David Wilson, Ragtime, circa 1974, oil on Masonite, 51 x 36, City of Sedalia, Missouri. Now in an office in the Municipal Building. One might think a fractured folk modern work like this would vex the citizens of a mid-size Midwestern town, but Wilson’s depiction of Scott Joplin is a favorite with the public. It has kinetic energy, not unlike the spirited rhythm of ragtime music.
In 1974 David Wilson was commissioned to paint a portrait of Scott Joplin. It was displayed in the hall of Sedalia’s new municipal building. For better security today it hangs in an office. That same year, Sedalia launched its first annual Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival.
At the end of World War I, other syncopated popular music forms like stride piano, boogie-woogie, Dixieland, blues and jazz successively supplanted ragtime. Periodically, it was dusted off and performed. Joshua Rifkin’s album of Scott Joplin in 1970 sold a million copies, equally the sales number of Maple Leaf Rag sheet music a century earlier.
Marvin Hamlisch won an Oscar for his score based on Scott Joplin’s songs for the movie The Sting. That 1973 film starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford was awarded a total of seven Academy awards including Best Picture.
The 1970s saw a national revival of interest in Joplin, but Sedalia’s ragtime heritage had been continuous since the turn of the nineteenth century when the town was the base for a number of black piano players who pioneered the lively syncopated dance music. Businessman John Stark was located here and his success publishing Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag in 1899 established Joplin as the “King of Ragtime.”
Article from The Sedalia Democrat, May 23, 1974.
The Sedalia Democrat followed every stage of Joplin’s career. Through the years, nostalgic stories recalled his success and the good old days when he enthralled white concertgoers and diverse patrons of the town’s many bawdy houses. Sedalia is a well-churched town, but is candid about its wide-open past as a booming railroad nexus with a thriving red light district and surfeit of saloons. Does the fetching musicality of ragtime provide a soundtrack that covers over the grim realities of its prostitution industry and rampant alcohol abuse? Scott Joplin would die in an asylum at the age of 48 of syphilitic dementia.
Photographs of Scott Joplin have survived so artists are able to paint credible portraits. Some of David Wilson’s other paintings prove he could have created a recognizable Joplin, but obviously he chose not to. In both our painting and the one at Sedalia’s Municipal Building he departed from the constraints of verisimilitude.
Other Sedalia public art works of Joplin are realistic. In 1977, Eric Bransby was paid $10,000 to paint three panels illustrating the town’s past (below left).
The entire chamber of a courtroom of the Pettis County courthouse is lined with pictures of local history by Barbara Campbell done in 2000. She of course included scenes evocative of Scott Joplin’s years in Sedalia, circa 1895-1901 (center).
Stanley James Heard painted a large mural of Joplin at the piano in 1994 on the wall of the Wilkins Music Co. 205 S. Ohio (below right).
(Click image to enlarge).
David wilson was my uncle he was a self taught artist. Indian art he painted with one horse hair .no school taught just was good at what he did I sent pics to the state fair of are family we go back to 1805 her in sedalia mo .my grandpa wilson his dad drove the big boy here in sedalia .I still have there bibles all the families of Wilson’s. We were a very religious family we were pennycost raised he david jr lived on 3rd street with my grandma and grandpa were I grandma gave birth to 5 children in the same house .she could tell you were she had each one in each room .I still drive by there just to remember I still remember playing around the trees at night there and the train going through the back yard waiting to eat tell the workers got home off the train such good lunches and dinners I have pics of them I sent up there to I hope one day they will share them I remember xmas here .and Easter grandma always had the biggest family that showed up to church that weekend my grandpa manns was a Mason and built the old stone bridge that dont stand no more his hand paints was in that my grandma and mom and family went to the schools here to .well If u have any questions fill free to write me or if you are family.