Eubie Blake (1883-1983) has been considered one of America's musical treasures. During his lifetime, he remained active through several distinguished careers as a noted stride and ragtime pianist and composer of rags, as a successful vaudevillian performer, and as a composer and songwriter. Though probably best known as a ragtime artist, Blake was one of very few successful African American composers of Broadway musicals in the first half of the twentieth century. Most significant among such compositions was the history - making hit musical, "Shuffle Along".
James Hubert "Eubie" Blake was born on February 7, 1883, in Baltimore, Maryland. John Sumner Blake, Eubie's father, a former slave, was a Civil War veteran and a stevedore. Eubie's mother, Emily Johnston Blake, also a former slave, was a laundress. The youngest of 11 children, Blake was the only one of his brothers and sisters to survive infancy. The Blake home, recalled Blake in Al Rose's Eubie Blake, was a very strict one. Blake's mother was a devoutly religious woman who gave much of her time to her church, and who tolerated absolutely no inappropriate behavior. Infractions of her rules, Blake remembered, resulted in corporeal punishments swift and severe.
One of the few demands of Blake's father was that his son receive an education. John Blake was taught to read as a slave a rare opportunity and, therefore, was adamant about the importance of literacy. Eubie Blake, however, did not remember his school days fondly, partially owing to general disinterest and frequent fights.
Blake's musical training began around the age of four. He first learned to play on a pump organ his mother had purchased in the hope that he would use his talents to the service of the church. Blake took his first piano lessons from Margaret Marshall, a next - door neighbor. Blake recalled being given the usual standards to play, as well as hymns, which kept his mother happy. However, he was more drawn to the music he heard drifting into his window from the many nightclubs and brothels in his neighborhood. Unable to resist the infectious rhythms and melodies of this raucous music, Blake's practice turned to perfecting this new style of playing.
Composed Rag
Blake landed his first real playing job when he was 15 years old at a neighborhood brothel, Aggie Shelton's Bawdy House. Three dollars a week plus tips was the salary, Blake recalled. He also remembered having to play in "rented long pants" on the account of having to sneak away from home each night in order to play the job. While at Aggie Shelton's, Blake composed his Charleston Rag in 1899. Other early jobs included brief tours with Dr. Frazier's Medicine Show as a buck and wing dancer and melodeon player in 1901 and in 1902 with the traveling show In Old Kentucky. Later that same year, Blake made his return to nightclub playing in Alfred Greenfeld's Saloon, where he composed his next rag, Corner of Chestnut and Low, the address of Greenfeld's club.
Beginning in 1905, Blake spent several summers away from Baltimore in Atlantic City where he was a pianist at the Middle Section Club. He recalled meeting and establishing lasting friendships with some of the greatest black musicians of the time, including long - time friend and competitor, pianist Hughie Wolford, and celebrated composer and performer Will Marion Cook. The older Cook took an interest in Blake's compositions, and according to Blake, became a mentor.
Blake's first big break came in 1907 when he was hired by Joe Gans, an African American prizefighter and childhood friend, who had just opened a new hotel in Baltimore called the Goldfield Hotel. The Goldfield immediately became a prominent haunt of wealthy, sophisticated business-people and entertainers of all races from all over the world. As a performer in this prestigious hotel, Blake became acquainted with rich and powerful people, many of whom had a profound impact on his career. While at the Goldfield, Blake continued to develop his compositional ability. He wrote rags: The Baltimore Todolo, Kitchen Tom, Tricky Fingers, Novelty Rag, and Poor Katie Redd. Blake attributed this compositional spurt to tutelage from Llewellyn Wilson, famous Baltimore conductor introduced to Blake by Will Marion Cook.
In July of 1910 Eubie Blake married Avis Lee, the daughter of a wealthy socialite from Baltimore. According to Blake, he and Avis had met in grade school. He admitted, however, that there was nothing between them until they met again as adults. Avis was not only older than he, but she was also more focused on her education and much more sophisticated, recounted Blake. In Reminiscing with Sissle and Blake, Blake called Avis "one of the ten most beautiful girls in Baltimore."
Avis Blake was herself a classically trained pianist, who, according to Eubie Blake, had the ability but had been too sheltered to consider having a career of her own. After they were married, she remained at home as homemaker and wife, occasionally traveling with Blake until her death from tuberculosis in 1939. They had no children.
