The house of the African American composer of rag-time music Scott Joplin is at 2658A, Delmar Boulevard in St. Louis.

Now a national historical site, it was renovated a few years ago and refurbished with artifacts from the period when Scott Joplin himself lived there, composing in the process his famous The Entertainer. I did say he was African-American, right?

The other thing to say about his life was that much of what has been written about him were obtained through words of mouth. The man himself wasn’t famous enough in his lifetime to deserve much tabloid ink (even though Wiki said he achieved some fame for his compositions and was dubbed “The king of ragtime”. Much of the details of his life in this house itself are shrouded in mystery. The only agreed fact was that he did live there for two years in the early 1900s, and that he wrote The Entertainer while living here. The tune came back to fashion in the 1970s selling into the millions.

(“Ragtime” was the name of a musical form. I never did figure out why they chose to call it that.)

In 1976 Joplin was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his contribution to music.