Throughout history, few musical crazes have hit with such impact, had such a heyday and lingered so hauntingly as ragtime. Ragtime arrived on the upswing of Tin Pan Alley, when the popularity of pianos in the home was reaching its peak and an endless stream of sheet music flowed out to meet the demand. In the early 1900s no name was more prominent om those sheet-music covers and no one wrote ragtime music more brilliantly than Scott Joplin.