This article's introduction section may not adequately summarize its contents. To comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, please consider modifying the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article. (discuss). (April 2011)

An American Rock Band playing in front of fans at Nikon Theater at Jones Beach in Wantagh, New York

Entertainment is an action, event or activity that aims to entertain, amuse and interest a public ("public" can consist of one person). This audience can have a passive role, as in the case of a play, a show on a TV or a movie, or active, as in the case of a video game. The holidays, games, reading and viewing works of art are not generally considered entertainment, but rather as a pastime. for the entertainment generally requires that the supplier of the show is visible to the viewer, with the exception of video games. The entertainment can attract an audience and influence their actions and thoughts. Active forms of amusement, such as sports, are more often considered to be recreation.^[1] Activities such as personal reading or practicing a musical instrument are considered to be hobbies or pastimes.

Entertainment may also provide fun, enjoyment and laughter. The industry that provides entertainment is called the entertainment industry. There are many forms of entertainment for example: cinema, theatre, sports, games and social dance. Puppets, clowns, pantomimes and cartoons tend to appeal to children, though many adults may also find them enjoyable.

Forms of entertainment[link]

This article may be confusing or unclear to readers. Please help clarify the article; suggestions may be found on the talk page. (April 2011)

This article may document a neologism in such a manner as to promote it. Please add more reliable sources to establish its current use and the impact the term has had on its field. Otherwise consider renaming or deleting the article. (April 2011)

Animation[link]

An animated cartoon horse.

Animation is a form of entertainment which appeals especially to younger audiences. Animation involves the display of rapid movement in any kind of artwork.^[2]

Live entertainment[link]

Most entertainment expects or requires an audience to be passive. Such entertainment may include watching a film or theatrical production and other live performance such as circus, plays, musicals, farces, monologues and pantomimes provide cintematic and theatric entertainment.

Comedy[link]

Comedy provides laughter and amusement. The audience is taken by surprise, by the parody or satire of an unexpected effect or an opposite expectations of their cultural beliefs. Slapstick film, one-liner joke, observational humor are forms of comedy which have developed since the early days of jesters and traveling minstrels.^[3]

Comics[link]

Felix the Cat comic strip

Comics contain text and drawings which convey an entertaining narrative.^[4] Several famous comics revolve around super heroes such as Superman and Batman. Marvel Comics and DC Comics are two publishers of comic books. Manga is the Japanese word for comic and print cartoons.

Caricature is a graphical entertainment. The purpose may vary from merely putting smile on the viewers face, to raising social awareness, to highlighting the moral vices of a person being caricatured.

Dance and music[link]

Many people find involvement in social dance to be entertaining. Many people listen to or watch musical entertainment.

Games[link]

Bingo

Games provide relaxation and diversion. Games may be played by one person for their own entertainment, or by a group of people. Games may be played for achievement or money such as gambling or bingo. Racing, chess or checkers may develop physical or mental prowess. Games may be geared for children, or may be played outdoors such as lawn bowling. Equipment may be necessary to play the game such as a deck of cards for card games, or a board and markers for board games such as Monopoly, or backgammon.^[5] This can include ball games, Blind man's bluff, board games, card games, children's games, croquet, Frisbee, hide and seek, number games, paintball and video games.

Other forms of entertainment[link]

This article or section lacks comparisons. To help improve it, make a comparative view including different countries and systems, and their pluses and minuses. Try using tables, drawings and figures. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

Sporting events are a popular form of entertainment.

• Concert
• Lecture
• Magic
• Mass media
• Radio
• Sports
• Storytelling
• Cinema

See also[link]

	Book: Entertainment
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Entertainment

• Busking
• Escapism
• History of film
• Leisure
• Literature

Footnotes[link]

External links[link]

Look up entertainer in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Entertainment at the Open Directory Project

Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin in June 1903. This picture also appears on the cover of The Cascades from 1904.[1]
Background information
Birth name	Scott Joplin
Born	ca. late 1867 or early 1868 Northeast Texas
Origin	Texarkana, Texas
Died	April 1, 1917 (aged 49) New York City, New York
Genres	Ragtime, march, waltz
Occupations	Composer, pianist, music teacher
Instruments	Piano, guitar, mandolin, cornet, violin, banjo, vocals
Years active	1895–1917

The signature of Scott Joplin.

Scott Joplin (ca. 1867/1868? – April 1, 1917) was an American composer and pianist. Joplin achieved fame for his ragtime compositions, and was later dubbed "The King of Ragtime". During his brief career, Joplin wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first pieces, the Maple Leaf Rag, became ragtime's first and most influential hit, and has been recognized as the archetypal rag.

Joplin was born into a musical African American family of laborers in Northeast Texas, and developed his musical knowledge with the help of local teachers, most notably Julius Weiss. Joplin grew up in Texarkana, where he formed a vocal quartet, and taught mandolin and guitar. During the late 1880s he left his job as a laborer with the railroad, and travelled around the American South as an itinerant musician. He went to Chicago for the World's Fair of 1893, which played a major part in making ragtime a national craze by 1897.

Joplin moved to Sedalia, Missouri in 1894, and earned a living teaching piano and going on tour across the Southern US. In Sedalia, he taught future ragtime composers Arthur Marshall, Scott Hayden and Brun Campbell. Joplin began publishing music in 1895, and publication of his Maple Leaf Rag in 1899 brought him fame and had a profound influence on subsequent writers of ragtime. It also brought the composer a steady income for life. During his lifetime, Joplin did not reach this level of success again and frequently had financial problems.

Joplin moved to St. Louis in 1901, where he continued to compose and publish music, and regularly performed in brothels and bars in the city's red-light district. By the time he had moved to St. Louis, Joplin may have been experiencing discoordination of the fingers, tremors, and an inability to speak clearly, as a result of having contracted syphilis. The score to his first opera, A Guest of Honor, was confiscated in 1903 with his belongings due to his non-payment of bills, and is considered lost.

He continued to compose and publish music, and in 1907 moved to New York City, seeking to find a producer for a new opera. He attempted to go beyond the limitations of the musical form which made him famous, without much monetary success. His second opera, Treemonisha, was not received well at its partially staged performance in 1915.

In 1916, suffering from tertiary syphilis and by consequence rapidly deteriorating health, Joplin descended into dementia. He was admitted to a mental institution in January 1917, and died there three months later at the age of 49.

