Composer, pianist; born in Texarkana, Texas. Originally a self-taught and itinerant musician, he studied at the George R. Smith College in Sedalia, Mo., to advance his musical skills (1896). He played piano in disreputable dives but used his musical knowledge to help other itinerant musicians notate their own compositions, just as he was doing with his. He then joined with a music publisher, John S. Stark of Sedalia, and began to receive both credit and money from his own "rags," especially after the success of his "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899). He toured throughout the Midwest, billed as the "King of Ragtime" as he played dozens of his own original ragtimes on the piano, among them "The Easy Winners" (1901) and "The Entertainers" (1902). By 1905 he had settled into Harlem in New York City and began an attempt to "elevate" ragtime. He had already used the ragtime style with dance beats--a waltz, a habanera--and had evidently tried a ragtime "opera" (A Guest of Honor, 1903--now lost), but in New York he composed an ambitious opera drawing on folk music themes, Treemonisha (1915); it was never performed beyond the rehearsal stage. (It was first produced on stage in Atlanta, Ga., in 1972.) It is believed that the collapse of the original production helped to cause his premature death. He and his music were largely forgotten until several of his rags were selected for the soundtrack of the popular movie, The Sting (1973), and this in turn led to a revival of interest in more of his music.