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The piano he had played for Freddie during her dying days. It was his rosewood Rosenkranz, the piano he had found in the alleyway when he could still stand and walk.
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Scott's eyes had missed it before because it was in a shadowed corner, nearly invisible in the room's bland light. Then, he did see it: An upright piano stood against the far wall. Why would Freddie wrest him away from his beautiful setting to bring him back to this lunatic's meeting hall?ĭo you see it? Freddie, as always, was persistent. A sobbing younger man sat cross-legged on the floor, his nest of privates in plain view from a hollow in his thin, urine-stained gown. Institutional wooden chairs circled a scuffed old table that offered two checkerboards but no checkers, beside a Graphophone with a working motor but no needle to play the cylinders.
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Scott Joplin gazed around the room, where the streaked windows invited in an awful dead winter sun that stole more than it gave. There it is, Scott, Freddie said, quivering his ear.
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The light filled him with wonder, and wonder was hard to come by these days.īut Freddie's voice interrupted him so loudly that he wondered why the droop-jawed attendant in the doorway didn’t call for them to hush that racket near so many insane and dying. Talking to Freddie was like walking onto the stage itself, standing in the stare of a footlight. He was talking to her, as he often did, about the stage set he was going to build as soon as he was able: murals of cloud banks, majestic live oaks and a sea of ripening corn-stalks. His second wife, Freddie, was the only one of the dead who still enjoyed his company. The man had outlived one wife and his baby girl-pure bad luck, his first wife had called him. The new arrival wheeled himself through the day room of Manhattan State Hospital on Ward's Island, whispering to his dead wife, who always walked beside him. The playing on the 1916 roll in question is poor, and it's well-known that Joplin was a better composer than he was a player.Īuthor Tananarive Due is an American Book Award winner who has written seven books, ranging from supernatural thrillers to a civil rights memoir. One roll in Tichner's collection, however, is likely to have been produced by Joplin's own hand. Louis music collector Trebor Tichner has collected Joplin rolls, but it would be hard to prove that Joplin actually made the piano rolls that bear his name. When fed into a player piano, the rolls re-create music from Joplin's era, and maybe even his own hand. The composer would have played a piano that punched tiny holes in rolls of paper. A visit to the home inspired author Tananarive Due to write her latest book, Joplin's Ghost.ĭue's book brings Joplin into the present as a ghost that is haunting a young R&B singer - a woman who has already survived a crushing encounter with an antique piano.įor those seeking a more concrete connection with Joplin, there are still piano rolls holding his compositions. The son of a former slave, the composer's Ragtime music swept the nation more than 100 years ago. Scott Joplin was once among America's most popular songwriters.