Editing Joseph Lamb (composer) (section)

==Career==
Lamb dropped out of [[St. Jerome's College]] in 1904 to work for a dry goods company. He met Joplin in 1907 while purchasing the latest Joplin and Scott sheet music in the offices of [[John Stillwell Stark|John Stark & Son]]. Joplin was impressed with Lamb's compositions and recommended him to ragtime publisher John Stark. Stark published Lamb's music for the next decade, starting with "Sensation".

Lamb's twelve rags published by Stark from 1908 to 1919 can be divided into two groups. The "heavy" rags are incorporated with Joplin's melody–dominated style and Scott's expansive use of the keyboard registers. This style includes "Ethiopia Rag" (1909), "Excelsior Rag" (1909), "American Beauty Rag" (1913), "Nightingale Rag" (1915), and "The Top Liner Rag" (1916). The "light" rags with the [[cakewalk]] tradition show the narrow-range melodies inspired by Joplin. This style of rags includes "Champagne Rag" (1910), "Cleopatra Rag" (1915), "Reindeer: Ragtime Two Step" (1915), and "Bohemia Rag" (1919). "Contentment Rag" (1915) and "Patricia Rag" (1916) have characteristics of both "heavy" and "light" rags.

Lamb used sequence for development purposes. He emphasized the harmonic sonority of the diminished seventh with upper-neighbor [[appoggiatura]]. He surpassed ragtime's usual four-measure phrase structure.<ref>{{cite book|last=Hasse|first=John|title=Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music|publisher=Schirmer Books|year=1985|location=New York, N.Y.|pages=[https://archive.org/details/ragtimeitshistor00hass/page/245 245–246]|isbn=0-02-871650-7|url=https://archive.org/details/ragtimeitshistor00hass/page/245}}</ref>

{{Listen|type=music|filename=Lamb-Ragtime_Nightingale.ogg|title=Lamb, Nightingale Rag|description=Performed by Constantin Stephan}}

In 1911, Lamb married his first wife, Henrietta Schultz, and moved to Brooklyn, New York. He worked as an arranger for the [[J. Fred Helf]] Music Publishing Company and later, starting in April 1914, as an accountant for L. F. Dommerich & Company. They had one son, Joseph Jr., together,<ref name=":1" /> in 1915. Henrietta died of influenza in 1920 about the same time that popular music interest shifted from ragtime to [[jazz]]. Lamb stopped publishing his music, playing and composing only as a hobby. "Bohemia Rag" was published in 1919.

[[Jack Mills, Inc.]] hired Lamb to write four [[novelty piano]] solos, (being "Cinders", "Shooting the Works", "Chime In", and "Crimson Rambler") in the early 1920s, but these were unpublished and lost until the 2010s.<ref name=":0" />