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Scott Joplin's ragtime piano roll music swept the world at the turn of the century. This dramatized biography of the originator of the ragtime rhythm traces the sources of black music in the New Orleans and Mississippi River life and sets the background from which Scott Joplin emerged. It follows his life from his discovery in a dance-hall by a music publisher, through to the failure of the opera "Treemonisha," and his early death in poverty and obscurity. Narrated by Eartha Kitt.