Joplin's music was rediscovered and returned to popularity in the early 1970s with the release of a million-selling album of Joplin's rags recorded by Joshua Rifkin, followed by the Academy Award–winning movie The Sting which featured several of his compositions, such as "The Entertainer". The opera Treemonisha was finally produced in full to wide acclaim in 1972. In 1976, Joplin was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

Early life[link]

Joplin was born in Northeast Texas in 1867, just outside of Texarkana. Joplin was the second of six children born to Giles Joplin, an ex-slave from North Carolina, and Florence Givens, a freeborn African American woman from Kentucky.^[2][3][4] Although for many years his birth date was accepted as November 24, 1868, research has revealed that this is almost certainly inaccurate – the most likely approximate date being the second half of 1867.^[5] The Joplins subsequently moved to Texarkana where Giles worked as a laborer for the railroad while Florence was a cleaner. Joplin was given a rudimentary musical education by his family and from the age of seven he was allowed to play piano while his mother cleaned.^[6]

At some point in the early 1880s, Giles Joplin left the family for another woman, leaving Florence to provide for her children through domestic work. Biographer Susan Curtis speculated that his mother's support of Joplin's musical education was an important causal factor in this separation; his father argued that it took the boy away from practical employment which would have supplemented the family income.^[7]

According to a family friend, the young Joplin was serious and ambitious studying music and playing the piano after school. While a few local teachers aided him, he received most of his serious music education from Julius Weiss, a German-Jewish music professor who had immigrated to the United States from Germany.^[8] Weiss had studied music at a university in Germany and was listed in town records as a "Professor of music." Impressed by Joplin's talent, and realizing his family's dire straits, Weiss taught him free of charge. He tutored the 11-year-old Joplin until he was 16, during which time he introduced him to folk and classical music, including opera. Weiss helped Joplin appreciate music as an "art as well as an entertainment"^[9] and helped his mother acquire a used piano. According to his wife Lottie, Joplin never forgot Weiss and in his later years, when he achieved fame as a composer, sent his former teacher "gifts of money when he was old and ill," until Weiss died.^[8] At the age of 16 Joplin performed in a vocal quartet with three other boys in and around Texarkana, playing piano. In addition he taught guitar and mandolin.^[9]

Life in the Southern states and Chicago[link]

In the late 1880s, having performed at various local events as a teenager, Joplin chose to give up work as a laborer with the railroad and left Texarkana to become a traveling musician.^[10] Little is known about his movements at this time, although he is recorded in Texarkana in July 1891 as a member of the "Texarkana Minstrels" in a performance that happened to be raising money for a monument to Jefferson Davis, President of the Southern Confederacy.^[11] He was soon to discover that there were few opportunities for black pianists, however; besides the church, brothels were one of the few options for obtaining steady work. Joplin played pre-ragtime 'jig-piano' in various red-light districts throughout the mid-South, and it has been claimed he was in Sedalia and St. Louis during this time.^[12][13]

In 1893 Joplin was in Chicago for the World's Fair. While in Chicago, he formed his first band playing cornet and began arranging music for the group to perform. Although the World's Fair minimised the involvement of African-Americans, black performers still came to the saloons, cafés and brothels that lined the fair. The exposition was attended by 27 million Americans and had a profound effect on many areas of American cultural life, including ragtime. Although specific information is sparse, numerous sources have credited the Chicago World Fair with spreading the popularity of ragtime.^[14] Joplin found that his music, as well as that of other black performers, was popular with visitors.^[15] By 1897 ragtime had become a national craze in American cities, and was described by the St. Louis Dispatch as "a veritable call of the wild, which mightily stirred the pulses of city bred people."^[16]

Life in Missouri[link]

	A 1906 recording of the "Maple Leaf Rag" by the United States Marine Band. This is the first surviving recording of the "Maple Leaf Rag"[17][18][19][20]
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

In 1894 Joplin arrived in Sedalia, Missouri. At first, Joplin stayed with the family of Arthur Marshall, at the time a 13-year old boy but later one of Joplin's students and a rag-time composer in his own right.^[21] There is no record of Joplin having a permanent residence in the town until 1904, as Joplin was making a living as a touring musician.

Front cover of the third edition of the "Maple Leaf Rag" sheet music

There is little precise evidence known about Joplin's activities at this time, although he performed as a solo musician at dances and at the major black clubs in Sedalia, the "Black 400" club and the "Maple Leaf Club". He performed in the Queen City Cornet Band, and his own six-piece dance orchestra. A tour with his own singing group, the Texas Medley Quartet, gave him his first opportunity to publish his own compositions and it is known that he went to Syracuse, New York and Texas. Two businessmen from New York published Joplin's first two works, the songs Please Say You Will, and A Picture of her Face in 1895.^[22] Joplin's visit to Temple, Texas enabled him to have three pieces published there in 1896, including the Crush Collision March which commemorated a planned train crash on the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad on September 15 which he may have witnessed. The March was described by one of Joplin's biographers as a "special... early essay in ragtime".^[23] While in Sedalia he was teaching piano to students who included future ragtime composers Arthur Marshall, Brun Campbell, and Scott Hayden.^[24] In turn, Joplin enrolled at the George R. Smith College, where he apparently studied "advanced harmony and composition". The College records were destroyed in a fire in 1925,^[25] and biographer Edward A. Berlin notes that it was unlikely that a small college for African-Americans would be able to provide such a course.^[26][27][28]

In 1899, Joplin married Belle, the sister-in-law of collaborator Scott Hayden. Although there were hundreds of rags in print by the time the Maple Leaf Rag was published, Joplin was not far behind. His first published rag, Original Rags, had been completed in 1897, the same year as the first ragtime work in print, the Mississippi Rag by William Krell. The Maple Leaf Rag was likely to have been known in Sedalia before its publication in 1899; Brun Campbell claimed to have seen the manuscript of the work in around 1898.^[29] The exact circumstances which led to the Maple Leaf Rag's publication are unknown, and there are a number of different versions of the event which contradict each other. After several unsuccessful approaches to publishers, Joplin signed a contract on 10 August 1899 with John Stillwell Stark, a retailer of musical instruments who later became his most important publisher. The contract stipulated that Joplin would receive a 1% royalty on all sales of the rag, with a minimum sales price of 25 cents.^[30] It is possible that the rag was named after the Maple Leaf Club, although there is no direct evidence to prove the link, and there were many other possible sources for the name in and around Sedalia at the time.^[31]

Scott Joplin House in St Louis, Missouri

There have been many claims about the sales of the Maple Leaf Rag, for example that Joplin was the first musician to sell 1 million copies of a piece of instrumental music.^[28] Joplin's first biographer, Rudi Blesh wrote that during its first six months the piece sold 75,000 copies, and became "the first great instrumental sheet music hit in America".^[32] However, research by Joplin's later biographer Edward A. Berlin demonstrated that this was not the case; the initial print-run of 400 took one year to sell, and under the terms of Joplin's contract with a 1% royalty would have given Joplin an income of $4 (or approximately $112 at current prices). Later sales were steady and would have given Joplin an income which would have covered his expenses; in 1909 estimated sales would have given him an income of $600 annually (approximately $15,520 in current prices).^[33]

The Maple Leaf Rag did serve as a model for the hundreds of rags to come from future composers, especially in the development of classic ragtime.^[34] After the publication of the Maple Leaf Rag, Joplin was soon being described as "King of rag time writers", not least by himself^[35] on the covers of his own work, such as "The Easy Winners" and Elite Syncopations.

