Tom Turpin

The Buffalo Rag

Tom Turpin's 1904 composition "The Buffalo Rag", in a 1906 performance by Vess L. Ossman

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Thomas Million John Turpin (November 18, 1871 – August 13, 1922) was an African American composer of ragtime music.

Tom Turpin was born in Savannah, Georgia, a son of John L. Turpin and Lulu Waters Turpin. In his early twenties he opened a saloon in St. Louis, Missouri which became a meeting-place for local pianists and an incubation point for early folk ragtime, such as musicians Joe Jordan and Scott Joplin. This saloon, named the 'Rosebud Café', became the namesake of Joplin's 'Rosebud March' (1905). The saloon was closed in 1906.^[1]

Turpin is credited with the first published rag by an African-American, his "Harlem Rag" of 1897 (it was composed by 1892, a year before ragtime's introduction to the world at the 1893 Worlds Fair). He published a total of 7 compositions. Two were recorded by contemporary musicians:^[2] St. Louis Rag (1903) was recorded most notably by the United States Marine Band and Arthur Pryor's Orchestra in 1906, and Buffalo Rag (1904), was recorded by Vess L. Ossman.

Turpin was a large man, six feet (1.83 m) tall and 300 pounds (136 kg); his piano had to be raised on blocks so that he could play it standing up, otherwise his stomach would get in the way. In addition to his saloon-keeping duties and his ragtime composition, he controlled (with his brother Charles) a theater, gambling houses, dance halls, and sporting houses. He served as a deputy constable and was one of the first politically powerful African-Americans in St. Louis. His influence on local music earned him the title "Father of St. Louis Ragtime."

In 1922, Tom Turpin died of peritonitis, at the age of 50.

He was portrayed by Godfrey Cambridge in the 1977 film Scott Joplin.^[3]