Boone was born to an ex-slave named Rachel Boone in 1864 near a Union army camp in Missouri. Rachel claimed to be a descendant of Daniel Boone (at the least we believe she may have been owned by the Boone family) and took the name "Boone" as her own after she was freed during the Civil War. Boone's father is believed to have been a regimental bugler (and possibly white), but it is likely that we will never know for sure. His mother, still unmarried, settled with her baby in Warrensburg, Missouri. In a cruel twist of fate, at the age of six months, Boone fell gravely ill with a "brain fever" and an infection in his eyes. This might have been a form of meningitis, but the cure at the time was harsh and cruel. In an attempt to save the boy's life, his eyes were removed.

In spite of his acquired disability, Boone was a cheerful, outgoing, and creative youngster. He exhibited an insatiable appetite for music by the age of two or three. He began by beating out simple rhythms. Soon he was imitating the sounds of birds, and shortly afterwards learned to play the tin whistle and harmonica. Through the efforts of his mother, the townspeople raised money to send him to the St. Louis School for the Blind at age nine so that he might receive an education and acquire the means to support himself.

It was here that Boone fell in love with the piano and displayed an uncanny talent for immediately playing any piece he heard. He was proclaimed a musical genius and was quite happy for a time at the school. Unfortunately, a new superintendent came along who set Boone to making brooms, not music, and Boone began running away to listen to the music that was being played in the brothels of St. Louis. Boone was eventually discharged for his behaviour after two and a half years at the school.

Boone was now on his own at age 12 and moved around St. Louis earning what he could by playing the harmonica. Eventually, he made his way home on the train, paying for his ticket by playing and entertaining the passengers. However, Boone was not content to sit at home, and his continual wanderlust got him into trouble. He was kidnapped shortly thereafter by a professional gambler who dressed him as a girl and used and abused Boone's talents for his own personal gain. Boone was eventually rescued by his stepfather and some local ministers.

As a teenager Boone made the acquaintance of African-American businessman John Lange Jr., who took the young artist under his wing. In 1880 Boone's life changed permanently when Lange encouraged him to accept a challenge from another blind pianist, Tom Bethune, known as "Blind Tom." Tom was an "idiot savant" who had a great gift for playing the piano. At many concerts his manager would invite people from the audience to try to outplay him; Lange encouraged Boone to accept Tom's challenge.

We are told that the Opera House in Columbia, Missouri was packed that night, with black people sitting on one side, and white people on the other. Boone played and Tom repeated his performance note for note. Then Tom played, and Boone was able to repeat the same music, even though he had never heard it before. The crowd went wild, and Boone's career was officially launched with Lange as his manager, friend, and mentor.

Lange sent Boone to the Christian College in Columbia to further his musical skills and to be exposed to the works of European classical composers such as Beethoven, Liszt, and Chopin, as well as those of the American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk. The J.W. Boone Music Company was founded and Lange and Boone adopted the motto, "Merit, not sympathy, wins." As his career began to take off, Boone travelled with his manager, carting his own instrument about in a wagon. Throughout his career he would literally wear out 16 pianos. At the age of 16 he composed his signature piece about the Marshfield Tornado which killed over 100 people in 1880. Boone later stripped the gears on a piano roll machine while attempting to record this phenomenally difficult and programmatic piece that simulated the sounds of an actual tornado. Because of this, nothing of this remarkable piece survives.

Boone's concerts before segregated audiences were a mixed bag in which he would play classical or serious music for the first half of the evening. Then he would say, "Now, let's put the cookies on the lower shelf where everyone can reach them," and proceeded to play arrangements and variations of spirituals, camp meeting songs, plantation songs, and ragtime songs. He is credited with being the first concert pianist to give legitimacy to African-American music, as well as being the first composer to use what is now called a "boogie woogie bass."

He was gifted with a phenomenal memory and skills which are still unexplained to this day. He could call any person he had ever met by name, just from the sound of the person's voice, even after a period of 30 years. He could also tell the colour of a piece of cloth, the colour of a person's hair, or even the age of a child by merely touching them. He associated certain sounds with colours in the same manner as some late Romantic and Impressionistic composers.

Boone toured throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico and was also said to have toured the British Isles. Lange, who continued as Boone's manager throughout this period, reported that between 1880 and 1915 they travelled between nine and ten months a year, giving six concerts a week for­ a total of 8,650 concerts. Lange estimated that the distance travelled was approximately 20 miles per day or 216,000 miles, and that they slept in 8,250 beds. Lange died in 1916, leaving an immense void in Boone's life.

In 1922, five years before Boone's death, a white man named Wayne Allen discovered that people were taking advantage of Boone. A man had given Boone papers to sign, under the guise of regular business, which turned out to be cheques for large sums of money and deeds to much of Boone's property. Allen went to the man's office, levelled a pistol at his heart, and threatened to kill him if he didn't tear up the papers. After the papers were destroyed, Allen went back to Boone and asked him not to sign anything else unless he read it first.

Allen and Boone became fast friends, and Boone hired him as his manager. Allen booked over 1,700 concerts for Boone in the last five years of his life. When Boone fell ill shortly before his death, Allen cancelled 57 concerts in the state of Illinois alone. John William Boone performed his last concert on May 31, 1927. He died of a heart attack on October 4 and was buried in Columbia, but tragically, his grave remained unmarked until 1971.

Scott Joplin may continue his reign today as the "King" of ragtime, but it is becoming increasingly clear that John William Boone is the "Father" of ragtime.