After the Joplins' move to St. Louis in early 1900, they had a baby daughter who died only a few months after birth. Joplin's relationship with his wife was difficult as she had no interest in music. They eventually separated and then divorced.^[36] About this time, Joplin collaborated with Scott Hayden in the composition of four rags.^[37] It was in St. Louis that Joplin produced some of his best-known works, including The Entertainer, March Majestic, and the short theatrical work The Ragtime Dance.

In June 1904, Joplin married Freddie Alexander of Little Rock, Arkansas, the young woman to whom he had dedicated The Chrysanthemum. She died on September 10, 1904 of complications resulting from a cold, ten weeks after their wedding.^[35] Joplin's first work copyrighted after Freddie's death, Bethena, was described by one biographer as "an enchantingly beautiful piece that is among the greatest of ragtime waltzes".^[38]

During this time, Joplin created an opera company of 30 people and produced his first opera A Guest of Honor for a national tour. It is not certain how many productions were staged, or even if this was an all-black show or a racially mixed production. During the tour, either in Springfield, Illinois, or Pittsburg, Kansas, someone associated with the company stole the box office receipts. Joplin could not meet the company's payroll or pay for its lodgings at a theatrical boarding house. It is believed that the score for A Guest of Honor was lost and perhaps destroyed because of non-payment of the company's boarding house bill.^[39]

Later years[link]

Front cover of the "Wall Street Rag" (1909) sheet music

In 1907, Joplin moved to New York City, which he believed was the best place to find a producer for a new opera. After his move to New York, Joplin met Lottie Stokes, whom he married in 1909.^[37] In 1911, unable to find a publisher, Joplin undertook the financial burden of publishing Treemonisha himself in piano-vocal format. In 1915, as a last-ditch effort to see it performed, he invited a small audience to hear it at a rehearsal hall in Harlem. Poorly staged and with only Joplin on piano accompaniment, it was "a miserable failure", the public being not yet ready for "crude" black musical forms, so different from the style of European grand opera of that time.^[40] The audience, including potential backers, was indifferent and walked out.^[36] Scott writes that "after a disastrous single performance ... Joplin suffered a breakdown. He was bankrupt, discouraged, and worn out." He concludes that few American artists of his generation faced such obstacles: "Treemonisha went unnoticed and unreviewed, largely because Joplin had abandoned commercial music in favor of art music, a field closed to African Americans."^[24] In fact, it was not until the 1970s that the opera received a full theatrical staging.

In 1914, Joplin and Lottie self-published his "Magnetic Rag" using the name the "Scott Joplin Music Company" which had been formed the previous December.^[41] Biographer Vera Brodsky Lawrence speculates that Joplin was aware of his advancing deterioration due to syphilis and was "consciously racing against time." In her sleeve notes on the 1992 Deutsche Grammophon release of Treemonisha she notes that he "plunged feverishly into the task of orchestrating his opera, day and night, with his friend Sam Patterson standing by to copy out the parts, page by page, as each page of the full score was completed."^[40]

Death[link]

By 1916, Joplin was suffering from tertiary syphilis and a resulting descent into madness.^[42][43] In January 1917, he was admitted to Manhattan State Hospital, a mental institution.^[35] He died there on April 1, 1917 of dementia.^[40][44] After Joplin's death at the age of just 49, from advanced syphilis, he was buried in a pauper's grave that remained unmarked for 57 years. His grave at Saint Michaels Cemetery in East Elmhurst was finally given a marker in 1974.^[45]

Works[link]

	Maple Leaf Rag played by a Wikipedian in 2008 The Entertainer played by a Wikipedian
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The combination of classical music, the musical atmosphere present around Texarkana (including work songs, gospel hymns, spirituals and dance music) and Joplin's natural ability has been cited as contributing significantly to the invention of a new style which blended both African-American musical styles with European forms and melodies, and which first became celebrated in the 1890s: ragtime.^[7]

When Joplin was learning the piano, serious musical circles condemned ragtime because of its association with the vulgar and inane songs "cranked out by the tune-smiths of Tin Pan Alley."^[46] As a composer Joplin refined ragtime, elevating it above the low and unrefined form played by the "wandering honky-tonk pianists... playing mere dance music" of popular imagination.^[47] This new art form, the classic rag, combined Afro-American folk music's syncopation and nineteenth-century European romanticism, with its harmonic schemes and its march-like tempos.^[37][48] In the words of one critic, "ragtime was basically... an Afro-American version of the polka, or its analog, the Sousa-style march."^[49] With this as a foundation, Joplin intended his compositions to be played exactly as he wrote them – without improvisation.^[24] Joplin wrote his rags as "classical" music in miniature form in order to raise ragtime above its "cheap bordello" origins and produced work which opera historian Elise Kirk described as "...more tuneful, contrapuntal, infectious, and harmonically colorful than any others of his era."^[12]

It has been speculated that Joplin's achievements were influenced by his classically trained German music teacher Julius Weiss, who may have brought a polka rhythmic sensibility from the old country to the 11-year old Joplin.^[50] As Curtis put it "The educated German could open up the door to a world of learning and music of which young Joplin was largely unaware."^[46]

Joplin's first, and most significant hit, the "Maple Leaf Rag", was described as the "archetype" of the classic rag, influencing subsequent rag composers for at least 12 years after its initial publication thanks to its rhythmic patterns, melody lines, and harmony,^[34] although with the exception of Joseph Lamb they generally failed to enlarge upon it.^[51]

[edit] Treemonisha

Treemonisha (1911)

The opera's setting is a former slave community in an isolated forest near Joplin's childhood town Texarkana in September 1884. The plot centers on an 18 year old woman Treemonisha who is taught to read by a white woman, and then leads her community against the influence of conjurers who prey on ignorance and superstition. Treemonisha is abducted and is about to be thrown into a wasps' nest when her friend Remus rescues her. The community realizes the value of education and the liability of their ignorance before choosing her as their teacher and leader.^[52][53][54]

Joplin wrote both the score and the libretto for the opera, which largely follows the form of European opera with many conventional arias, ensembles and choruses. In addition the themes of superstition and mysticism which are evident in Treemonisha are common in the operatic tradition, and certain aspects of the plot echo devices in the work of the German composer Richard Wagner (of which Joplin was aware); a sacred tree under which Treemonisha is found recalls the tree from which Siegmund takes his enchanted sword in Die Walküre, and the retelling of the heroine's origins echos aspects of the opera Siegfried. In addition, African-American folk tales also influence the story, with the wasp nest incident being similar to the story of Br'er Rabbit and the briar patch.^[55]

