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Ragtime & Blue grass A style of jazz characterized by elaborately syncopated rhythm in the melody and a steadily accented accompaniment.The most famous ragtime composer was Scott Joplin. Joseph Lamb and James Scott are, together with Joplin, acknowledged as the three most sophisticated ragtime composers.
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Some rank Artie Matthews as belonging with this distinguished company. Other notable ragtime composers included May Aufderheide, Eubie Blake, George Botsford, Zez Confrey, Ben Harney, Charles L. Johnson, Luckey Roberts, Paul Sarebresole, Wilber Sweatman, and Tom Turpin. Modern ragtime composers include William Bolcom, David Thomas Roberts, Frank French, Trebor Tichenor, Mark Birnbaum and Reginald R. Robinson.
Ragtime dominated American popular music style from the mid-1890s to about 1920. The word "ragtime" seems to have evolved from a compound term, "rag time" or "ragged time," describing the syncopated and percussive nature of the music. Ragtime's 1970s revival, boosted by the popularity of George Roy Hill's film The Sting (1973), whose soundtrack featured some of the most poignant and evocative of Scott Joplin's piano rags, put the piano at the center of popular perceptions of ragtime. Consequently, even some music historians have mistakenly privileged ragtime piano in assessing the genre. In fact, as Edward A. Berlin has argued, ragtime songs like "Mister Johnson Turn Me Loose" and "Under the Bamboo Tree" would probably have been cited by contemporaries as the most important ragtime compositions.
