In the demimonde of saloon and bordello pianists, among whom ragtime was born in the last decade of the nineteenth century, Scott Joplin was a man set apart by virtue of an innate gentility, a quiet intense seriousness of purpose, the visionary ambition of the artist (which lifted him beyond the facile orbit of the mere entertainer), and—not least—the nurturing spirit of the born teacher. In Sedalia, MO, where he lived between 1896 and 1901, Joplin befriended Arthur Marshall and Scott Hayden, gifted teens and pianists avid for the easy money that came with "sporting" life. To both, Joplin imparted something of his sense of mission, laced with camaraderie, and given a fillip by Joplin's enterprise in securing paying engagements in which the boys took leading parts, sometimes under the name of Scott Joplin's Drama Company. Joplin composed the Maple Leaf Rag in 1897, soon after settling in Sedalia, though it was turned down by several publishers before John Stark took it in 1899. It was, in fact, the stunning success of the Maple Leaf that prompted Stark, and later, Joplin, to move to St. Louis—Stark to trade his backroom press for a print shop and Joplin to settle in to a large home of his own with his new bride, Belle Hayden, young Scott's widowed sister-in-law. Before leaving Sedalia, Joplin collaborated with his charges, contributing an introduction and trio each to the delightful Swipesy by Marshall (1900) and the rag classic Sunflower Slow Drag by Hayden (1901), both issued by Stark. During 1903, Joplin published Weeping Willow, Palm Leaf Rag, and music for a song potboiler, Little Black Baby, to maudlin lyrics by one Louise Armstrong Bristol—none of them with Stark. He was heavily engaged in the composition of his first (now lost) opera, A Guest of Honor, which Stark had begun to back away from as having no commercial future. In that year, too, he collaborated again with Hayden in Something Doing, billed as a Cake Walk March on its cover and a ragtime two-step inside, indicating the informal prancing strut it was meant to accompany. No commentator has ventured to suggest which composer contributed its individual strains—the similarly sinuous, sunny cast of its material could be by either. Hayden would die of tuberculosis in 1915, aged 33. The Joplin collaborations, including Felicity Rag (1911) and Kismet Rag (1913), and one unfinished manuscript, Pear Blossoms, are all that remain of Hayden's audibly preternatural talent.

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