Ragtime is a piano-based forebear of jazz immensely popular in the 1890s and onward. African-American pianist and composer Scott Joplin didn't invent ragtime and was far from its only practitioner, but he remains the figure most commonly associated with the genre. Ragtime blended tempos found in marches and minstrel-show songs, characterized by a "ragged" syncopated rhythm. At the time, songs were sold via sheet music that would allow people to play the music on pianos in their own homes. Songs were also available on "rolls" for player pianos, in which a musician would perform the song on a special piano that would create a role of paper with perforations for each sequential note. When loaded into a player piano, the performance was more-or-less replicated.
Joplin published "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1899. The name of the song derived from the Maple Leaf Club in Sedalia, Missouri, a social club that convened in a local saloon where Joplin had frequently performed. The "Maple Leaf Rag" became the first instrumental piece of music to sell more than 1 million copies of sheet music. In 1916, Joplin himself performed the "Maple Leaf Rag" for a piano roll.
Joplin complained that people who performed his compositions would typically play them at a faster tempo than he intended, perhaps as an attempt to show off. In his roll of "Maple Leaf Rag," Joplin keeps the pace at a deliberately moderate tempo. As in most ragtime songs, "Maple Leaf Rag" features two key rhythmic elements: the continual use of syncopation throughout and the use of bass notes alternating with chords played with the left hand. Although the roll can't translate variations in volume that Joplin would have used, it does provide an accurate sonic "picture" of the song with the rhythm and pacing as Joplin intended.
New Orleans jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton recorded a version of "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1938. Morton's version is more akin to the jazz of the late 1930s than the ragtime of the turn of the century, but his version features some rhythmic variations that don't appear in Joplin's version. Morton's version is faster than Joplin's, which had a slow, steady pace. As music professor Robert Zimmerman writes, "Morton's playing has more of a two-beat feel where Joplin's is closer to 4/4, especially at the beginning, when the stride pattern is not happening in the left hand."