Ragtime enjoyed a relatively brief period of popularity, beginning in the late 1890s and lasting until the end of World War I. Ragtime musicians were known for their use of syncopation, the introduction of surprising derivations from a simple rhythm. It started in bars and on stages where black musicians experimented with new rhythms, eventually filtering its way out and becoming popular with white audiences. The best known ragtime musician was Scott Joplin, also known as "The King of Ragtime."
While ragtime music was meant to be read from sheet music, jazz musicians took the form a step further. Rather than play from sheet music, jazz musicians took the basic elements of ragtime and added improvisation to the performance. No longer were performers chained to a composition, but were able to explore via improvisation. Jelly Roll Morton called himself the creator of jazz and found his influences in ragtime, evolving it into a form he called "stomp piano."
Jazz music emerged from the melting pot of turn of the century New Orleans where ragtime began to mix with blues and native brass-band music. While brass bands began to experiment with syncopation, solo pianists moved from the set music of ragtime to experimenting with the early improvisations that would become jazz. Brass musicians would also use syncopation to mimic the vocal styling of blues with their instruments, another early hallmark of jazz.
According to the Washington Post, ragtime merged "vernacular African-American music with the mainstream traditions of Western composition and prefigured, in many regards, the later development of jazz." Ragtime merged both high and low art, along with marrying rhythmic experiments with European musical tradition. Numerous early jazz musicians, from Charles Mingus to Benny Goodman to Duke Ellington would build their style on ragtime, but by incorporating other music such as the blues and adding the flavor of improvisation, they would help create the new genre of jazz.