Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy Bee Wilson and I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Fry. We talked about Scott Joplin this week and
Speaker 1: a very very long, long time. On the Shortlist episode,
Speaker 1: we mentioned we're going to have the Crash at Crush
Speaker 1: as an upcoming Saturday Classic. I can't remember if that's
Speaker 1: this upcoming Saturday or a subsequent one, but I always
Speaker 1: try to go re listen to the old episodes to
Speaker 1: make sure that we did not say something super wrong
Speaker 1: or something that like didn't age well or whatever, or
Speaker 1: like something that I remember we needed to correct anything
Speaker 1: like that. And I really would have thought that that
Speaker 1: episode was something we put out during the pandemic, and
Speaker 1: we did put out a playlist that included it during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, But no, it's from something like twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: and I just in my head it was something way
Speaker 1: more recently than that. But like I said in that episode,
Speaker 1: how much I was like conflicted about doing an episode
Speaker 1: on Scott Joplin because of really wanting to talk about him,
Speaker 1: but also feeling pretty heartbroken about the end of his
Speaker 1: life because it was at such a young age from
Speaker 1: an illness that there was no effective treatment for, and
Speaker 1: also just had so much stigma, so much stigma that
Speaker 1: for a long time, even organizations that were dedicated to,
Speaker 1: you know, continuing his memory and promoting his work and
Speaker 1: emphasizing his contributions to the development of ragtime just like
Speaker 1: didn't discuss it and instead would even say that he
Speaker 1: had died of heartbreak because he couldn't find a publisher
Speaker 1: for a tree menisia, and that probably did affect his
Speaker 1: mental health, but that was not the cause of his death.
Speaker 1: Something that I originally had a bunch of stuff about
Speaker 1: in the outline that I wound up taking out because
Speaker 1: it was not totally germane to what we were talking about.
Speaker 1: So we did mention that the house that he lived
Speaker 1: in the Saint Louis has been named a landmark. That
Speaker 1: house and its existence as a museum has like a
Speaker 1: whole long and contentious story because the people who did
Speaker 1: the work to save that house and to turn it
Speaker 1: in the museum into a museum were like the local
Speaker 1: black community. And then the thing happened, which I think
Speaker 1: happens a lot in these kinds of situations, which was
Speaker 1: that the people who then became in charge of like
Speaker 1: turning it into a museum were mostly white, and they
Speaker 1: didn't have those local connections, and there wasn't as much
Speaker 1: involvement of like the people who had done that work,
Speaker 1: And so the people who had tried to save the
Speaker 1: house were really anticipating that they were going to have
Speaker 1: a museum and a cultural center that was like specific
Speaker 1: to them and their history and their needs. And then
Speaker 1: when it first opened, it was way more devoted to
Speaker 1: like just sort of celebrating Scott Joplin, which is also good,
Speaker 1: but like wasn't what people were expecting or needed, and
Speaker 1: so that led to just some I read a whole
Speaker 1: article about it, just a long process of trying to
Speaker 1: sort of move this house in the museum closer to
Speaker 1: what the Latua More community led effort. And then in
Speaker 1: October of last year, somebody broke into it and vandalized
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff, and it seems from the
Speaker 1: news reporting like this was somebody who was like in
Speaker 1: a mental health crisis. I could not find more updated information,
Speaker 1: but I think based on the Missouri Department of Natural
Speaker 1: Resources website that it's still actually closed. I think it
Speaker 1: normally would have opened for the season by now, but
Speaker 1: it seems not to have. That's a pity. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the items that they have on display there are not
Speaker 1: items that Scott Joplin owned. The things that are about
Speaker 1: Ragtime are more things that are from that era. Most
Speaker 1: of that the structures that were places that he lived
Speaker 1: or places he would be closely associated with, like just
Speaker 1: don't they don't exist anymore. They've mostly been torn down
Speaker 1: or replaced something else, except for this one. I'm a
Speaker 1: little embarrassed to admit that because I was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one. To me, everyone's always known about Scott Choplin. Like,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that there was a whole period of
Speaker 1: like just silence regarding Yeah, I didn't really either. Like
Speaker 1: I said in the episode, my first exposure to Scott
Speaker 1: Joplin was the Sting and the score to the Sting.
