Ragtime performances

You are listening to: Elite Syncopations by Scott Joplin, 1902 performed by W. Brett Youens

In none of Joplin's previous rags does the bass play such an independent role as it does in Elite Syncopations.  For much of the A strain and almost all of the D strain, Joplin forgoes the standard oom-pah, oom-pah bass, which one often thinks of in connection with ragtime, for a more melodic one.           Later rags with especially active bass lines are Pineapple Rag (1908), and Euphonic Sounds (1909).