Perhaps the most important ragtime composition in history, Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag is credited with innovating the genre. Named for the club where he often played, Maple Leaf Rag sold hundreds of thousands of copies in its first decade of publication, and became the template for ragtime music. According to biographer Peter Gammond, Joplin proclaimed, "One day the Maple Leaf will make me King of Ragtime Composers."