Maple Leaf Rag about the sales of the "Maple Leaf Rag", for example that 1 million copies of the sheet music were sold in the composer's lifetime, making Scott Joplin the first musician to sell 1 million copies of a piece of instrumental music. Joplin's first biographer Rudi Blesh wrote that during its first six months the piece sold 75,000 copies, and became "the first great instrumental sheet music hit in America". However, research by Joplin's later biographer Edward A. Berlin demonstrated that this was not the case; the initial print-run of 400 took one year to sell, and under the terms of
Maple Leaf Bar in the bar's patio area. The Maple Leaf hosts poetry readings and fashion shows. The Krewe of OAK starts and ends its parades at the Maple Leaf, where it holds its Krewe Ball. The Maple Leaf is thinly disguised in the Ellen Gilchrist short story "The Raintree Street Bar and Washerteria" (the bar used to contain a laundromat). Poems about it can be found in "Mirror Wars" and "Shards" by Nancy Harris, "Body and Soul" and "Rhythm & Booze" by Julie Kane; "The Everette Maddox Song Book", "Bar Scotch", and "American Waste" by Everette Maddox; and in the anthologies "The