Tom Turpin’s Rosebud Was the Cradle of Ragtime

     

And there was distant music,

Simple and somehow sublime,

Giving the nation

A new syncopation-

The people called it Ragtime!

The son of a freed slave, Thomas Million Turpin learned the niceties of running a saloon from his father, “Honest John.”  Then Tom established the Rosebud Bar in St. Louis and made it the showplace for offbeat rhythms the world has come to know as “ragtime” music.

Tom Turpin, shown left, and his brother Charles both inherited their physiques and their spirit from their father.  John Turpin was a man of independence and courage whom slavery left unbowed.  Likely a house slave and literate, he often bragged that after Emancipation he never worked for anyone but himself.  Following the Civil War, known as “Honest John, he became politically active as a black leader in Savannah, Georgia, where a street is named for him and where Tom was born in 1873.

Later in that decade, John moved his wife, Lulu, and their children to Mississippi, arriving just as Reconstruction was ending and the state began passing “Jim Crow” laws that would discriminate strongly against people of color.  Apparently recognizing the deteriorating situation, Father Turpin uprooted his family once more and moved to more moderate Missouri, settling in St. Louis about 1880.  There he went into business as owner of the Silver Dollar Saloon at 425 South 12th St.  Noted for his ability to handle trouble in his establishment, Honest John never used his fists, preferring to grab miscreants by the wrists and strike them with his head — called by some the “Missouri State Head Butting Champion.”

When his sons Tom (known as “Million” to his family) and  Charles were old enough, John took them into the business, teaching them how to wait tables and tend bar.  The boys, however, developed “gold fever,” traveled West, and likely with money from their father bought a stake in the Big Onion Mine in Searchlight, Nevada, the town shown above.  When the mine proved to be a bust, they separately wandered back to St. Louis where Tom in an 1889 directory was recorded as a bartender in his father’s saloon.  

While working at the Silver Dollar, Tom began to entertain customers by playing the piano.  Largely self-taught since a boy, he had developed his own hard-thumping style that lent itself to the new syncopated rhythms that people were calling ragtime.  Turpin also was writing music in this idiom, in 1897 becoming not only the first published St. Louis ragtime composer, but the first black composer with a published rag.  Called the “Harlem Rag” it proved to be successful and was issued in several editions.  It gave the youth the money to strike out on his own.

In 1897, drawing on the years of experience working for his father, Tom opened Turpin’s Saloon at Nine Targee Street, apparently living above the establishment with a wife and baby, both of whom died during this period.  This twin tragedy may temporarily have unhinged him.  According to a report in the St. Louis Post Dispatch in late February 1898, Tom was arguing with a bar patron on “the relative merits of negro women." Inflamed by liquor, each drew a pistol and dared the other to shoot. Said the newspaper:  “It was a battle to the death and both of the black men exhibited nerve and bulldog tenacity...Then came a bullet that prostrated Keeler. It entered his left side and he sank to the floor.”  He later died at the hospital.  Tom was arrested but charges appear to have been dropped.  Turpin’s saloon closed.

According to the 1900 census, Tom now was living with brother Charles, two younger sisters, and Honest John, a widower because Lulu had died several years earlier.  That same year he opened the

Rosebud, sometimes called a cafe, sometimes a bar, at 2220-2222 Market Street near downtown St. Louis — destined to become a legend.  The saloon, shown here, soon became the gathering place for black pianists during the height of ragtime popularity, hosting such well-known composers as Scott Joplin, Joe Jordan and Louis Chauvin.

Turpin advertised his saloon relentlessly.  He touted it as “headquarters for colored professionals” and kept it open around the clock.  According to one observer:  “The Rosebud had something for almost everybody, including two bars, gambling facilities, a sportsmen's club, a wine room where the piano entertainment resided, and a gentleman's brothel upstairs.”  

He boasted about being a distributor of Applegate’s “Old Rosebud Whiskey.”   Profiled earlier in my post [June 2012]  Col. C. L. Applegate was described in his own ads as “Kentucky’s Leading Distiller.”  Old Rosebud was a flagship brand of Applegate’s distilling and rectifying organization, renowned for the colonel’s give-away items to saloons.  Turpin’s likely would have been well supplied with shot glasses and a fancy Rosebud decanter sitting behind the bar.

