Ragtime originated in African American musical communities, in the late 19th century, and descended from the jigs and marches played by bands in Northern cities with black populations. By the start of the 20th century it became widely popular throughout North America and was listened and danced to, performed, and written by people of many different cultures. A distinctly American musical style, ragtime may be considered a blend of African rhythms and European classical music.

There is no question as to Joplin’s greatness, his talent, his importance in the history of ragtime and American music. Yet, for all his prominence and recognition, many of the facts regarding his life still elude us.

It is uncertain where or when he was born. The best we can say is that he was born in Texas, probably in the northeast part of the state, for the U.S. Census locates him there in July 1870 as a two-year-old child. That he was already two at that time (and was twelve when the next Census was taken, in June 1880) indicates that the frequently-cited and celebrated birth date of November 24, 1868 is incorrect.

So then, when was he born? Available documents point to a birth between June 1867 and mid-January 1868.

When he was still a young child, his family left the farm on which his father (formerly a slave) worked as a labourer. They moved to the newly established town of Texarkana, which straddles the Texas-Arkansas border. The Joplins lived on both sides of the border.

Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles. Instead of altering the pitch of the strings in the normal manner (by pressing the string against frets), a slide is placed upon the string to vary its vibrating length, and pitch. This slide can then be moved along the string without lifting, creating continuous transitions in pitch. The technique of using a slide on a string has been traced to one-stringed African instruments similar to a “Diddley bow”. The tuning and bend filled playing style resembles the blues-harp.

The technique was made popular by African American blues artists. The first musician to be recorded using the style was Sylvester Weaver who recorded two solo pieces “Guitar Blues” and “Guitar Rag” in 1923. Some of the blues artists who most prominently used the slide include gospel singer Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Son House, Robert Johnson. Arguably the first influential classic electric blues slide guitarist is Elmore James, whose riff in the song “Dust My Broom” is copied from Robert Johnson and is held in particularly high regard. Blues legend Muddy Waters was also very influential, particularly in developing the electric Chicago blues slide guitar from the acoustic Mississippi Delta slide guitar. Texas blues musician Johnny Winter developed his distinctive style through years of touring with Waters.

Reverend Gary Davis was born in 1896 in Laurens County, South Carolina. Blind from an early age, he grew up as a guitar prodigy in a musical culture, absorbing a wide variety of styles. In his teens he played in a string band with the legendary Blind Willie Walker that performed the blues, ragtime, jazz, country, and dance tunes popular at the time.

In 1935, Davis recorded 14 brilliant gospel tunes in New York City for ARC (American Record Corporation), only to disappear from the scene, disenchanted with the recording business. For the rest of the 1930s and 1940s, he survived on the edges by playing wherever he could, traveling with the tobacco industry around the Raleigh/Durham area with other musicians, many of whom were also blind. Wherever there were refreshments or a little cash flowing, the musicians would be there trying to pick up some change. During this time Davis befriended Blind Boy Fuller, teaching him many songs as well as his standard-tuning style. During the 1940s, Davis moved to New York City, where he lived until his death in 1972.

Surviving decades of trials and deep poverty, Davis finally became known to guitar players through four now-classic Prestige/Bluesville LPs released in the early ’60s. When performers like Peter, Paul, and Mary and Joan Baez recorded his songs, he earned royalties that allowed him and his wife, Annie, to live more comfortably, with a house and a car – for his various lead boys to drive him to gigs. He also had the benefit of a great manager, Manny Greenhill, who sent him on concert tours around the world.

David Qualey is an American guitarist and composer. From 1968 to 1971, David Qualey performed his military service in the US army. He also played in small clubs until 1973. It was not until 1973 when he lived in Germany, he made first LP for Stockfisch Records. Some of his famous tunes from his 17 records include Santa Cruz, his arrangement of Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of man’s desiring’ and Beatles ‘Let it be’.

One of several brothers who all abandoned the surname Gumm in favour of the classier sounding Von Tilzer, Albert followed carefully, and creatively, in his older brother Harry’s footsteps. After working in Chicago at a music publishing establishment which was a regional outlet for the firm of Shapiro, Bernstein and Von Tilzer, Albert made the inevitable move out east. Then in 1904 they started up the York Music Company on West 28th Street in New York City. The song that put this company on the map was “Teasin’,” the product of Albert’s collaboration with Cecil Mack. He seems to have had no trouble in turning out songs which were to become extremely popular.

Albert Von Tilzer is also remembered for emitting “Oh, By Jingo!” a knuckleheaded novelty number that the record-buying public of 1919 seems to have found particularly irresistible.

Origins of the blues – The origin of the term was most likely derived from mysticism involving blue indigo, which was used by many West African cultures in death and mourning ceremonies where all the mourner’s garments would have been dyed blue to indicate suffering. This mystical association towards the indigo plant, grown in many US slave plantations, combined with West African slaves who sang of their suffering as they worked on the cotton that the indigo dyed eventually resulted in these expressed songs being known as the Blues.

Blues has evolved from the unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves imported from West Africa and rural blacks into a wide variety of styles and sub-genres, with regional variations across the United States. Though blues, as it is now known, can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the African call-and-response tradition, transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar.

In particular, no specific African musical form can be identified as the single direct ancestor of the blues. However many blues elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa.

The musicals forms and styles that are now considered the “blues” as well as modern country music arose in the same regions during the 19th century in the southern United States. Recorded blues and country can be found as far back as the 1920s, when the popular record industry developed and created marketing categories called “race music” and “hillbilly music” to sell music by blacks for blacks and by whites for whites, respectively. At the time there was no clear division between “blues and “country”, except for the ethnicity of the performer, and even that was sometimes documented incorrectly by record companies.