Peacherine Rag: A Song History

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"Peacherine Rag" is a piano rag by Scott Joplin, issued in 1901 by John Stark & Son of St. Louis.[1] The Morgan Library & Museum holds a Stark printing of the sheet music, with a copyright date of 1901, which its catalog suggests may be the first edition.[2] In her biography of Joplin, Kathleen Benson Haskins writes that Stark had held the piece for some time, since the heavy demand for "Maple Leaf Rag" had left his firm with a backlog of orders that delayed new publications.[3] She groups it with "Sunflower Slow Drag" and "Augustan Club Waltz," two other pieces bearing Joplin's name that Stark issued in 1901, and suggests it probably appeared later in the year than those two.[3]

A painted still life of a patterned bowl heaped with peaches beside a bunch of green grapes and a knife.

John A. Woodside, Still Life: Peaches and Grapes, oil on wood, ca. 1825. An American still life of peaches, shown for the title; it has no connection to the rag.

According to Haskins, this was the first Joplin cover to bill him as "the King of Ragtime Writers," and although she does not rank the rag among his finest, she says it sold well.[3] The State Historical Society of Missouri's encyclopedia credits Stark with coining that nickname.[4] Haskins also cites a 1902 article in the Sedalia Times that named "Peacherine" among the Joplin numbers then in strong demand.[3] Interest in Joplin grew further in the 1970s, helped by the use of his music in the score of The Sting, and he received a special Pulitzer Prize after his death, in 1976.[5] For mountain dulcimer, Shelley Stevens sets the tune in DAD tuning in Baker's Dozen #10: Ragtime And Honky Tonk, a Fingers Of Steel book whose thirteen classic American ragtime tunes, by Joplin, Hughie Cannon and others, are written out in both standard notation and dulcimer tab.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Peacherine Rag"

Sources

  1. IMSLP: "Peacherine Rag (Joplin, Scott)".
  2. The Morgan Library & Museum: "Peacherine rag".
  3. Kathleen Benson Haskins, Scott Joplin: The Man Who Made Ragtime: "Chapter VI: St. Louis".
  4. State Historical Society of Missouri, Missouri Encyclopedia: "Joplin, Scott".
  5. Britannica: "Scott Joplin".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Baker's Dozen #10: Ragtime And Honky Tonk".
  7. Image: John A. Woodside, Still Life: Peaches and Grapes, oil on wood, ca. 1825. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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