Tom Turpin himself often was the star entertainer.  As he got older, he carried three hundred pounds or more on his six-foot frame.  His large stomach made it difficult to see the keyboard so that he often played standing up in front of a raised piano, banging out ragtime tunes in an inimitable style.  

He also continued to write music.  After issuing “Bowery Buck” in 1901, Turpin composed “A Ragtime Nightmare,” a tune based on a work by a black playwright.  He followed that up with “Buffalo Rag.”  Although he composed a number of other ragtime pieces, these are the ones by which Tom Turpin is best remembered today.

In 1901, Tom married for the second time; his wife Willamete “Willie” Turpin.  The next several years were a boom time for the Rosebud Cafe as the year-long St. Louis International Exposition (1904/1905) brought hundreds of thousands to the city.  The saloon was constantly busy.  Ragtime music, now at the top of its popularity, poured out its doors.   With the end of the World’s Fair, many musicians moved on to Chicago and other destinations.  Interest in ragtime declined in St. Louis.  Jazz became the craze.

Beset by these realities, the Rosebud folded in 1906.  Far from being discouraged, however, Tom Turpin continue to run saloons, dance halls, brothels and even a theater in St. Louis, often with the help of brother Charles.  In 1910 he open a new establishment, the Eureka Club at 2208 Chestnut Street.  In 1916 he opened another saloon at 2333 Market Street that he called The Jazzland Cafe, another center for black musicians. During those years Turpin also was serving as a deputy constable for the African American community in St. Louis and regarded as politically potent.

Turpin died in August 1922 at the relatively young age of 50, the cause of death listed as “peritonitis” from a rupture of the abdominal wall.  He was buried at St. Peter’s Cemetery in the Normandy district of St. Louis County, a graveyard run by the United Church of Christ.  His gravestone is shown here as it lies in Section 27, Lot 16. 

The inscription calls him "The Father of St. Louis Ragtime."  One biographer has summed Tom’s life up this way:  “Turpin left a wide swath of happy memories for thousands of people in his considerable wake.”  As a fan of ragtime, to that observation I add “Amen.” 

Note:  A two -story replica of the Rosebud with bar and piano has been built next to the Scott Joplin House in St. Louis, now a state historic site.  Except during the winter closing of the entire complex, Turpin’s recreated drinking establishment is on the tour given at the Joplin site and can be rented for special events.

The Colonel and the Applegates of Louisville

Colonel C.L. Applegate, described in his own ads as “Kentucky’s Leading Distiller,” was a member of a Louisville family that was immersed in the whiskey trade.  Keeping the facts straight about the Colonel and his kinfolk, however, has eluded several authors.  I shall try briefly, however, to sort out one Applegate from another.

How the Colonel came by his rank, whether as a traditional “Kentucky” Colonel or as an officer in the Civil War is unclear.  Nor is, if the latter was true, was his allegiance evident.  Kentucky did not join the Confederacy but some residents held slave and its young men fought for both sides.  The family appears to have been longtime residents of the Blue Grass State and at least one or two early Applegate settlers were involved in the whiskey business.

The Colonel first forges onto the scene in 1876 when he and a brother, Edward, purchased land in the small town of Yelvington, Daviess County, Kentucky, from a pioneer Kentuckian named Sam Taylor Hawes.   The site was located on the road between Maceo and Yelvington. There about 1878 they constructed a distillery, pictured here. Information from insurance underwriter records compiled in 1892 suggest that the Applegate property included a two frame warehouses, both with metal or slate roofs. Warehouse "A" was 115 ft north of the still house, warehouse "B" was 107 ft south.  The property also included cattle and a barn. The owner was recorded as being C. L. Applegate & Co. 

The plant had a mashing capacity of nearly 250 bushels a day, marking it as a major whiskey-making plant. The company sold bourbon using the brand names “Rosebud” and “Beechwood,” shown here on shot glasses.  The distillery prospered until 1890 when the Applegate brothers were forced to shut it down for lack of a reliable water source. They continued to age whiskey in their Yelvington warehouses for another decade or more.  Those structures and their bourbon escaped a fire that raged through the town in the late 1900s, destroying most of the businesses.