Treemonisha is not a ragtime opera because Joplin employed the styles of ragtime and other black music sparingly, using them to convey "racial character", and to celebrate the music of his childhood at the end of the 19th century. The opera has been seen as a valuable record of rural black music from late 19th century re-created by a "skilled and sensitive participant".^[56]

Berlin speculates about parallels between the plot and Joplin's own life. He notes that Lottie Joplin (the composer's third wife) saw a connection between the character Treemonisha's wish to lead her people out of ignorance, and a similar desire in the composer. In addition, it has been speculated that Treemonisha represents Freddie, Joplin's second wife, because the date of the opera's setting was likely to have been the month of her birth.^[57]

At the time of the opera's publication in 1911, the American Musician and Art Journal praised it as "an entirely new form of operatic art".^[58] Later critics have also praised the opera as occupying a special place in American history, with its heroine "a startlingly early voice for modern civil rights causes, notably the importance of education and knowledge to African American advancement."^[59] Curtis's conclusion is similar: "In the end, Treemonisha offered a celebration of literacy, learning, hard work, and community solidarity as the best formula for advancing the race."^[54] Berlin describes it as a "fine opera, certainly more interesting than most operas then being written in the United States", but later states that Joplin's own libretto showed the composer "was not a competent dramatist" with the book not up to the same quality as the music.^[60]

Performance skills[link]

	"Pleasant Moments – Ragtime Waltz" – played by Scott Joplin (April 1916) An April 1916 Piano Roll recording of Scott Joplin. Thought lost until discovered by a collector in New Zealand in 2006.[61] "Maple Leaf Rag" – played by Scott Joplin (June 1916) A June 1916 Piano Roll recording of Scott Joplin for The Aeolian Company.
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Joplin's skills as a pianist were described in glowing terms by a Sedalia newspaper in 1898, and fellow ragtime composers Arthur Marshall and Joe Jordan both said that he played the instrument well.^[37] However, the son of publisher John Stark stated that Joplin was a rather mediocre pianist and that he composed on paper, rather than at the piano. Artie Matthews recalled the "delight" the St. Louis players took in outplaying Joplin.^[62]

While Joplin never made an audio recording, his playing is preserved on seven piano rolls for use in mechanical player pianos. All seven were made in 1916. Of these, the six released under the Connorized label show evidence of significant editing,^[63] probably by William Axtmann, the staff arranger at Connorized.^[64] Berlin theorizes that by the time Joplin reached St. Louis he may have been experiencing discoordination of the fingers, tremors and an inability to speak clearly, symptoms of syphilis, the disease that took his life in 1917.^[65] The second roll recording of "Maple Leaf Rag" on the UniRecord label from June 1916 was described by biographer Blesh as "... shocking... disorganized and completely distressing to hear."^[66] While there is disagreement among piano-roll experts about the accuracy of the reproduction of a player's performance,^{[67][68][69][70]} Berlin notes that the "Maple Leaf Rag" roll was "painfully bad" and likely to be the truest record of Joplin's playing at the time. The roll, however, does not reflect his abilities earlier in life.^[63]

Legacy[link]

Nonpareil (1907)

Joplin and his fellow ragtime composers rejuvenated American popular music, fostering an appreciation for African American music among European Americans by creating exhilarating and liberating dance tunes, changing American musical taste. "Its syncopation and rhythmic drive gave it a vitality and freshness attractive to young urban audiences indifferent to Victorian proprieties... Joplin's ragtime expressed the intensity and energy of a modern urban America."^[24]

Joshua Rifkin, a leading Joplin recording artist, wrote that "a pervasive sense of lyricism infuses his work, and even at his most high-spirited, he cannot repress a hint of melancholy or adversity... He had little in common with the fast and flashy school of ragtime that grew up after him."^[71] Joplin historian Bill Ryerson adds that "In the hands of authentic practitioners like Joplin, ragtime was a disciplined form capable of astonishing variety and subtlety... Joplin did for the rag what Chopin did for the mazurka. His style ranged from tones of torment to stunning serenades that incorporated the bolero and the tango."^[36] Biographer Susan Curtis wrote that Joplin's music had helped to "revolutionise American music and culture" by removing Victorian restraint.^[72]

Composer and actor Max Morath found it striking that the vast majority of Joplin's work did not enjoy the popularity of the Maple Leaf Rag, because while the compositions were "of increasing lyrical beauty and delicate syncopation" they remained "obscure" and "unheralded" during his lifetime.^[51] Joplin apparently realized that his music was ahead of its time: As music historian Ian Whitcomb mentions that Joplin "opined that Maple Leaf Rag would make him 'King of Ragtime Composers' but he also knew that he would not be a pop hero in his own lifetime. 'When I'm dead twenty-five years, people are going to recognize me,' he told a friend." Just over thirty years later he was recognized, and later historian Rudi Blesh would write a large book about ragtime, which he dedicated to the memory of Joplin.^[47]

Although he was penniless and disappointed at the end of his life, Joplin set the standard for ragtime compositions and played a key role in the development of ragtime music. And as a pioneer composer and performer, he helped pave the way for young black artists to reach American audiences of both races. After his death, jazz historian Floyd Levin noted: "those few who realized his greatness bowed their heads in sorrow. This was the passing of the king of all ragtime writers, the man who gave America a genuine native music."^[73]

Revival[link]

After his death in 1917, Joplin's music and ragtime in general waned in popularity as new forms of musical styles, such as jazz and novelty piano, emerged. Even so, jazz bands and recording artists such as Tommy Dorsey in 1936, Jelly Roll Morton in 1939 and J. Russell Robinson in 1947 released recordings of Joplin compositions. "Maple Leaf Rag" was the Joplin piece found most often on 78 rpm records.^[74]

In the 1960s, a small-scale reawakening of interest in classic ragtime was underway among some American music scholars such as Trebor Tichenor, William Bolcom, William Albright and Rudi Blesh. Audiophile Records released a two record set, The Complete Piano Works of Scott Joplin, The Greatest of Ragtime Composers, performed by Knocky Parker, in 1970.^[75]

