In earlier stages, the sheet music of cakewalk, ragtime, and coon songs sounded identical. For commercial reasons the titles “cakewalk” “rag” and others were all printed on the sheet music. The image covers on sheet music started from just images of trees, to stereotypical pictures of African Americans eating watermelons. These stereotyped cover photos were attractive to publishers and buyers and were a way to “prove” its authenticity that it was indeed African American music. The fact that stereotyping African Americans was seen as marketable is mind boggling . This provides insight to me as to why the stereotype lasted so long. It was primarily because it made money back in those days.