Tyehimba Jess
Issue No. 9 • April 2013
Della Marie Jenkins, Sept 19, 1924
Ms. Jenkins, a registered nurse with a twenty year career, was eager to share her memories of Mr. Joplin. We met at her apartment near 125th and Lennox.
How did you come to know Mr. Joplin?
Well sir, I was a nurse at the New York State Mental Hospital. He was a patient. Syphilis. Slow. Slow way to go. Must’ve had it for years cause by the time he got to the hospital he was barely moving. You know, funny thing is I didn’t even know who he was till about two weeks after he came there. He didn’t play much at all while I knew him.
What were your duties with Mr. Joplin?
Bathing, feeding, tending bedsores – wasn’t much to be done by that point but dose him up and let him move on from this world. He didn’t say much, moved very little. Except when I would hold him up for bathing. He would try to play his scales on the bedside table. I would be wiping him down while he played rags on that invisible piano all slow motion and stiff, all herky jerky like a rusted up gadget. So far gone into his dreams he didn’t know much of whoever came to visit, but knew how to find middle C, knew how to grow something in his head nobody else could hear. Course, that might’ve been sickness talking – but there he was, with music stuck all up in his hands, him trying to work it all out before he left.
How did he play?
Like I said, he didn’t play much, except when he was all feeble finger-twitching on the air, or on the table, or on the wall, or on his stretched out legs. But one last time he played the real piano in the great room, I think it had been months since he touched a key. Really wasn’t supposed to have him down there, as he was terminal care and all. But did it matter? That’s what I thought anyway. Man about to pass on over, he might as well have one last play. Wheeled him down there a few days before he passed, let him sit in a wheelchair stacked up on pillows. Didn’t do nothing for such a long time, nothing but stare at the keys, his eyes all empty like broken pails. But then he moved. A little. It was like watching raw sap coming out a tree, he was moving so slow – and when he hit that first note, it barely made a sound. By the end, he wasn’t nothing but a tremble.
What did he play?
Well sir, I must confess that I don’t know all of those songs. Most I know is how he played, what it was sounding like. So, at first he played pretty good, you know - like the kind of good you want to tell somebody about just right before you doze off. The kind of notes that come strong at first and then fade to the next till you wonder where you began and they end at. Then other times…
He’d make me want to just look away. He’d look up from the keys and through … through me, through the brick and mortar ward, through Manhattan, like he was looking out a window wondering whether to jump, half blind one second, sway headed like a newborn the next. And when he played like that, it was …well… old timey one minute, then lovely terrible. Like he had another life in the music, but he couldn’t get it all the way out to save him in this one. Or like he was playing another language on the keys, begging us to hear it with him. And then sometimes playing all slow like he wanted us to learn every note. Then other times he’d be frantic, digging through them black and whites like he was lookin for something he’d lost, what was left of himself.
Was it ragtime?
Yes sir, it was ragtime alright... And then it was just plain raggedy, all stitched together, loose in some parts and painful tight in others. Heard a cakewalk in there, but then the walk started to lean too hard and got drunk off its own sway. Heard some spirituals: Nearer My God to Thee, Most Done Toiling Here, but they wore too much pride to be prayerful. Heard a hint of that new blue music, but he let the keys sing too free to be truly sorrowed. It was a true mix up, sir. Didn’t know rightly how to feel after he stopped, wasn’t no way to know whether a man should just take his hat off his head or throw it up in the air, whether a woman should put her hands together over and over or just hold them up to her mouth with a silent prayer. So we all just sat there and watched. Silent. The sick, the dying, the nurses. We watched him crawl all over that keyboard like a beggar in the gutter and a king on the sauce; watched him leave half his life spread across the keys till he left himself half dead.
How long did he play?
(Pause) What’s time got to do with it? (Laughter, slight) … Long enough, sir. Long enough.
