This is an excellent collection of Scott's waltz's, marches and most of his rag's. For more selections of his rag's I suggest the book Scott Joplin's Complete Piano Rags. It is avaliable from Amazon also. Both of these books will give the pianist a very good selection of his songs to play at an intermediate to advanced level. Still missing A Real Slow Drag though. If you are a ragtime enthusiast check out the Ragtime festival in Sedalia Missouri around the first of June each year. It is excellent.

This is an excellent and well written book of Scott's rags, waltz's and marches. It has more of the marches and waltz's than the other book I highly recommend (Complete Piano Rags) that has more of the Rag's such as two or my favorites the Pineapple Rag and the Paragon Rag. Both of these books can be oredered through Amazon.

This book contains a collection of the some of the best music, and tops it off with an informative preface on Joplin's work and sheet music cover images of every song.

This is an excellent book if you want to play Scott Joplin on guitar. There is no tab in the book so you need to know how to read standard music notation to learn the pieces. An added bonus is that Prof. de Chiaro has recorded all the pieces in the book on a set of 4 CDs from Centaur Records, so you can use the CDs to help you to learn to play the pieces. I am currently learning "Maple Leaf Rag" from the book and I am very happy with the results (after previously trying other, inferior transcriptions). Unreservedly recommended!

This book is a complete and precise collection of Scott Joplin's works. The book also gives a summary of the composers lifetime.

I highly recommend this book.

This will save you immeasurable time if you are interested in research in this area. A voluminous, exhaustively researched bible of everything ever written about Joplin. The true Joplin enthusiast must have this book.

Before you purchase, note the title - The Complete Piano RAGS of Scott Joplin. It may seem a bit purist to exclude his other pieces, but many of them, including his marches and songs, are rather commonplace for their time period. Two unfortunate omissions are Solace, which is actually a Tango, although it is in rag format, and Chrysanthemum, which is an intermezzo, although many in rag circles think it qualifies as a Joplin rag. Aside from these, this is a good substitute for the hard to find Complete Works of Scott Joplin from the New York Public Library. Also included are the original covers and some information on Joplin and the pieces.

The first follow up to the three larger Dover editions of collected ragtime, this is the one that really smokes, and has rags that simply will not be ignored. Not only are three Joplin greats part of the package, but the well known Dill Pickles, Wild Cherries, Temptation Rag, the incomparable Entertainer's Rag, and Scott's masterpiece, Grace and Beauty. You can find many of them on my site as well, if you want to hear them first. The three Joplin pieces alone would run in the hundreds of dollars in today's thriving collectible sheet music market. So if you can deal with the covers not printed in color, you'll be duly entertained, and hopefully entertaining, when perusing the contents of this book that you should be buying instead of just reading this rambling review!!!

Complete Piano Rags is a great book to play from. Any pianist of modest ability should get great enjoyment from these pieces once they figure out the syncopation. Ragtime is a great crowd-pleaser, too. Complete Piano Rags also shows the covers from the original sheet music for the rags, which are amusing in some cases. Like every other Dover edition, this book is a good value at a low price, and won't fall apart through use. The only thing this book doesn't have that I wish it did is Joplin's "Solace: a Mexican Serenade," which isn't a rag, but is still very beautiful (can be heard on one of J. Rifkin's records). If you do buy this book, I recommend playing "The Magnetic Rag," and "The Fig Leaf Rag." "Elite Syncopations" has a cool ending section, too.

Despite years of detective work by musicologists, Joplin's life remains something of a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing. Berlin's work is the most coherent and robust work on Joplin's life to date, and barring some miraculous finding (such as the Sweatman files), it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. The depth of Berlin's reportage and the obvious breadth of his detective work (he's a superb "triangulator") give his assertions and educated guesses on Joplin's life, work and motivations far greater academic vailidity than that of many authors who have chased this musical ghost.

After reading Doctorow's Ragtime and visiting Scott's St. Louis home I was eager to learn more about Scott Joplin and this book satisfied that need.

It is a detective story putting the clues together how his life was lived. This makes it an interesting read.

The only warning I would have is that it is blocky and interrupted with music scores and other interludes which don't lend itself to a reading rhythm.

My review in two words: BUY IT.

This book is probably as thorough of a study into the life of Scott Joplin as is possible. Edward Berlin has obviously exhausted every resource available to him, and throughout, the book is well-noted - that is to say he gives credit to probably 99.9% of the sources of his information in the section for notes. Berlin has went through census records, newspapers, other books on ragtime, interviews with/statements given by numerous people affiliated with Scott Joplin and countless other sources for this book. This book is 99.9% true, solid facts; he seldom states a personal opinion, and when he does, it is made blatantly clear that that is what he is doing. This book also includes a listing of the complete known works of Scott Joplin, and the sheet music for the three songs "Good-bye Old Gal Good-bye", "Snoring Sampson" and "Lovin' Babe". (I would like to say in response to someone else's review that it is very difficult for me to see how the biography of a *musician* can be "interrupted" with music scores.)

In 1971 I first purchased the NYPL edition of the Collected Works (later Complete Works) of Scott Joplin. The first volume had all of his piano instrumentals, (plus 3 additional rags in the Complete works) save Frolic of the Bears from Treemonisha. It is now hard to find, and people have to scavange a bit to get a copy.

So now we have the next best thing - sort of. I wanted to give this book a better rating because of my admiration of the composer, much less my knowledge of his works through recording them all over the past few years for CD release. It is intended to balance out the alternate Dover title Complete Piano Rags. But in that regard there are still omissions. This book contains Joplin's Marches and Waltzes, as well as his single tango that the book is titled for and one collaborative rag (Lily Queen).

While these pieces are not quite piano rags or even ragtime (except Lily Queen, and arguable for Solace and Bethena) they do represent a balance for a disciplined composer who was serious not only about his work, but about making the ordinary into something much more.

But I have a question that I am not alone in asking. Between these two volumes, what about the missing pieces? We have to find another source for them now? These include Cleopha (A March), and The Chrysanthemum (of which many of us have had spirited discussions with editor Dave Jasen as to its rag vs.intermezzo status). Two pieces are hardly enough to create another volume, yet the Chrysanthemum in particular is so rich and enjoyable to play and listen to that this omission is frustrating indeed.

This consideration aside, if you don't have the NYPL edition, Solace is still worth having as a compliment to Complete Rags. And you can always come to my ragtime site to listen to the missing pieces if you want.

I enjoyed reading your book. A friend of mine, knowning that I had written the story also, and am awaiting its printing, brought me a copy. Your illustrator is very good. I enjoyed his work. Somehow, I got the impression that Remus becomes the leader of the village. Am I correct. If so, that is not what Joplin was about. He was about female leadership. That is why she asked the question to the crowd three times in three different ways. That is also why the opera was not picked up by the publishers. Woman sufferage was a sore topic at that time, and would not have created a reason for another million dollar block buster for them. Joplin was way ahead of his time in that aspect. I have a friend whose father was in Joplin's band, and she was able to give me added insight to the man. I'm glad you did the book. Nevilla E. Ottley

Scott Joplin is _the_ name in Ragtime, and this book does a fine job of tracing what is known about his life and career. It's obviously written by a fan, though, and to my mind doesn't do enough to place Joplin in the context of his times (for a book with the title "Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era", that is). Its comments on the early record industry are most revealing, however, and the black-and-white photos are above average. For ragtime fans and those who are interested in the roots of modern popular music.