Another major ragtimer we need to touch on James S. Scott of Neosho, Missouri. For some reason, most of the great ragtimers and influential jazzmen either came from or made their homes in Missouri. Scott was born in 1886 of parents who came from North Carolina. His cousin was blues singer, Ada Brown, who recalled her cousin quite fondly.
Fats Waller & Ada Brown - That Ain't Right - Stormy Weather (1943) - YouTube
A beautiful clip of Fats Waller and Ada Brown. They don’t make em like this anymore.
Scott was a short man, about five-foot-four. He walked quickly with his head lowered as though lost in thought. He often walked past old friends and family members on the street without seeing them. If one of them called to him, he would suddenly look up and break into a smile. His family was not well-to-do even for a Black family in America at that time and he went to work from a young age shining shoes. That Scott was such a musical genius and excellent sight-reader on the piano is surprising considering the Scotts did not have a piano. James had to learn wherever he could find a keyboard to play on. Yet he became quite good just learning by ear. An excellent black pianist in town named John Coleman took an interest in young Scott and gave him about 30 lessons in technique and sight-reading after seeing how good the boy had become on his own. Scott seems to have taken it from there and began churning out amazing ragtime pieces of a quality unmatched even by older more experienced composers as Joplin whom he admired.
At 16, James got a job at Dumars Music Store in Carthage, Missouri doing menial labor and helping Mr. Dumars frame pictures—something Dumars specialized in. The store had a piano back in the stockroom and this gave James something he had so desperately lacked—steady access to a piano—and he never missed an opportunity to practice on it and work on his own pieces. Scott was such a modest young man, he never told Mr. Dumars what an ace-crackerjack pianist he was and Dumars only found when out he chanced upon hearing James practicing back in the stockroom. Dumars was startled to see his stockboy tearing it up and excitedly asked him, “Can you read?”
James said he could. Dumars immediately promoted Scott to head salesman plugging and demonstrating sheet music. When James played some of his own pieces for Dumars, the storeowner realized that he may have hit a jackpot! Dumars published Scott’s first rag when the boy was no more than 17.
Summer breeze James scott - YouTube
Scott’s first published rag. The influence of Joplin is there but Scott’s style is all his own.
Scott’s most famous rag was published by Dumars in 1906—“Frog Legs Rag”:
frog legs rag (1906) - YouTube
The sheet music of “Frog Legs” is a Stark reissue.
Scott stayed with Dumars until 1914 when he left Carthage at the age of 28 and went to St. Louis to meet Scott Joplin, which he did. Joplin liked the young man and recommended him to John Stark & Sons. Stark signed anyone Joplin told them to trusting his ear. So Joplin functioned as something of an A&R man for the publishing house. Scott turned in stunning pieces to Stark showing all kinds of innovation with ragtime.
Pieces as “Climax Rag” and “Suffragette Waltz”—both from 1914—show an evolution in his style from the Dumars days even considering the brilliance of earlier pieces as “The Ragtime Betty” (1909) and “The Ragtime Oriole” (1911). After ragtime collapsed with the onslaught of the 20s, Scott supported himself by teaching piano, leading an eight-piece band and playing piano and organ in theatres to accompany movies which were silent then. The talkies came into vogue, Scott was thrown out of work like thousands of other musicians. Then his wife, Nora, died and Scott moved in with his cousin along with his dog. He continued composing even after coming down with dropsy. His rags were reaching a complexity likely achieved by no one else before or since. But in 1938 at the age of 52, James Scott died in the hospital. His sheet music is now lost and some believe was thrown away by a maid sent to clean up the dead man’s rooms.