Speaker 1: That in fact was one of the things that made
Speaker 1: me want to take piano lessons, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: learned to play the Entertainer, and everybody played the Entertainer. Yes,
Speaker 1: I had a piano recital of the Entertainer one year
Speaker 1: of the part that I had learned to play. To
Speaker 1: the beginning part a simplified version because I was I
Speaker 1: don't remember how long I had been taking piano lessons,
Speaker 1: but the full thing, with all of the notes was
Speaker 1: beyond me at that point. So there's there's a couple
Speaker 1: of things. One is I would call a lot of
Speaker 1: the arrangement of Ragtime in general, A lot of it
Speaker 1: is Scott Joplin's music. So a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of just Scott Joplin's music. Specifically, a lot of it
Speaker 1: in that movie is more mad cap than is really written. Right,
Speaker 1: It's a lot faster, there's a lot more instrumentation in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases. And then also initially there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people that did not realize that it
Speaker 1: was an arrangement that Marvin Hamless had done. And there
Speaker 1: were people in the seventies he thought that Marvin family
Speaker 1: Sho had written all the music himself. Scott Joplin is credited,
Speaker 1: but not till the end of the movie. I think. Also,
Speaker 1: my mom just a big fan of Robert Redford and
Speaker 1: Paul Newman. So hello, yeah, so for sure movie to
Speaker 1: be watching at our house. I probably watched it younger
Speaker 1: than a person actually should really do that. On the
Speaker 1: Scovill scale of like handsome men in a movie that
Speaker 1: are fun to watch. That's like a seven twenty two. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're both so charming and so engaging and have great
Speaker 1: chemistry together. There's no that's a great movie. When people
Speaker 1: talk about the first album they ever bought, the first
Speaker 1: albums I ever bought in terms of like full length
Speaker 1: albums were the soundtrack to The Sting and the original
Speaker 1: cast recording of the movie Annie. Oh No, that was
Speaker 1: not where I was. The first full album I ever
Speaker 1: bought was Pat Benatar. Okay, I have no regrets, still
Speaker 1: love her to this day. Amazing. It may surprise no
Speaker 1: one that I continued to have hang ups about whether
Speaker 1: people will judge the music that I'm listening to because
Speaker 1: the knowledge that my first purchases of albums as a
Speaker 1: child were The Sting and the original cast recording of Annie,
Speaker 1: my classmates thought that was absurd. I think they were
Speaker 1: mean children. So if you were in third grade with me,
Speaker 1: I think you owe me an apology. I mean, those
Speaker 1: were not the first records I had, sure, but that
Speaker 1: was the first record that, like, I purchased with my
Speaker 1: own dollars. Okay, yeah, yeah, I think I bought these
Speaker 1: with my allowance. Yeah. I had been gifted a record
Speaker 1: player at Christmas one year. My parents had selected an
Speaker 1: assortment of things. There was some Anne Murray in there.
Speaker 1: There was some Crystal Gale remember the time distinctly and
Speaker 1: was not mine, but I essentially stole it from my
Speaker 1: father's collection. Was a Peanuts album that was like some
Speaker 1: of the adorable music that you hear on Peanuts cartoons,
Speaker 1: but also like interludes of the dialogue, so it's like
Speaker 1: an entertainment. It wasn't a music album. It was like
Speaker 1: an entertainment, as though you were watching a Peanuts television special,
Speaker 1: but it was just audio. Oh yeah, see, yeah, that
Speaker 1: also is not cool. But I sure loved it the most.
Speaker 1: I like a lot of things that aren't cool, and
Speaker 1: I'm fine with it now. I think Scott Joplin's very cool. Though.
Speaker 1: Do you know did it ever come up in your research? Why?
Speaker 1: In that nineteen thirty six I'm pulling this out of
Speaker 1: my memory book, he was listed as white. I think
Speaker 1: that was just a mistake, like an assumption on the
Speaker 1: writer's part. Yeah, Like I I don't know what could
Speaker 1: have caused that assumption, and I did not go into it.
Speaker 1: Like I didn't go looking for information about it. It
Speaker 1: was more that, like I kept seeing it referenced, and
Speaker 1: then I went and looked up the original book to
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, what what did he actually say here
Speaker 1: when he assumed that Scott Joplin was white? And it's
Speaker 1: possible that his work was so well known at the
Speaker 1: time that there was an assumption that, like a black
Speaker 1: musician could not have gotten that right same amount, Like
Speaker 1: there were absolutely black We've talked about this, there were,
Speaker 1: there were successful black musicians, but like the scale of
Speaker 1: some of his musical success, maybe there was just an
Speaker 1: assumption that, like the times would not have allowed right,
Speaker 1: a black musician to reach that same amount of prominence.
Speaker 1: I don't really know though, But like Alan Locke is
Speaker 1: sometimes called like the the father of Black history, I
Speaker 1: don't love like the mother of the father of kind
Speaker 1: of things, But like so much of his writing was
Speaker 1: about tracing black people's contributions to things that they had
Speaker 1: been historically written out of that it's a surprising error
Speaker 1: to have their Yeah, I cannot remember if one of
Speaker 1: Alan Locke's works is also where where it was originally.
Speaker 1: People started to think that Deborah Sampson might have been black.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't remember. I need to go look that up. Now.