In 1968, Bolcom and Albright interested Joshua Rifkin, a young musicologist, in the body of Joplin's work. Together, they hosted an occasional ragtime-and-early-jazz evening on WBAI radio.^[76] In November 1970, Rifkin released a recording called Scott Joplin: Piano Rags^[77] on the classical label Nonesuch. It sold 100,000 copies in its first year and eventually became Nonesuch's first million-selling record.^[78] The Billboard "Best-Selling Classical LPs" chart for September 28, 1974 has the record at number 5, with the follow-up "Volume 2" at number 4, and a combined set of both volumes at number 3. Separately both volumes had been on the chart for 64 weeks. In the top 7 spots on that chart, 6 of the entries were recordings of Joplin's work, three of which were Rifkin's.^[79] Record stores found themselves for the first time putting ragtime in the classical music section. The album was nominated in 1971 for two Grammy Award categories: Best Album Notes and Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra). Rifkin was also under consideration for a third Grammy for a recording not related to Joplin, but at the ceremony on March 14, 1972, Rifkin did not win in any category.^[80] He did a tour in 1974, which included appearances on BBC Television and a sell-out concert at London's Royal Festival Hall.^[81] In 1979 Alan Rich in the New York Magazine wrote that by giving artists like Rifkin the opportunity to put Joplin's music on disk Nonesuch Records "created, almost alone, the Scott Joplin revival."^[82]

In January 1971, Harold C. Schonberg, music critic at the New York Times, having just heard the Rifkin album, wrote a featured Sunday edition article entitled "Scholars, Get Busy on Scott Joplin!"^[83] Schonberg's call to action has been described as the catalyst for classical music scholars, the sort of people Joplin had battled all his life, to conclude that Joplin was a genius.^[84] Vera Brodsky Lawrence of the New York Public Library published a two-volume set of Joplin works in June 1971, entitled The Collected Works of Scott Joplin, stimulating a wider interest in the performance of Joplin's music.

In mid-February 1973 under the direction of Gunther Schuller, The New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble recorded an album of Joplin's rags taken from the period collection "Standard High-Class Rags" called Joplin: The Red Back Book. The album won a Grammy Award as Best Chamber Music Performance in that year, and went on to become Billboard magazine's Top Classical Album of 1974.^[85] The group subsequently recorded two more albums for Golden Crest Records: More Scott Joplin Rags in 1974 and The Road From Rags To Jazz in 1975.

In 1973, film producer George Roy Hill contacted Schuller and Rifkin separately, asking each man to write the score for a film project he was working on: The Sting. Both men turned down the request because of previous commitments. Instead Hill found Marvin Hamlisch available, and brought him into the project as composer.^[86] Hamlisch lightly adapted Joplin's music for the The Sting, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and Adaptation on April 2, 1974.^[87] His version of "The Entertainer" reached number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the American Top 40 music chart on May 18, 1974,^[88][89] prompting The New York Times to write, "the whole nation has begun to take notice".^[81] Thanks to the film and its score, Joplin's work became appreciated in both the popular and classical music world, becoming (in the words of music magazine Record World), the "classical phenomenon of the decade".^[90] Rifkin later said of the film soundtrack that Hamlisch lifted his piano adaptations directly from Rifkin's style and his band adaptations from Schuller's style.^[86] Schuller said Hamlisch "got the Oscar for music he didn't write (since it is by Joplin) and arrangements he didn't write, and 'editions' he didn't make. A lot of people were upset by that, but that's show biz!"^[86]

On October 22, 1971, excerpts from Treemonisha were presented in concert form at Lincoln Center with musical performances by Bolcom, Rifkin and Mary Lou Williams supporting a group of singers.^[91] Finally, on January 28, 1972, T.J. Anderson's orchestration of Treemonisha was staged for two consecutive nights, sponsored by the Afro-American Music Workshop of Morehouse College in Atlanta, with singers accompanied by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra^[92] under the direction of Robert Shaw, and choreography by Katherine Dunham. Schonberg remarked in February 1972 that the "Scott Joplin Renaissance" was in full swing and still growing.^[93] In May 1975, Treemonisha was staged in a full opera production by the Houston Grand Opera. The company toured briefly, then settled into an eight-week run in New York on Broadway at the Palace Theater in October and November. This appearance was directed by Gunther Schuller, and soprano Carmen Balthrop alternated with Kathleen Battle as the title character.^[92] An "original Broadway cast" recording was produced. Because of the lack of national exposure given to the brief Morehouse College staging of the opera in 1972, many Joplin scholars wrote that the Houston Grand Opera's 1975 show was the first full production.^[91]

1974 saw the Royal Ballet, under director Kenneth MacMillan, create Elite Syncopations a ballet based on tunes by Joplin and other composers of the era.^[94] That year also brought the premiere by the Los Angeles Ballet of Red Back Book, choreographed by John Clifford to Joplin rags from the collection of the same name, including both solo piano performances and arrangements for full orchestra.

Other awards and recognition[link]

1970: Joplin was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame by the National Academy of Popular Music.^[95]

1976: Joplin was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his special contribution to American music.^[96]

1977: Motown Productions produced Scott Joplin, a biographical film starring Billy Dee Williams as Joplin, released by Universal Pictures.^[97]

1983: the United States Postal Service issued a stamp of the composer as part of its Black Heritage commemorative series.^[98]

1989: Joplin received a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.^[99]

2002: a collection of Joplin's own performances recorded on piano rolls in the 1900s was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry.^[100] The board annually selects songs that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

References[link]

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

Books[link]

