 20 Today, Said It All. https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/andre-3000-said-the-south-got-something-to-say-aque-1829402260
Kirk, Elise Kuhl (2001). American Opera. University of Illinois Press.
The Nonpareil – A Rag and Two-Step. Sheet music. 1907
Okeowo, Alexis. (2017) The Provocateur Behind Beyonce, Rihanna, and Issa Rae. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/the-provocateur-behind-beyonce-rihanna-and-issa-rae
operaam.org. "Treemonisha". https://web.archive.org/web/20050218222938/http:/www.operaam.org/encore/tree.htm
Parney, Lisa Leigh. (1999) Joplin, Jazz & Joy. https://www.csmonitor.com/1999/0129/p18s2.html
Please Say You Will. Sheet music. 1895.
Scott Joplin. Directed by Jeremy Kagan. Universal Pictures, 1977.
Scott, William B.; Rutkoff, Peter M. (2001). New York Modern: The Arts and the City. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 37.
Waldo, Terry. (1976). This is Ragtime. New York. Da Capo Press.
Ward, Jesmyn. (2014). Men We Reaped. New York. Bloomsbury
Westhoff, Ben. (2011). Dirty South – book review. https://web.archive.org/web/20110423035054/http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2011/03/excerpt_dirty_s.php
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