Speaker 1: This is why having extemporaneous conversations on the show, it
Speaker 1: can't be tricky because we don't necessarily remember anything from
Speaker 1: previous conversations. We talked about William Avakham this week. So
Speaker 1: much drama. Yes, I certainly had no idea that there
Speaker 1: was telling the pope he was a heretic and was
Speaker 1: not recognizing and was not being recognized as pope. Flipping
Speaker 1: a table and then running to pizza. Yeah, I'm out,
Speaker 1: that's a move. I found a moment of frustration in
Speaker 1: researching this episode, which is that at you know, this
Speaker 1: time and many times throughout history, the Catholic Church, in
Speaker 1: the papacy has its tendrils in so many things going
Speaker 1: on throughout Europe in particular, Yes, that it becomes very
Speaker 1: hard to pluck things out and be like no, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to focus on this lane only, and it's like, wait,
Speaker 1: this car of information is swerving over and it's kind
Speaker 1: of Germane but I don't know, like I mean where
Speaker 1: you have to got to stop and make sure everybody
Speaker 1: understands why we're an Avignon yeah, discuss why Louis the
Speaker 1: Fourth hates him. I was thinking as we were recording
Speaker 1: that it feels like it's been a while since we've
Speaker 1: had an episode that really touched on how inextricable the
Speaker 1: church was from so much of everyday life in Europe
Speaker 1: for a big swath of time. Right, It's not something
Speaker 1: that we've never talked about, but it just it sort
Speaker 1: of seems like it's been a bit since we have
Speaker 1: been a minute I've been in like that particular chunk
Speaker 1: of history really and just made me think of it, like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah. I mean, it's in a time where
Speaker 1: theoretically people support the separation of church and state in many,
Speaker 1: not all, but many countries. It is interesting to think about. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: but what if we had an election, we elected president,
Speaker 1: and then a religious figure had to go yeah he's cool,
Speaker 1: before we could actually have an inauguration. That would be
Speaker 1: a strange and very different world. I also do love
Speaker 1: that Akham probably would not have loved Akham's razor. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: that's not quite what I was getting at you guys, right.
Speaker 1: Also like that there's no there's no concept where I
Speaker 1: put forth here's a thing. It's more like one of
Speaker 1: many approaches, right right. I liked the whole conversation about
Speaker 1: what do we mean exactly when we say poor clothes? Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I mean this is the thing, right, Like, here's the thing, okay,
Speaker 1: Pope John the twenty second, huge, huge problem in a
Speaker 1: variety of ways, And I understand where he would get
Speaker 1: to the point of like, no, guys, you gotta own
Speaker 1: it if you're gonna use it, because otherwise we get
Speaker 1: into a legal tangle over here. I mean it feels
Speaker 1: I'm I'm parsing it in a way that feels a
Speaker 1: little like a boardroom discussion of like how are we
Speaker 1: going to handle this closed thing? But I understand where
Speaker 1: he would get to that point and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: your local folks have to work this out because like
Speaker 1: how you dress an avignon, because it's going to be
Speaker 1: different than how somebody dresses in name or some other place.
Speaker 1: So you know, we got to kind of stabilize to
Speaker 1: the region. But then, of course that would cause the
Speaker 1: problems of this isn't being applied, you know, unilaterally in fairness.
Speaker 1: I see where it got to be a big problem,
Speaker 1: even though it seems like it's just to talk about clothes.
Speaker 1: It's also a discussion of like treatment of different people
Speaker 1: within the same theoretical order. Right, they needed a Franciscan's union,
Speaker 1: which is kind of what they were trying to do,
Speaker 1: right to go. No, No, we need to make a
Speaker 1: solid set of rules that we all agree upon. Harder
Speaker 1: to do them. Yeah, I think most of us today,
Speaker 1: whether you are religious or not, we associate the Catholic
Speaker 1: Church and the papacy with just opulence. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: been to the Vatican. It's spectacular, and part of that
Speaker 1: like spectacular presentation is like symbolizing to the masses like no,
Speaker 1: no God is in the mix here. That is why
Speaker 1: everything here is beautiful. And it's like a way to
Speaker 1: convey that. And so the idea that the same people
Speaker 1: who would be like more gold in lay please, would
Speaker 1: be like, I don't really care if your robes are
Speaker 1: dirty or not. There's a whole interesting thing there for
Speaker 1: me to like ask them to discuss what poor means
Speaker 1: because he probably didn't know. Yeah, now I want to
Speaker 1: go back to the Vatican really bad. The Vatican museums
Speaker 1: are spectacular. There's no other way to describe them. We
Speaker 1: only saw like a like a little bit really like
Speaker 1: less than six percent probably, yeah, And I still was like, going,
Speaker 1: I didn't I think I said on the show before,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize like how vast their art collection was,
Speaker 1: how much modern art was in the collection. We got
Speaker 1: to that Mark Chagall room and I was like, you guys,
Speaker 1: go ahead, I'm gonna hang out here for a minute.
