John William Blind Boone, Ragtime Before Ragtime

He was born in Miami, Missouri, in May of eighteen sixty-four, the son of a Black Union Army bugler and a cook named Rachel. An infection at seven months of age cost him both eyes. His mother raised him in Warrensburg, Missouri, where he learned to play the piano, and Columbia is where he would eventually build a career that made him one of the most celebrated performers in the American Midwest.

John William Boone, known everywhere as Blind Boone, was a musical prodigy whose repertoire crossed every boundary the audiences of his era tried to maintain. He played classical compositions, popular songs, and the syncopated folk material of Black Missouri that musicologists now recognize as a forerunner of ragtime, emerging years before Scott Joplin published the Maple Leaf Rag in eighteen ninety-nine. Boone was performing material with ragtime characteristics in the eighteen eighties.

His manager, John Lange Jr., a businessman from Columbia, built a touring circuit that sustained Boone's career for decades. Together they presented concerts across Missouri, the wider Midwest, and eventually much of the country.

Boone's performances were known for their astonishing range: he could hear a piece of music once and reproduce it, then improvise variations that left audiences stunned. Boone made his home in Columbia as an adult, and he died in nineteen twenty-seven in Warrensburg. He bought a house here.

He played benefit concerts for Black churches and community organizations. He is buried in Columbia Cemetery. A historic marker at the site of his home on Eighth Street acknowledges his life, and a pavilion in Douglass Park, the historic center of Columbia's Black community, bears his name.