I was looking at a picture of the Canadian flag, which has a large, red maple leaf on it. At the same time, I was listening to my favorite Dixieland band, Tuba Skinny, who happened to be playing Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag.
This unplanned juxtaposition gave me ideas for three columns: how to make maple syrup, the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, and how Scott Joplin’s famous rag came to be published.
I tried writing a column about making maple syrup, but it didn’t pan out (sorry).
Any description of the process was based not on my experience, but on internet research. Heck, I didn’t even know I had a sugar maple on my property until my brother-in-law asked if he could tap it. Anything I wrote would, no doubt, perplex or even offend those who, like my brother-in-law, know what they are doing. So it boils down (sorry) to this: if you want maple syrup instructions, ask around. You probably have a relative or neighbor who could help.
And if you want a chemical explanation of sucrose, glucose, and fructose and the roles these sugars play or don’t play in maple syrup, I’m sure Wikipedia would be happy to assist you.
As far as the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist goes, it was a sticky situation (I’m going to stop now). Here is a brief recap: in 2011, thieves broke into a warehouse in Quebec and stole 528,000 gallons of maple syrup valued at around 18 million dollars.
The ringleader was arrested in 2012, sentenced to eight years in prison, and fined nine million dollars. If he didn’t pay the fine, he would have to spend an additional 14 years in prison. In 2017, an appeals court ruled that the fine was excessive and lowered it to one million. However, in 2022, the Supreme Court of Canada reversed that decision and reinstated the original fine.
So that leaves Scott Joplin’s famous tune, Maple Leaf Rag, written in 1899.
The story goes that Joplin walked into the office of music publisher John Stark in Sedalia, Missouri, and presented the song. Stark rejected it, saying it was too difficult to play. Joplin said that even a child could play it. He returned with a teenage boy who performed the rag perfectly, so Stark offered Joplin a contract. What the publisher didn’t know was that Joplin had coached the boy on how to play the song.
Over the years, ragtime’s popularity waned and then all but disappeared from the public’s mind, having been supplanted by jazz, followed by rock-n-roll.
In 1970, musicologist Joshua Rifkin recorded an album called Scott Joplin: Piano Rags. To Rifkin’s amazement, the album became a huge hit, selling millions of copies. And it inspired Marvin Hamlisch to create a Joplin-themed soundtrack for the 1973 movie, The Sting.
Maple Leaf Rag is usually played on piano, but my favorite version is by Tuba Skinny. Watch the YouTube video from 2015, performed on a street in the French Quarter. It’s sweet.
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