Interview Subject: Sam Patterson. Nov. 21, 1924 Harlem, NY
Mr. Patterson was a close compatriot of Scott Joplin. An accomplished ragtime pianist himself, he was quite close to Joplin throughout his Missouri days and on until his death in 1917. I interviewed Mr. Patterson in Manhattan at the Harlem YMCA, during one of his travels to New York.
You helped Mr. Joplin write his scores?
Well, I was with him. I was in that room with him for days – weeks. He was pressing up on them keys like he was trying to look into a mirror and find his own face. Blood gone almost all the way bad by then.
Syphilis?
Yeah, syphilis. That bad blood dog. It bit him up and spat him out – left nothing but dry bones and a crop of scattered nerves – just enough for him to try and stutter out some last scraps of sound. It was rough, boy. Rough.
Did he get much done?
Well, in a seeming sort of way. Problem was, he couldn’t hardly start one rag before he would get up and go to the next. Was all broiled up in each one – start one sounding like morning, get halfway through and end up switching to some chords that left a midnight taste in your mouth. Start another that blew through your bones like a winter frost, then he’d take a break and come back burning up them keys like August in a cotton field.
Did he finish any of those compositions?
Can’t tell you. Might have – but most of what he did finish he ended up callin’ child’s play. But they weren’t any child’s play, I’ll tell you that. Not any child I ever met. I know cause I heard him play it all one time, just before he lit that match.
You mean that he played the whole thing at once? As one piece?
The whole thing. Took all them raggedy pieces and tied em’ all together with a loose string of phrases all syncopated up like a gold pocket watch. A dozen dozen little song parts ticking away, all coiled up spitting and spinning. Times falling away and then coming together at the last minute. . . goodness.
Did it have a name?
Can’t say it did. Only saw him play it that one night. And everything he was working on was changing titles all the time, anyway. One hour it’d be the If Rag, then turn around and it’d be Lost Boy. Next hour, it’d be the Magnetic Rag. Remember Me. Tremble Hand. Hallelujah. Bad Blood. Palms Down. Syncopated Glories. Morning Burl. Seem like they was all getting born up at once – everything he’d had me writing down for all those days and nights. I couldn’t rightly say that all of it was nice sounding. But some of it stuck to me so hard until I could never shake it off. Or maybe it was the way he was playing it –like he was staring down a well. And then sometimes he’d just stop and look at his palms, like he’d brung up a last drink of water. Then he’d just splash it all over that piano.
But I can still hear parts of it in my head (plays)
That was some good stuff right there. 'Cept he’d played it all stiffed up, bar by bar, most the time. Till’ that one last night.
Were you there that night?
I was there. Well, naw I wasn’t there. I was supposed to be. See, he had just played that thing. Had played it all out, till there wasn’t no more. He was sweating and heaving at the end like he’d been running for everything he’d ever lost. I remember once he looked up like he’d found some secret in the music, and then he did something he’d rarely do – he sang a little with the tune, like I’m in the wind, baby. I’m in the wind, darling. He was just twirling them keys all around, you know. Just twinkling up those high notes with big bashes of bass. Then too, I remember there was this one part in the music where he sounded like he’d wandered somewhere deep in the notes and couldn’t find a way back. Well, he found his way back alright. But he just wasn’t the same no more.
What happened? How was he different?
Well, let me see... You ever have someone seem all never-beaten all their life, so never-beaten till it’s like they was never weak? So strong till the day you come to know how weak they are - that’s when you see how you never knew their strength? Well, I had been knowing him for days, weeks, years. All the time knowing ‘bout his strength – knowing he would be hitting those keys to the end, even when he was out of it, he’d walk out with his head up. He’d seen worse. Lot worse.