Meanwhile back in Louisville, another Applegate,  William E. by name,  was running separate whiskey enterprise.  Born in 1851 according to passport records, William was a rectifier (blender) and distributor.  His firm appears in business directories in 1872 at several addresses but by 1908 it had settled on locations in or near Louisville’s “Whiskey Row.”   William called his firm Applegate and Sons.  The sons were William E. Jr., born in 1875, and Hamilton C., born in 1879.

The record does not establish the exact relationship between the Colonel and William Applegate although the evidence is strong that there were familial ties.  My speculation is that they were brothers and business allies.  Evidence is an Applegate & Sons trade card advertising the Colonel’s brands of bourbon.

Meanwhile the Colonel with brother Edward were planning a new facility for rectifying, bottling and wholesaling whiskey.   With financing from Henry Vogt of the Vogt Machine Company in Louisville, the Vogt-Applegate Co. was founded and began operation. The Colonel was a vice president and the company pitchman for the whiskey.  The business was located at 236 Fourth Street but eventually moved onto Whiskey Row at 102-104 E. Main Street, not far from Applegate & Sons.  An early 1900s photograph shows the location.  As Vogt-Applegate met with success, the company opened branch offices in Kansas City and Chattanooga.

The Colonel’s firm bought product from the state’s distillers, with a principal supplier being Tom Moore’s at Bardstown, Kentucky. Vogt-Applegate bottled and sold liquor largely by mail directly to consumers. The company featured a wide range of brands, including, "Blue and Gray", "Dr. Cannon's Celebrated Medical Gin",  "Old Ben Vogt", "R. F. V. Special", "Shaw's Malt",  "Stork Overproof", and "Vogt - Applegate Co.'s White Corn.”  “Old Beechwood” was its flagship label, advertised widely both regionally and nationally.  Among giveaways to favored customers was a plate-sized paperweight.  The arm seen on the glass weight, dated 1905, is that of the Colonel, whose face and figure were frequently in company ads.

The Colonel was also a spokesman for the whiskey rectifiers of Kentucky.  When the state’s governor in 1906 called a special session of the legislature to tax rectifiers 1 1/2 cents additionally per gallon he camped at the Lackman Hotel in Frankfort, the state capitol, to lobby and speak against the levy.  He charged that the tax would drive out the whiskey blenders and the state would lose $30 million annually and potentially leave thousands of workers unemployed.  Although the tax was reduced to 1 1/4 cents,  it was enacted by the legislature and later upheld in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, William E. Applegate was being recognized as a leading Louisville businessman and a horse racing enthusiast.  He became a member of the board of Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby.  In 1914, a horse owned by his son Hamilton won the Derby.  The name of the horse was “Rosebud,” after the Applegates’ whiskey.  While some authors have suggest that the horse was owned by the Colonel, racing historians more accurately credit Hamilton Applegate.  The latter trademarked “Old Rosebud” in 1907 and issued a back of the bar bottle depicting the horse.

Sam Cecil, a historian of Kentucky whiskey, claims that when the Vancleave & Hardesty distillery near Raywick in Marion County went bankrupt that it was bought by the Colonel. Federal warehouse records tell a different story.  They indicate that the individual responsible for whiskey transactions from those tax district warehouses was Hamilton Applegate, whose affiliation was with Applegate and Sons.   To compound the confusion,  William E. Junior appears to have had an interest in the Pepsin Whiskey Company, which appeared for a short time in Louisville directories.

My efforts to fix more firmly the relationships among the Applegates through death notices, obituaries and other records so far has been unsuccessful.  One thing that is clear is that the William Applegates had a family mansion on Louisville’s fashionable Third Street.   Built in the Richardsonian Romanesque style,  at various times from 1894 until 1938 it was owned or inhabited by William Senior, William Junior and Hamilton.   Shown here, the house, now owned by others, continues as a residence.

Note: Although this article may have straightened out one or two mistaken ideas about Colonel and the other Applegates,  it is far from definitive.  Many loose ends remain.  I am hopeful that Applegate descendants and others will see this post, provide me with more complete and accurate information, and at long last help me get the story straight.