At fifteen, Sanford Brunson Campbell (1884-1952) became enchanted with the new sounds of ragtime and ran away from his rural Kansas home, hopping a train to Sedalia, Missouri, determined to take piano lessons from a black musician he had never met. Scott Joplin nicknamed his white protege "The Ragtime Kid." A composer and entertainer at the dawn of the ragtime era, "Brun" was a prime mover in the ragtime revival of the 1940s and helped establish Joplin's prominence as one of America's most innovative composers. Campbell's own legacy was tarnished by his inability to tell a straight story and...