Brun Campbell’s Sedalia Letters Found

Recently, letters written between 1945 and 1951 by S. Brunson Campbell (Scott Joplin’s white pupil in Sedalia in the late 1890s) were made public for the first time. The letters were initially sent to Sedalia newspaper editors. This month I am letting Charles Hanna of Edina, Minnesota, blow the dust from these long-archived letters. But before I describe his 70-year old cache, let me explain how this all came about and then the importance of the letters. Ever since my interest turned to ragtime in the early 1970s I have been reading about how Brun Campbell lobbied Sedalia to do something in recognition of Scott Joplin and the city’s role as the Cradle of Ragtime. Several of Campbell’s letters were printed in the Sedalia newspapers and ultimately his urging led to the famous 1951 Memorial Concert by the Sedalia Men’s Choral Club and the Memorial plaque placed in the old Lincoln High School Building. I was specifically intrigued by Campbell’s insistence that Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” was not named for the Sedalia club but for the name of a waltz by that title published by A.W. Perry and Son in 1897. (However, Campbell emphasized that the Maple Leaf Club is where Joplin performed and honed his compositional skills.) Though none of the Joplin biographers or ragtime historians I sincerely respect gave much if any credibility to his story, I still can’t quite let go