In 1893, at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a pianist named Jesse Pickett reportedly played a rag older than any published one — "the only ragtime strain known from that pre-publication time," by one account. Almost everything else about him is secondhand: reputedly from Philadelphia, later spotted in Baltimore's bordellos and New York's rent parties, remembered as a gambler and a pimp as often as a composer. No birth year, death year, photograph, or recording survives. His signature tune, built on a habanera-derived left-hand rhythm, circulated under several names, and even its authorship is disputed — pianist James P. Johnson credited a rival known as Jack the Bear instead. What's left is one witness's memory: Eubie Blake, who learned the piece from Pickett and decades later insisted, "People think I wrote the Dream Rag" — his denial the closest thing to a signature Pickett left behind.