Euday Louis Bowman

The plaque says Bowman wrote his rag about Kansas City, but the Handbook of Texas thinks he most likely composed it in a Main Street shoeshine parlor in Fort Worth. What is certain is how little he earned. In 1916 he sold the copyright and royalties to a music company for at most a few hundred dollars. More than 120 other artists recorded the piece, beginning with Louis Armstrong's Hot Seven in 1927. In May 1949 Bowman made his only trip to New York to appeal for royalties, caught pneumonia after three days and died on May 26.

What the plaque says

Euday Louis Bowman (Nov. 9, 1886 - May 26, 1949) Fort Worth native Euday Bowman was a ragtime composer. His best known song was the classic "12th Street Rag," which he wrote about his experiences in Kansas City, Kansas. Copyrighted in 1914, it did not become popular until 1948 when it was recorded by Walter "Pee Wee" Hunt. Other songs written by Bowman, including "Fort Worth Blues," were never published. He died of pneumonia while on a business trip to New York City in 1949. Recorded - 1980

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tarrant County Courthouse — 1.2 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 1.4 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 1.7 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 2.2 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.

More markers nearby

• John Peter Smith_Oakwood Cemetery Founder — steps away
• General Thomas N. Waul, C.S.A. — steps away
• Governor Charles A. Culberson — steps away
• Oakwood Cemetery — steps away