• Blesh, Rudi (1981). "Scott Joplin: Black-American Classicist". In Lawrence, Vera Brodsky. Scott Joplin Complete Piano Works. New York Public Library. ISBN 0-87104-272-X. 
• Berlin, Edward A. (1994). King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era. Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN 0-19-510108-1. 
• Crawford, Richard (2001). America's Musical Life: a History. W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-04810-1. 
• Curtis, Susan (1999). Christensen, Lawrence O. ed. Dictionary of Missouri Biography. Univ. of Missouri Press. ISBN 0-8262-1222-0. http://books.google.com/books?id=6gyxWHRLAWgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=joplin&f=false. Retrieved October 2, 2009. 
• Curtis, Susan (2004). Dancing to a Black Man's Tune: A Life of Scott Joplin. Univ. of Missouri Press. ISBN 0-8262-1547-5. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=11-58pQzanEC&printsec=frontcover&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• Davis, Francis (1995). The History of the Blues:The Roots, the Music, the People. Hyperion. ISBN 0-306-81296-7. 
• Gioia, Ted (1997). The History of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509081-0. http://books.google.com/books?id=Ff94HgAACAAJ. 
• Haskins, James (1978). Scott Joplin. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-385-11155-X. http://books.google.com/books?id=TfcyAAAACAAJ. 
• Howat, Roy (1986). Debussy in Proportion: A Musical Analysis. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-31145-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=9cZ0gCtkPr4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=howat+debussy#PPA160,M1. Retrieved April 17, 2009. 
• Jasen, David A.; Trebor Jay Tichenor (1978). Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History. New York, NY: Dover Publications, Inc.. p. 88. ISBN 0-486-25922-6. 
• Jasen, David A. (1981). "Discography of 78 rpm Records of Joplin Works". In Lawrence, Vera Brodsky. Scott Joplin Complete Piano Works. New York Public Library. ISBN 0-87104-272-X. 
• Kirk, Elise Kuhl (2001). American Opera. Univ. of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-02623-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=uIPDlKlchQ0C&printsec=frontcover&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• Lawrence, Vera Brodsky, ed. (1971). Scott Joplin Complete Piano Works. New York Public Library. ISBN 0-87104-242-8. 
• Levin, Floyd (2002). Classic Jazz: A Personal View of the Music and the Musicians. Univ. of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-23463-5. 
• MaGee, Jeffrey (1998). "Ragtime and Early Jazz". In David Nicholls (ed.). The Cambridge History of American Music. New York: The Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-45429-8. http://books.google.com/books?id=-pbKjje254AC. 
• McElhone, Kevin (2004). Mechanical Music (2 ed.). Osprey Publishing. ISBN 0-7478-0578-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=yTn26iv0gjIC. Retrieved April 16, 2009. 
• Morath, Max (2005). Kirchner, Bill. ed. The Oxford Companion to Jazz. Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN 0-19-518359-2. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dIyO-dQwkDwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Kirchner+jazz#v=onepage&q=joplin&f=false. 
• Palmer, Tony (1976). All You Need Is Love /The Story Of Popular Music. Book Club Associates. ISBN 978-0-670-11448-1. 
• Philip, Robert (1998). Rowland, David. ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Piano (Illustrated, reprint ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-47986-X. http://books.google.com/books?id=kEy1MRsnVHIC&printsec=frontcover&cad=0#PPA78,M1. Retrieved April 17, 2009. 
• Scott, William B.; Rutkoff, Peter M (2001). New York Modern: The Arts and the City. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. ISBN 0-8018-6793-2. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YgALtJ2GKIUC&pg=PA452&dq=scott+rutkoff#v=onepage&q=Joplin&f=false. 
• Ping-Robbins, Nancy R. (1998). Scott Joplin: a guide to research. p. 289. ISBN 0-8240-8399-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=0FeXfmHEXfIC&pg=PA289&lpg=PA289. Retrieved March 20, 2009. 
• Siepmann, Jeremy (1998). The Piano: The Complete Illustrated Guide to the World's Most Popular Musical Instrument. Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 0-7935-9976-8. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7qWxm0nzMxcC&pg=PA44&dq=the+piano+jeremy+siepmann&cad=0_0#PPA36,M1. 
• Ryerson, Bill; Joplin, Scott (1973). Best of Scott Joplin: a Collection of Original Ragtime Piano Compositions. C. Hansen Music and Books. ISBN 0-8494-0581-5. 
• Waldo, Terry (1976). This Is Ragtime. New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc. ISBN 0-8015-7618-0. http://books.google.com/books?id=L2_mcLYJA1sC. 
• Waterman, Guy (1985a). "Ragtime". In J.E. Hasse (ed.). Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music. New York: Shirmer Books. ISBN 0-02-871650-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=y9PBAAAACAAJ. 
• Waterman, Guy (1985b). "Joplin's Late Rags: An Analysis". In J.E. Hasse (ed.). Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music. New York: Shirmer Books. ISBN 0-02-871650-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=y9PBAAAACAAJ. 
• Whitomb, Ian (1986). After the Ball. Hal Leonard Corp. ISBN 0-87910-063-X. 
• Williams, Martin (1959). The Art of Jazz: Ragtime to Bebop. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-306-80134-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=VTIJAAAACAAJ. 
• Williams, Martin, ed. (1987). The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz. Smithsonian Institution Press. ISBN 0-393-99342-6. 

Web-pages[link]

• Berlin, Edward A. (2012). "Scott Joplin: Brief Biographical Sketch". Edward A. Berlin. http://www.edwardaberlin.com/scott_joplin__brief_biographical_sketch_33423.htm. Retrieved April 3, 2012. 
• Berlin, Edward A. (1998). "A Biography of Scott Joplin". The Scott Joplin International Ragtime Foundation. http://www.scottjoplin.org/biography.htm. Retrieved November 14, 2009. 
• Edwards, "Perfessor" Bill (2008). "Rags & Pieces by Scott Joplin, 1895–1905". http://www.perfessorbill.com/pbmidi15.shtml. Retrieved November 14, 2009. 
• Edwards, "Perfessor" Bill (2010). ""Perfessor" Bill's guide to notable Ragtime Era Composers". http://www.perfessorbill.com/ragtime3_alt.shtml. Retrieved July 28, 2011. 
• ESPER. "Black Heritage Stamp issues". Ebony Society of Philatelic Reflections, Inc. http://www.esperstamps.org/heritage/bh-1.htm. Retrieved August 17, 2011. 
• IMDB.com. "Listing for Scott Joplin (TV 1977)". IMDB.com, Inc. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076674. Retrieved August 16, 2011. 
• RedHotJazz. "Wilbur Sweatman and His Band". http://www.redhotjazz.com/wswbnd.html. Retrieved July 25, 2011. 
• St. Louis Walk of Fame. "Inductees to the St. Louis Walk of Fame". St. Louis Walk of Fame. http://www.stlouiswalkoffame.org/inductees/?view=achievement. Retrieved August 17, 2011. 

Journals[link]

• Albrecht, Theodore (1979). Julius Weiss: Scott Joplin's First Piano Teacher. 19. Case Western Univ. College Music Symposium. pp. 89–105. 
• Billboard Magazine (1974a). "Best Selling Classical LPs". Billboard magazine (Nielsen Business Media, Inc.) (September 28, 1974): 61. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=twcEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT51&dq=billboard+1975+joplin+perlman#v=onepage&q&f=false. Retrieved July 29, 2011. 
• Billboard Magazine (1974b). "Hot 100". Billboard Magazine (Nielsen Business Media, Inc.) (May 18, 1974): 64. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bQkEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA23&dq=billboard%20magazine%201974%20contemporary&pg=PA64#v=onepage&q=entertainer&f=false. Retrieved August 5, 2011. 
• Rich, Alan (1979). "Music". New York Magazine (New York Media LLC) (December 24, 1979): 81. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=j-ECAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA81&dq=new%20york%20magazine%201979%20joplin&pg=PA81#v=onepage&q=joplin&f=false. Retrieved August 5, 2011. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Scott Joplin

• Texas State Historical Association – Biography of Scott Joplin
• The Scott Joplin International Ragtime Foundation
• Joplin at St. Louis Walk of Fame
• "Perfessor" Bill Edwards plays Joplin, with anecdotes and research.
• Maple Leaf Rag A site dedicated to 100 years of the Maple Leaf Rag.
• The Scott Joplin House – St. Louis, Missouri
• Scott Joplin at Find a Grave

Recordings and sheet music[link]

• Free recordings of Joplin's music in Mp3 format by various pianists at PianoSociety.com
• www.kreusch-sheet-music.net – Free Scores by Joplin
• Sheet Music and Covers (includes cover art, comprehensive sheet music selection, and biography)
• Free scores by Scott Joplin in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Free scores by Scott Joplin at the International Music Score Library Project
• Kunst der Fuge: Scott Joplin – MIDI files (live and piano-rolls recordings)
• John Roache's site has MIDI performances of ragtime music by Joplin and others
• The Mutopia Project has compositions by Scott Joplin

Cory Hall (born December 5, 1976 in Bakersfield, California) is a former American football safety in the National Football League. He was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in the third round of the 1999 NFL Draft. He played college football at Fresno State.

