Title: Scott Joplin
Content:  In the late 1880s, having performed at various local events as a teenager, Joplin gave up his job as a railroad laborer and left Texarkana to become a traveling musician. Little is known about his movements at this time, although he is recorded in Texarkana in July 1891 as a member of the Texarkana Minstrels, who were raising money for a monument to Jefferson Davis, president of the former Confederate States of America. However, Joplin soon learned that there were few opportunities for Black pianists. Churches and brothels were among the few options for steady work. Joplin played pre-ragtime "jig-piano" in various red-light districts throughout the mid-South, and some claim he was in Sedalia and St. Louis, Missouri, during this time. In 1893, while in Chicago for the World's Fair, 
Title: Scott Joplin
Content:  He performed in the Queen City Cornet Band and his own six-piece dance orchestra. A tour with his own singing group, the Texas Medley Quartet, gave him his first opportunity to publish his own compositions, and it is known that he went to Syracuse, New York, and Texas. Two businessmen from New York published Joplin's first two works, the songs "Please Say You Will" and "A Picture of Her Face", in 1895. Joplin's visit to Temple, Texas, enabled him to have three pieces published there in 1896, including the "Great Crush Collision March", which commemorated a planned train crash on the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad 
Title: Scott Joplin
Content:  "The Easy Winners" and "Elite Syncopations". During his time in St. Louis, Joplin collaborated with Scott Hayden in the composition of four rags. It was in St. Louis that Joplin produced some of his best-known works, including "The Entertainer", "March Majestic", and the short theatrical work "The Ragtime Dance". By 1903, the Joplins had moved to a 13-room house, renting some of the rooms to lodgers, who included pianist-composers Arthur Marshall and Scott Hayden. Joplin did not work as a pianist in the saloons in St Louis, which was usually a major source of income for musicians, as he was "probably outclassed 
Title: Scott Joplin
Content:  he dedicated to the memory of Joplin. Although he was penniless and disappointed at the end of his life, Joplin set the standard for ragtime compositions and played a key role in the development of ragtime music. And as a pioneer composer and performer, he helped pave the way for young Black artists to reach American audiences of all races. After his death, jazz historian Floyd Levin noted: "Those few who realized his greatness bowed their heads in sorrow. This was the passing of the king of all ragtime writers, the man who gave America a genuine native music."
Title: Scott Joplin
Content:  Scott Joplin (c. November 24, 1868 – April 1, 1917) was an African-American composer and pianist. Joplin is also known as the "King of Ragtime" because of the fame achieved for his ragtime compositions, music that was born out of the African-American community. During his brief career, he wrote over 100 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first and most popular pieces, the "Maple Leaf Rag", became ragtime's first and most influential hit, and has been recognized as the archetypal rag. Joplin grew up in a musical family of railway laborers in Texarkana, Arkansas, and developed his own musical knowledge with the help of local teachers. While in Texarkana, Texas, he formed a vocal quartet 
Title: List of compositions by Scott Joplin
Content:  The following is a complete list of musical compositions by Scott Joplin (c. 1867 – April 1, 1917). Scott Joplin was born in Arkansas in around 1867, just outside Texarkana, and was a street performer before settling in Sedalia, Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri, and finally New York City where he died in 1917. He was an American composer and pianist, who achieved fame for his ragtime compositions, and was dubbed "The King of Ragtime." During his career, Joplin wrote over 40 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first pieces, the "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899), has been recognized as the archetypal 
Title: Scott Joplin
Content:   In 1907, Joplin moved to New York City, which he believed was the best place to find a producer for a new opera. After his move to New York, Joplin met Lottie Stokes, whom he married in 1909. In 1911, unable to find a publisher, Joplin undertook the financial burden of publishing Treemonisha himself in piano-vocal format. In 1915, as a last-ditch effort to see it performed, he invited a small audience to hear it at a rehearsal hall in Harlem. Poorly staged and with only Joplin on piano accompaniment, it was "a miserable failure" to a public not ready for "crude" Black musical forms—so different from the European grand opera of that time. The audience, including potential backers, was indifferent and walked out. Scott 
Title: Scott Joplin
Content:  taught mandolin and guitar. During the late 1880s, he left his job as a railroad laborer and traveled the American South as an itinerant musician. He went to Chicago for the World's Fair of 1893, which played a major part in making ragtime a national craze by 1897. Joplin moved to Sedalia, Missouri, in 1894 and earned a living as a piano teacher. There he taught future ragtime composers Arthur Marshall, Scott Hayden and Brun Campbell. He began publishing music in 1895, and publication of his "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1899 brought him fame. This piece had a profound influence on writers of ragtime. It also brought Joplin a steady income for life, though he did not reach this level of 
Title: Scott Joplin
Content:  September 15 that he may have witnessed. The march was described by one of Joplin's biographers as a "special... early essay in ragtime." While in Sedalia, Joplin taught piano to students who included future ragtime composers Arthur Marshall, Brun Campbell and Scott Hayden. Joplin enrolled at the George R. Smith College, where he apparently studied "advanced harmony and composition." The college's records were destroyed in a fire in 1925, and biographer Edward A. Berlin notes that it was unlikely that a small college for African-Americans would be able to provide such a course. Although there were hundreds of rags in print by the 
Title: Scott Joplin (painting)
Content:  Scott Joplin is a painting by Ellen Banks. It is in the collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts in the United States. The painting comprises acrylic paint on canvas. It is part of a series of paintings by Banks that depicts abstract musical scores from notable musicians. Scott Joplin depicts a piano score from Scott Joplin. The painting was completed by Banks in 1982 and purchased by the Addison Gallery in 1983. It has been exhibited twice at the Addison Gallery, in 1983 and 1988.

Question: what did scott joplin play?
Answer: Piano.