The Dream (Jack The Bear, Pickett) "The Dream Rag", or the existing fragment of it, may be the earliest surviving piece in the ragtime genre. It was written by Jesse Pickett (although sometimes attributed to a contemporary Jack "the Bear" Wilson) and a young Eubie Blake learned it from Pickett at the Chicago World's Fair of 1894. (Ragging It: Getting Ragtime Into History by H. Loring White, and Dvorak to Duke Ellington: A Conductor Explains America's Music by Maurice Peress.)
