Joseph F. Lamb led a unique musical life, became recognized as one of the greatest ragtime composers, and left a rich legacy. His earliest and most enduring musical motivation was his exciting discovery that the notes he scrawled on paper could adequately represent his musical concepts. From the moment his sisters played the round little black dots of his childhood attempts at composition through his final years and last piano rags, Lamb remained captivated by the printed score. He did not conceive of a dichotomy between musical concepts and their notation; improvisation seemed baffling, awkward, redundant. In this respect Lamb realized Scott Joplin's vision of ragtime as a notated art form more thoroughly than did Joplin himself. Joplin assimilated ragtime as an itinerant musician, finally committing the music to paper with his Original Rags and Maple Leaf Rag of 1899. In contrast, Lamb's fundamental exposure to music, including ragtime, came from playing and studying sheet music, a piano primer, and musical excerpts from such magazines as The Etude.

American Beauty Rag (1913) Bird Brain Rag (1959) Bohemia Rag (1919) Champagne Rag (1910) Cleopatra Rag (1915) Contentment Rag (1915) Cottontail Rag (1959) Excelsior Rag (1909) Nightingale Rag (1915) Patricia Rag (1916) Reindeer Rag (1915) Sensation - A Rag (1908) Top Liner Rag (1916)