Hall also played for the Atlanta Falcons.

Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), known as Chet Atkins, was an American guitarist and record producer who, along with Owen Bradley, created the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country's appeal to adult pop music fans as well.

Atkins's picking style, inspired by Merle Travis, Django Reinhardt, George Barnes and Les Paul, brought him admirers within and outside the country scene, both in the United States and internationally. Atkins produced records for The Browns, Porter Wagoner, Norma Jean, Dolly Parton, Dottie West, Perry Como, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Eddy Arnold, Don Gibson, Jim Reeves, Jerry Reed, Skeeter Davis, Waylon Jennings and many others.

Among many honors, Atkins received 14 Grammy Awards as well as the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, nine Country Music Association Instrumentalist of the Year awards, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

Biography[link]

Childhood and early life[link]

Chet Atkins was born on June 20, 1924, in Luttrell, Tennessee, near Clinch Mountain. His parents divorced when he was six, after which he was raised by his mother. He was the youngest of three boys and a girl. He started out on the ukulele, later moving on to the fiddle, but traded his brother Lowell an old pistol and some chores for a guitar when he was nine.^[1] He stated in his 1974 autobiography, "We were so poor and everybody around us was so poor that it was the forties before anyone even knew there had been a depression." Forced to relocate to Fortson, Georgia, to live with his father because of a critical asthma condition, Atkins was a sensitive youth who made music his obsession. Because of his illness, he was forced to sleep in a straight-back chair in order to breathe comfortably. On those nights, he would play his guitar until he fell asleep holding it, a habit which lasted his whole life.^[2] While living in Fortson, he attended historic Mountain Hill School. He would return in the 1990s to play a series of charity concerts to save the school from demolition.^{[citation needed]}

Stories have been told about the very young Chet who, when a friend or relative would come to visit, and if that person played a guitar, would crowd in and put his ear so very close to the instrument that it became difficult for that person to play.^[2]

Atkins became an accomplished guitarist while he was in high school.^[1] He would use the restroom in the school to practice, because it gave better acoustics.^[3][4] His first guitar had a nail for a nut and was so bowed that only the first few frets could be used.^[5] He later purchased a semi-acoustic electric guitar and amp, but he had to travel many miles to find an electrical outlet since his home had no electricity.^[6]

Later in life he lightheartedly gave himself (along with John Knowles, Tommy Emmanuel, Steve Wariner and Jerry Reed) the honorary degree CGP, standing for "Certified Guitar Player".^[5] In 2011 Daughter Merle Atkins Russell bestowed the CGP degree upon long time sideman Paul Yandell. She then declared no more CGP's would be allowed by the Atkins estate.^{[citation needed]}

His half-brother Jim was a successful guitarist who worked with the Les Paul Trio in New York.^[2]

Atkins did not have a strong style of his own until 1939 when (while still living in Georgia) he heard Merle Travis picking over WLW radio.^[2][7] This early influence dramatically shaped his unique playing style. Whereas Travis's right hand used his index finger for the melody and thumb for bass notes, Atkins expanded his right hand style to include picking with his first three fingers, with the thumb on bass.

Chet Atkins was a Ham Radio General class licensee. Formerly using the call-sign, WA4CZD, he obtained the vanity call sign W4CGP in 1998 to reflect the C.G.P. name. He was an ARRL member.^[8]

Early musical career[link]

After dropping out of high school in 1942, Atkins landed a job at WNOX-AM radio in Knoxville. There he played fiddle and guitar with singer Bill Carlisle and comic Archie Campbell as well as becoming a member of the station's Dixieland Swingsters, a small swing instrumental combo. After three years, he moved to WLW-AM in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Merle Travis had formerly worked.

After six months he moved to Raleigh and worked with Johnnie and Jack before heading for Richmond, Virginia, where he performed with Sunshine Sue Workman. Atkins's shy personality worked against him, as did the fact that his sophisticated style led many to doubt he was truly "country." He was fired often but was soon able to land another job at another radio station due to his unique playing ability.^[2] Atkins and Jethro Burns of Homer and Jethro married twin sisters, Leona and Lois Johnson who sang as Laverne and Fern Johnson: the Johnson Sisters. Leona Atkins outlived Atkins by eight years, dying in 2009 at the age of 85.^[9]

Traveling to Chicago, Atkins auditioned for Red Foley, who was leaving his star position on WLS-AM's National Barn Dance to join the Grand Ole Opry.^[10] Atkins made his first appearance at the Opry in 1946 as a member of Foley's band. He also recorded a single for Nashville-based Bullet Records that year. That single, "Guitar Blues", was fairly progressive, including as it did, a clarinet solo by Nashville dance band musician Dutch McMillan with Owen Bradley on piano. He had a solo spot on the Opry; but when that was cut, Atkins moved on to KWTO-AM in Springfield, Missouri. Despite the support of executive Si Siman, however, he soon was fired for not sounding "country enough."^[2]

Signing with RCA Victor[link]

While working with a Western band in Denver, Colorado, Atkins came to the attention of RCA Victor. Siman had been encouraging Steve Sholes to sign Atkins, as his style (with the success of Merle Travis as a hit recording artist) was suddenly in vogue. Sholes, A&R director of country music at RCA, tracked Atkins down to Denver.

He made his first RCA recordings in Chicago in 1947. They did not sell. He did some studio work for RCA that year but had relocated to Knoxville again where he worked with Homer and Jethro on WNOX's new Saturday night radio show The Tennessee Barn Dance and the popular Midday Merry Go Round.

In 1949 he left WNOX to join Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters back on KWTO. This incarnation of the old Carter Family featured Maybelle Carter and daughters June, Helen and Anita. Their work soon attracted attention from the Grand Ole Opry. The group relocated to Nashville in mid-1950. Atkins began working on recording sessions, performing on WSM-AM and the Opry.^[2]

While he hadn't yet had a hit record on RCA his stature was growing. He began assisting Sholes as a Session Leader when the New York–based producer needed help organizing Nashville sessions for RCA artists. Atkins's first hit single was "Mr. Sandman", followed by "Silver Bell", which he did as a duet with Hank Snow. His albums also became more popular, and he was featured on ABC-TV's The Eddy Arnold Show during the summer of 1956; as well as on Country Music Jubilee in 1957 and 58 (by then renamed Jubilee USA).

