Many San Francisco Jazz musicians actively collected sheet music from the ragtime era, including the works of Scott Joplin, the King of Ragtime Composers, whose rag The Entertainer was a big hit in the 1970s as the theme from the motion picture The Sting.

When the Yerba Buena Jazz Band performed, they generally included at least one ragtime number, usually as a piano solo with rhythm section accompaniment, in each set. This practice has been carried on by virtually every San Francisco-style traditional jazz band up to the present day.