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 Rag Rag" is still a favorite of ragtime pianists, and has been described as an "American institution... still in print and still popular". As the copyright has expired, the composition is in the public domain. It appears in the soundtracks of hundreds of films, cartoons, commercials, and video games. In 2004 Canadian radio listeners voted it the 39th greatest song of all time. In Joplin's will, he requested that "Maple Leaf Rag" be played at his funeral. When preparations were being made however, his wife did not allow it because she did not think it was a proper funeral song. She