Atkins's Gretsch Country Gentleman, model G6122-1962

In addition to recording, Atkins became a design consultant for Gretsch, who manufactured a popular Chet Atkins line of electric guitars from 1955–1980. Atkins also became manager of RCA's Nashville studio, eventually inspiring and seeing the completion of the legendary RCA Studio B, the first studio built specifically for the purpose of recording on the now-famous Music Row.^[5]

Performer and producer[link]

When Sholes took over pop production in 1957—a result of his success with Elvis Presley—he put Atkins in charge of RCA's Nashville division. With country music record sales declining as rock and roll took over, Atkins and Bob Ferguson took their cue from Owen Bradley and eliminated fiddles and steel guitar as a means of making country singers appeal to pop fans. This became known as the Nashville sound which Atkins said was a label created by the media attached to a style of recording done during that period to keep country (and their jobs) viable.

Atkins used the Jordanaires and a rhythm section on hits like Jim Reeves' "Four Walls" and "He'll Have to Go"^[11] and Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome Me" and "Blue Blue Day".^[12] The once rare phenomenon of having a country hit cross over to pop success became more common. He and Bradley had essentially put the producer in the driver's seat, guiding an artist's choice of material and the musical background.

Atkins made his own records, which usually visited pop standards and jazz, in a sophisticated home studio, often recording the rhythm tracks at RCA but adding his solo parts at home, refining the tracks until the results satisfied him.^[5] Guitarists of all styles came to admire various Atkins albums for their unique musical ideas and in some cases experimental electronic ideas. In this period he became known internationally as "Mister Guitar", inspiring an album named Mister Guitar, engineered by both Bob Ferris and Bill Porter, his replacement.

At the end of March 1959, Porter took over as chief engineer at RCA's Nashville studio, in the space now known as "Studio B". (At the time there was only one studio at RCA, with no letter designation.) Porter soon helped Atkins get a better reverberation sound from the studio's German effects device, an EMT plate reverb. With his golden ear, Porter found the studio's acoustics to be problematic, and he devised a set of acoustic baffles to hang from the ceiling, then selected positions for microphones based on resonant room modes. The sound of the recordings improved significantly, and the studio achieved a string of successes. The Nashville sound became more dynamic.^[13] In later years, when Bradley asked how he achieved his sound, Atkins told him "it was Porter."^[14] Porter described Atkins as respectful of musicians when recording—if someone was out of tune he would not single that person out by name. Instead, he would say something like, "we got a little tuning problem ... Everybody check and see what's going on."^[14] If that didn't work, Atkins would instruct Porter to turn the offending player down in the mix. When Porter left RCA in late 1964, Atkins said, "the sound was never the same, never as great."^[14]

Atkins's trademark "Atkins Style" of playing uses the thumb and first two—sometimes three—fingers of the right hand. He developed this style from listening to Merle Travis occasionally on a primitive radio. He was sure no one could play that articulately with just the thumb and index finger (which was exactly how Travis played) and he assumed it required the thumb and two fingers—and that was the style he pioneered and mastered.

He enjoyed jamming with fellow studio musicians which led to them being asked to perform at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960. Although that performance was canceled due to rioting, a live recording of the group (After the Riot at Newport) was released. Atkins performed by invitation at the White House for presidents Kennedy through George H. W. Bush. Atkins was a member of the Million Dollar Band during the 1980s. He is also well known for his song "Yankee Doodle Dixie", in which he played "Yankee Doodle" and "Dixie" simultaneously, on the same guitar.

Before his mentor Sholes died in 1968, Atkins had become vice president of RCA's country division. In 1987 he told Nine-O-One Network Magazine that he was "ashamed" of his promotion: "I wanted to be known as a guitarist and I know, too, that they give you titles like that in lieu of money. So beware when they want to make you vice president."^[15] He had brought Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Connie Smith, Bobby Bare, Dolly Parton, Jerry Reed and John Hartford to the label in the 1960s and inspired and helped countless others.^[16] He took a considerable risk during the mid-1960s, when the Civil Rights Movement sparked violence throughout the South by signing country music's first African-American singer Charley Pride, who sang rawer country than the smoother music Atkins had pioneered.

Atkins's own biggest hit single came in 1965, with "Yakety Axe", an adaptation of his friend saxophonist Boots Randolph's "Yakety Sax". He rarely performed in those days, and eventually had to hire other RCA producers like Bob Ferguson and Felton Jarvis to alleviate his workload.^[5]

Later career[link]

In the 1970s, Atkins became increasingly stressed by his executive duties. He produced fewer records but could still turn out hits such as Perry Como's pop hit "And I Love You So". He recorded extensively with close friend and fellow picker Jerry Reed, who'd become a hit artist in his own right. A 1973 diagnosis of colon cancer, however, led Atkins to redefine his role at RCA, to allow others to handle administration while he went back to his first love, the guitar, often recording with Reed or even Homer & Jethro's Jethro Burns (Atkins's brother-in-law) after Homer died in 1971.^[5]

By the end of the 1970s, Atkins's time had passed as a producer. New executives at RCA had different ideas. He first retired from his position in the company, and then began to feel stifled as an artist because RCA would not let him branch out into jazz. His mid-1970s collaborations with one of his influences, Les Paul, Chester & Lester and Guitar Monsters, had already reflected that interest; Chester & Lester was one of the best-selling recordings of Atkins's career. At the same time he grew dissatisfied with the direction Gretsch (no longer family-owned) was going and withdrew his authorization for them to use his name and began designing guitars with Gibson. He left RCA in 1982 and signed with Columbia Records, for whom he produced a debut album in 1983.^[10]

Jazz had always been a strong love of his, and often in his career he was criticized by "pure" country musicians for his jazz influences. He also said on many occasions that he did not like being called a "country guitarist", insisting that he was a guitarist, period. Although he played 'by ear' and was a masterful improviser he was able to read music and even performed some classical guitar pieces. When Roger C. Field, a friend, suggested to him in 1991 that he record and perform with a female singer he did so with Suzy Bogguss.^[5]

He returned to his country roots for albums he recorded with Mark Knopfler and Jerry Reed.^[5] Knopfler had long mentioned Atkins as one of his earliest influences. Atkins also collaborated with Australian guitar legend Tommy Emmanuel. On being asked to name the ten most influential guitarists of the 20th century, he named Django Reinhardt to the first position, and also placed himself on the list.^[17]

In later years he even went back to radio, appearing on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion radio program, on American Public Media radio, even picking up a fiddle from time to time.^[5]

Legacy[link]