Speaker 1: I got some stuff to look at. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of spectacular art in that building. Yeah, those buildings plural.
Speaker 1: I think that was in my terrible jet lag portion
Speaker 1: of the trip, and so like it's everything about it
Speaker 1: just has this haze of like just very disoriented fatigue,
Speaker 1: which is why when we go to Barcelona this November,
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna remember the thing I already know
Speaker 1: about myself, which is that I need to show up
Speaker 1: at least the day early and have a little adjustment time.
Speaker 1: I kind of forgot that I needed to do that
Speaker 1: when we went to Italy because we hadn't traveled at
Speaker 1: all since before the pandemic started, and I had just
Speaker 1: kind I was so focused on getting there, getting home,
Speaker 1: nobody getting COVID. Like I was so focused on that
Speaker 1: that like I just sort of forgot anything else useful
Speaker 1: about traveling, right. I mean the trick there, right is
Speaker 1: that for a lot of airlines, the way they run
Speaker 1: trips from North America to Europe is like you kind
Speaker 1: of get on an evening flight and then with the
Speaker 1: time change, you land there in the morning. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: for me, I'm like, cool, we're here and I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna start my day and it doesn't matter that I
Speaker 1: haven't slept and I'm a little bit crazy. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna gun it. I'm gonna push through and then I
Speaker 1: will collapse tonight and get a great sleep. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't work for everybody. For me personally, it was complicated
Speaker 1: by the fact that we had a plane change in Dublin,
Speaker 1: and so it was like by the time I was
Speaker 1: sleepy enough to sleep a little bit on the plane,
Speaker 1: we were landing in Dublin, get up, and then the
Speaker 1: Dublin to Rome flight was short enough that it was
Speaker 1: like once you're settled in, you're landing again. So it
Speaker 1: was like, I know, this is an absurd problem to
Speaker 1: talk about. We're talking about having the ability to do
Speaker 1: international travel and being exhausted by it. But the whole
Speaker 1: point is I don't remember much of the Vatican museum
Speaker 1: because there was just a big cloud of not knowing
Speaker 1: where I was or when sleep would happen. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like I was just screeching with glee on the
Speaker 1: inside a lot because I was like, there's so much
Speaker 1: there's so much art and it's right there, and it's amazing.
Speaker 1: I think we mentioned before that I witnessed somebody just
Speaker 1: grazing his hand along all of the hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of years old tapestries and I almost like lost my mind,
Speaker 1: like I had to like not tackle him, right, because
Speaker 1: that's the thing. There's a lot of amazing art, and
Speaker 1: it's not the same way like I think of when
Speaker 1: you go to a museum like the Met or the Louver.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of docents around like don't touch that,
Speaker 1: don't touch that, don't touch that. There are so many
Speaker 1: huge groups going through the Vatican museums, and a lot
Speaker 1: of that stuff is like just in a hallway that
Speaker 1: you're walking through. It's not behind glass, it's not behind
Speaker 1: even a rope in many cases, and so there are
Speaker 1: so many unfortunate temptations to just want to touch things.
Speaker 1: And I get the temptation, but I was horrified and
Speaker 1: freaked out seat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was losing my mind.
Speaker 1: So don't do that. If you go, and if you
Speaker 1: get a chance to go, I highly recommend it. I
Speaker 1: would like to go back and just spend several days
Speaker 1: in a row going through the Vatican museums because it's
Speaker 1: mind blowingly huge. Yeah yeah, and maybe next time I
Speaker 1: will look for things related to Pope John the twenty
Speaker 1: second and see what they're about. I'd be like, m
Speaker 1: how much gold? You don't understand what poverty is, do you?
Speaker 1: But let's see, we'll see. If this is your weekend
Speaker 1: coming up, we hope that you get to maybe go
Speaker 1: to a museum and not touch things unless you're supposed to.
Speaker 1: Unless it's a police touch me installation. Those happen, But
Speaker 1: if that's not your thing, we hope whatever it is
Speaker 1: that you do this weekend, even if it's just sitting
Speaker 1: on the couch listen, sometimes that's the best way to
Speaker 1: spend their time, whatever you do, that it's RESTful and enjoyable,
Speaker 1: and that you get some restoration and delight out of it.
Speaker 1: If you don't have time off this weekend, then you're
Speaker 1: working or have other obligations. I hope that whatever you
Speaker 1: are doing you still find a little bit of fun
Speaker 1: in it. Still don't touch the art though. We will
Speaker 1: be right back here tomorrow with a classic, and on
Speaker 1: Monday we will have another brand new episode. Stuff You
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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