The Entertainer is Scott Joplin's most famous piece, as well as being Ragtime’s most well-known composition. The Entertainer was written in 1902 in St. Louis, at the same time as Scott Joplin penned the less well-known A Breeze from Alabama. The Entertainer is these days most commonly associated with the 1973 motion picture "The Sting" starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman. Ironically Ragtime had fallen out of popularity during the 1930's, the time of the setting of the movie, so it would have been unlikely that The Entertainer would have been performed around that time. The use for The Entertainer in The Sting re-ignited world-wide interest in Ragtime and the music of Scott Joplin in particular, and his music is now as popular as ever.

It is probably fair to say that anyone who has ever learned the piano has played The Entertainer in some version or other.