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Scott Joplin

Scott Joplin had lived in St. Louis on and off through the 1880s and early 1890s. But after the success of The Maple Leaf Rag, Joplin decided to make the permanent move, from his hometown of Sedalia to St. Louis, in the spring of 1901. He was a big hit in his new home right from the start. Among the works he wrote in 1901 was the rag The Easy Winners, which, unusually for Joplin, he chose to publish himself (in October of that year). Why his usual publisher, John Stark, didn't publish the rag isn't known for certain -- one guess is that Joplin may have been trying to get Stark's attention after he had passed on publishing Joplin's ballet The Ragtime Dance.

In any case, many commentators believe The Easy Winners, which is something of a celebration of the sporting world, particularly horse racing, to be one of Joplin's greatest rags. Certainly it was once one of his most popular; it was one of only four Joplin pieces (the others being the Maple Leaf, Gladiolus, and Original rags) to be recorded before the year 1940.