thumb|Ben Harney, from cover of the 1896 sheet music release of Mister Johnson Turn Me Loose, published by M. Witmark & Sons
Benjamin Robertson Harney (March 6, 1872 – March 2, 1938) was an American songwriter, entertainer, and pioneer of ragtime music. His 1895 composition "You've Been a Good Old Wagon but You Done Broke Down" is known as the second ragtime composition to be published and the first ragtime hit to reach the mainstream. The first Ragtime composition published was La Pas Ma La written by Ernest Hogan in 1895. The copyright for "You've Been a Good Old Wagon but You Done Broke Down" was registered in January 1895 (Greenup Music Co.)source, a few months prior to La Pas Ma La (September 1895, J. R. Bell)source, suggesting (contrary to popular belief) it was in fact the first of the two. During the early years of Harney's career, he falsely promoted himself as being the inventor of ragtime and never acknowledged the genre's black origin. Many contemporary musicians criticized him for it. Although ragtime is now probably more associated with Scott Joplin, in 1924 The New York Times wrote that Ben Harney "Probably did more to popularize ragtime than any other person." Time magazine called him "Ragtime's Father" in 1938.
Life and career
thumb|The cover of the sheet music for Mister Johnson Turn Me Loose (1896)
Harney is generally said to have been born in Louisville, Kentucky. Although some sources put his birthplace as Nashville, Tennessee, according to his father's military records he was born in Memphis, Tennessee. In the past some have claimed that Harney was African-American and early in his career he is said to have played with African-American theater troupes. But, W.C. Handy referred to him as "white". All photographic and contemporary accounts show that Harney was light skinned with red hair. He married and lived in white society and always represented himself as White. Furthermore, his well-documented family background conclusively proves his ethnicity. Harney was the son of Benjamin Mills Harney, a veteran of both the Mexican–American War and the Civil War, and his second wife Margaret Wellington Draffin, daughter of a prominent Kentucky lawyer. His grandfather was John Hopkins Harney, the first mathematics professor at Indiana University and author of the first algebra textbook ever published in the United States. His uncle William Wallace Harney was a renowned journalist and author. He counted two prominent U.S. generals as distant cousins: Lew Wallace and William Selby Harney.
Harney's tunes "You've Been a Good Old Wagon but You Done Broke Down", "Mister Johnson, Turn Me Loose", and "Cake Walk In The Sky" were big hits in the late 1890s.