See, sometimes he’d be out on the road, playing his set - everything that had got his name on it, his bread and butter. He’d be up there playin it all grand and professor like, kinda stilted up and slowed down so that the audience could hear every note shimmering in its own museum. He’d love each rag like it was the children he never got to see grow up – he’d be keepin’ them all orderly and polite, straining up their voices -not so much as they’d break, but enough to hear them bend up a little into hope, no matter how sad they might be. But never rushin’ nowhere. Folks was all okay with that back when he first started playin that Maple Leaf and such.
But it changed. He thought putting those pieces on paper would help hold them the way he heard them – make them stay proper and well behaved.
I imagine he was quite eager to get his work published in order to get compensated. Correct?
Yeah, he was glad to see it out in the world. See, he wanted to leave his sound behind him... but see, it didn’t work out quite exactly like that. Once those rags were on paper, every ten fingered bowler wearing stud would put his hands all over those tunes. Walk them slow at first, till they learned all their ins and outs. They was polite with them tunes, till they figured out how to roll em’ out a little faster, and then make em’ strut and swagger more with each stride. Next thing you know, they was cakewalking them rags up and down that keyboard like a pimp in the tenderloin. Their fingers would work em’ more faster, more prettier than they was supposed to be – all slicked up and leaned back and sideways steppin – hustled up and tricked out like something illegal, ill tempered and ill-begotten gained.
And started to be like every time he went to a new town, there’d be some lightfingered hustler out to bootstrap himself up, using Scott like a ladder. Come up on stage after Scott all friendly, then play his pieces all to pieces. I mean snapping those rags with a shoeshine boy’s spit and polish, trying to make the best tip of the week by showing the master how to work his own business. He’d say in his polite little professor tone “Very nice, but too fast, friend!” and they’d just laugh. He would laugh with them a little through his frown, too - because what else could he do?
And what’s make it worse is that Scott couldn’t keep up with em’. That ol’ dog syphilis had him by the throat, and had gnawed up almost everything he could do with his hands… and every year it got worse, till he would come into town and some folks would think he must’ve been a faker, askin’ how could the great rag man be all dusted up and unpolished like that? This be Scott Joplin? This?
But he never stopped, brother. Never stopped. Would always shake it off, even though you knew he’d been shook. Always had a plan –an opera, a show…
Like Treemonisha, right? Isn’t that what kept him going?
Yeah, trying to get that opera up and runnin’ kept him going for a long time. Years, maybe. But everybody got limits. And that night, he knew he’d just…. run out of time. He’d played that patchworked blanket of rags that night for hours and hours, all up and down the fingerboard till the air was about beat out the room, and he was breathless, and when he looked up you could see there weren’t that many breaths left for him here on this earth, and when I saw his face…boy, I just had to…
I had to walk away for a while. I went out that door. Got the night air. Cleaned myself off. With the moonlight.
So… you left the building...
Yeah. Only left about twenty minutes or so, walking round the block. Came back and there was a glowing off the roof of the building. Ran up all them stairs, thinking the building was on fire, maybe one of them johns had dropped a cigar on the roof. Got there to see him standing next to this big old metal trash can, all blazed up with his songs. He must’ve put some kerosene on them cause they was blazed up pretty high and hot – I could feel the heat off those rags - damn, all them beautiful rags – could feel the heat from ten feet away. And I could see Scott on the other side. His face all lit up, his hands trembling and holding one last stash of scribbled up music.
You can’t stop something you know is gonna happen anyway. And then, you still gotta try. And I did. I tried to fix my mouth to talk at him, talk him down from all that mischief the sickness had put up in his brain. But what could I say? All the things you would say in the same situation. Don’t do it Scott - your voice on paper, your work, think of your bloodline of sound all burning up, man… Who gone show them, man? People need to know…
You know what he said?
What did he say?
It was almost like he knew it was coming. This giant hand of wind came right over us from the river. And he threw them rags all up in the air and into the palm of that hand, and it made a fist and smeared his music all over New York. All them notes all scattered over Manhattan like so many raindrops. All them notes burning up in smoke.
What’d he say? It’s all in the wind, Sam. It’s all in the wind.