He was an African American composer and pianist born in the late 1860s in Texas. He took his art and made it into something even more popular than what it had already been. He was born into a musical family and learned how to play the guitar first then the piano and eventually mastered it. He had initially been instructed by a German music teacher, Julius Weiss who lived in his home town. Eventually, Joplin left home during his teen years and became a traveling musician. He gained his fame by playing at bars where new forms of music had been featured. These formed the basis of ragtime which had syncopated rhythms and a mixture of musical distinctions. Joplin continued to work and in 1913, he formed his own publishing company with his wife Lottie.  Despite his unfortunate death in 1917, Ragtime resurged during the 1940s and then in the 70s became a popular classical genre.