Joplin, MO, an Entertainment Center? Huh?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

In this column about Billy Tipton, a female Jazz musician who lived as a man, Cecil says:

I lived in Joplin, Missouri for seven years, and I never learned anything to suggest that the city was ever anything more than an Ozark mining & manufacturing town. I heard talk around town that Scott Joplin visited the city a few times, as people were willing to pay to see the novelty of a guy named Joplin playing in a town named Joplin. (And FTR, the town was not named for Scott. It was named for a minister, Harris T. Joplin, who organized the first Methodist congregation in Southwest Missouri.)

Does anybody know any more about this? Was Joplin THE destination for with-it musicians back in The Day?

2

Apparently nobody knows the answer.

3

Me neither, but while Googling “billy tipton joplin” I turned up Cecil’s column word-for-word on this website. Is that legal?

http://www.shepherd-express.com/shepherd/19/24/news_and_views/straight_dope.html

4

Of course it is. Cecil’s column is syndicated, and runs as a regular feature in the online Shepherd Express.

5

Oh.

6

When I first saw the thread I did a Google search on Joplin, Missouri, and found various sites mentioning that it was a mining boomtown at some point. Perhaps at that point it was also an “entertainment center” but I didn’t find any confirmation of that fact.

7

OK, I’m from Joplin, & the truth is, Joplin isn’t what it used to be.
I don’t think Joplin was ever a huge entertainment center, & it may not even been as much one as OKC, but it did once have more of that sort of thing.
Of course, now it’s a bit like that British joke:
“What do young people do for fun around here?”
“Move to the city.”

(Is that a Monkees reference? Have I now done 2 Monkees refs in 2 days? How weird. Oh, maybe it’s from somewhere else…)