Dancing to a Black Man's Tune; A Life of Scott Joplin by Susan Curtis - 1994

Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1994 University of Missouri Press, Columbia, MO. 1994. First Printing by line number. Missouri Biography Series. Book is tight, square, and unmarked. Book Condition: VG; small dents in boards on fore edge, bottom and spine from book contact with other books. No DJ. Gold boards and spine with bright black lettering on the spine. 265 pp 8vo. Born in 1868 to freedman parents Joplin spent his early years in a sharecropping life in the midst of Reconstruction. Along the way he learned to play musical instruments and worked his way up and down the Mississippi River valley playing in dance halls and saloons to make a living. His syncopated jazz rhythms never found the financial backing to achieve fame and he died in 1917 of syphilis. His fame came years later in the movie The Sting. A clean very presentable copy.