Paramount Rag

At a glance

• What it isa ragtime piece for solo piano.
• Who and whenpublished in 1917 by James Scott, an African American composer from Missouri.
• What to listen forthe even walk of the left hand, and the right hand moving off the beat above it.

Listen for

• The left hand's walklow notes and chords alternate in an even 'oom-pah', keeping the beat. This is the floor that holds up the whole piece.
• Syncopation in the right hand: the right hand deliberately plays across the beat.
• Several sectionsa classic rag is usually built from several sections of about sixteen bars each, which follow one another and repeat. Listen for how the mood changes when one section gives way to the next.

When it was written

Ragtime is piano music that arose among African American musicians in the late nineteenth century. Laying off-beat rhythms over an even, march-like pulse, it sold as sheet music and spread to home pianos across America. Scott Joplin, Joseph Lamb and James Scott are counted today as the three composers of classic ragtime, who shaped the genre with careful composition.

In 1917 Joplin died, and the first jazz records came out as a new music began to draw attention. In the same year the United States entered the First World War. Paramount Rag appeared in the very year the ragtime era was drawing to a close.

The composer, James Scott

James Scott was born in Missouri around 1885. As a young man he worked at a music store in Carthage, Missouri, where his first pieces were published, and later he met the publisher John Stark, who brought out many of his rags. After he later moved to Kansas City he taught piano and played in silent-film theaters. He died in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1938.