# 2044 - 1983 20c Black Heritage: Scott Joplin

U.S. #2044
1983 20¢ Scott Joplin
Black Heritage

• 6^th stamp in Black Heritage Series
• Issued about 115 years after Joplin’s birth

Stamp Category:  Commemorative
Series:  Black Heritage
Value:  20¢, first-class rate
First Day of Issue:  June 9, 1983
First Day City:  Sedalia, Missouri
Quantity Issued:  115,2000,000
Printed by:  Bureau of Engraving and Printing
Printing Method:  Photogravure
Format:  Panes of 50 in sheets of 200
Perforations:  11

Why the stamp was issued:  This stamp was the 1983 addition to the Black Heritage Series, issued 115 years after Joplin’s birth.

About the stamp design:  Jerry Pinkney produced the artwork for this stamp, based on a photo of Joplin that had appeared on the cover of The Complete Works of Scott Joplin, Volume II.  The smaller image depicts Joplin sitting at his piano. 

First Day City:  The First Day ceremony for this stamp was held at the location where Joplin’s Maple Leaf Club once stood in Sedalia, Missouri.  It was here that he worked and composed his music.  The First Day ceremony marked the start of a three-day festival dedicated to Joplin.  Later that evening, there was an unofficial First Day ceremony for this stamp in Washington, DC.  It was held at Joplin’s, a restaurant named for the composer.  First Day programs were sent by Express Mail that day from Sedalia to reach the Washington, DC event in time. 

Unusual fact about this stamp:  Imperforate error stamps have been discovered.

About the Black Heritage Series:  The Black Heritage Series began on February 1, 1978, with the issue of the 13¢ Harriet Tubman stamp (US #1744).  Since then, the USPS has issued a new stamp in the series every year.  A number of them have even been released in February in recognition of Black History month.  As of 2024, it was the USPS’s longest-running stamp series of all time.

History the stamp represents:  While Scott Joplin’s exact birthdate is unknown, it’s often considered to be November 24, 1868, as shown on his tombstone. He was reportedly born in Texarkana, Texas, but other reports suggest he was born between late 1867 and early 1868 in Linden, Texas.

Joplin was the second of six children born to a former slave and free-born African American woman from Kentucky. His father worked on railroads while his mother was a cleaner, but both were also talented musicians. Joplin’s father played the violin and his mother sang and played the banjo. Because of this, Joplin received some musical training as a child and enjoyed playing the piano while his mother cleaned.

Joplin eventually met Julius Weiss, a German music professor who tutored the children of a prominent local family. Weiss was very impressed with Joplin’s talent, and taught him for free, acknowledging the family’s financial issues. For five years, Weiss taught Joplin to enjoy music as both art and entertainment. He also helped the family get a used piano for their home. Years later when Joplin was a successful composer, he sent Weiss money.

As a teenager, Joplin performed in a vocal quartet and taught guitar and mandolin in his spare time. He’d also worked as a laborer with the railroad but eventually decided to give that up to become a traveling musician. Joplin then joined the Texarkana Minstrels and performed at a fund-raiser for a monument to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Joplin struggled to find opportunities, but found the steadiest work in churches and brothels. It was during this time that he played a precursor to ragtime known as jig-piano. Joplin enjoyed combining western waltzes and marches with the rhythms of African American songs.

In 1893, Joplin joined millions of other Americans in Chicago at the World’s Fair. He formed a cornet band that played outside the fairgrounds. It was there that a fellow musician encouraged him to write down and publish his songs. Joplin was one of a number of musicians to bring ragtime to the fair. Up to that time, it was mostly heard in small cafes, saloons, and brothels. The fair exposed millions of Americans and world travelers to ragtime and, within a couple of years, it was a national craze. One newspaper described the sound as “a veritable call of the wild, which mightily stirred the pulses of city-bred people.”

After the fair, Joplin moved to Sedalia, Missouri, in 1894. He continued to work as a traveling musician with a six-piece dance orchestra. Joplin published his first two songs, “Please Say You Will” and “A Picture of Her Face” in 1895. When he wasn’t traveling, Joplin taught piano to a group of future ragtime composers and also studied at George R. Smith College.

Joplin published his first rag, “Original Rags,” in 1897 – the same year the first credited ragtime song was published by William Krell. Two years later, Joplin published one of his most famous songs, the “Maple Leaf Rag.” Within a few years, Joplin was dubbed the “king of ragtime writers” and his “Maple Leaf Rag” served as the inspiration for hundreds of other future songs.

Joplin moved to St. Louis in 1900, where he’d continue to have success as a composer. Here he wrote another famous work, “The Entertainer,” as well as “March Majestic” and “The Ragtime Dance.” Next Joplin tried his hand at Opera. He created a 30-person opera company to perform, A Guest of Honor. The opera was based on a 1901 dinner hosted by Theodore Roosevelt for civil rights leader Booker T. Washington. However, Joplin was unable to pay the performers and the opera was closed and the score eventually lost.

Joplin then moved to New York City to find a publisher for his opera Treemonisha. He failed to find a publisher and attempted to find backers, but was unsuccessful (though the opera was revived in the 1970s). Joplin worked tirelessly in his later years, even as illness took his mind. He was admitted to a mental institution and died there on April 1, 1917. He was buried in an unmarked grave for 57 years until it received a marker in 1974.