ABSTRACT
S Cott Joplin Was in the netherworld of itinerant black pianists of his day, but he was not of it. He was somehow different from his compatriots, and everyone who knew him thought so. Even as he was scrounging for a living in midwestern saloons, as his friends were doing, and selling his work for the same paltry fees that they were getting, Joplin stood apart. He was quiet, intense, cool. He seemed to know something, to want something, to have his eye on something that his contemporaries could not see.