Blake left the Goldfield in early 1911, shortly after the death of owner Joe Gans. His stay there, however, had made him famous throughout the Northeast and highly sought after. The years between 1911 and 1915 Blake described as good ones in which he played in some of the best clubs in Baltimore, New York, and Atlantic City. In 1911 Blake wrote his rags, Chevy Chase and Fizz Water, which he published later that year. Unfortunately the experience was marred by the unscrupulous dealings of his publisher. In his inexperience, Blake inadvertently gave up certain rights to his songs, causing him to lose a great deal of money in future royalties. That same year Blake also wrote Troublesome Ivories and Brittwood Rag, named after the popular Brittwood Club of Harlem.
During this period of his life, Blake was enjoying fame and privilege few musicians of his time would ever know. By most standards he was a success. Yet the events of the next years took him in an entirely different direction - into a new musical profession which eclipsed his young career as ragtime pianist for the next 40 years. Blake became a songwriter and composer of musicals.
Met Sissle
Blake and Noble Sissle met on May 16, 1915, at Riverview Park in Baltimore. Almost immediately after their meeting they formed one of the most successful collaborative performing and songwriting teams in American musical theater history.
Noble Sissle (1889 - 1975) was a well - educated son of well - to - do parents from Indianapolis, Indiana. Sissle studied at DePauw and Butler Universities in Indiana. He was a naturally gifted singer and actor who had participated in plays and sung in glee clubs both in high school and college. Seeking fame as a professional performer, Sissle moved to Baltimore. Blake recalled that it was through Sissle that he met James Reese Europe, whom Rose described in Eubie Blake as a "monumental figure in the Negro Music World." Europe was the organizer and president of the Clef Club for black musicians. This organization was a booking agency for musicians and especially Europe's orchestras, which dominated booking in New York City. Europe hired Blake as pianist in his Long Island orchestra in 1916. The three men remained close friends until Europe's death by stabbing in 1919.
Only a few weeks after their meeting, Blake had written music to Sissle's lyrics, "Its All Your Fault," which they persuaded the legendary Sophie Tucker to sing. Two years later, in 1917, the team of Sissle and Blake was separated by World War I. Sissle enlisted, but Blake, already 34, was too old. Upon Sissle's return in 1919, they developed a vaudeville act which traveled under the name The Dixie Duo.
Significant about The Dixie Duo was the fact that this team never performed in black face as was the tradition; yet, they were still successful. "The practice of corking faces by black performers was expected for artistic survival," says Rose. And, of course white artists like Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor continued using black face. Credit must therefore be given to Sissle and Blake as pioneers among others in the rejection of the stereotypical make up. During their tour the team wrote, then favorites, Pickaninny Shoes, and Oriental Blues which was later included in their smash hit musical, Shuffle Along.
The hit musical Shuffle Along, established Blake and Noble Sissle prominently among the greats of musical theater in the twenties. Shuffle Along opened in 1921 and was an immediate success. Blake and Sissle financed the show themselves, along with help from Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, the Fisk educated comedy team with whom they had joined forces. Miller, Lyles, and Sissle also starred in the show. Originally titled The Mayor of Jimtown, Shuffle Along satirized small - town politics in a fictional black town with hilarious comedic sketches and lively musical numbers. The overwhelming success of this show made wealthy men of its creators, and stars of Miller and Lyles, as well as newcomers Florence Mills, Paul Robeson, and Josephine Baker.
Shuffle Along ran for over 500 performances on Broadway. The show also ran for an extended stay in Boston. The touring companies played to sell - out houses all over the United States. Songs from the musical included "Bandana Days," "In Honeysuckle Time," "If you've Never Been Vamped by a Brownskin, You've Never Been Vamped At All," "Love Will Find A Way," and "I'm Just Wild about Harry."
Several revivals of Shuffle Along were mounted years after the show had closed. Most notable were the productions of 1933 and 1952. Despite the fact that Sissle and Blake tried to rejuvenate their once hit show with new songs, neither revival was nearly as successful as the first.
Three years after Shuffle Along, Sissle and Blake's second successful musical came to Broadway in 1924, The Chocolate Dandies. Songs from The Chocolate Dandies included "That Charleston Dance," "There's a Million Little Cupids in the Sky," "You Ought to Know," "Dumb Luck," and "Manda."
After the break - up of Blake and Sissle in 1927, Blake teamed with several other prominent lyricists and performers of the time, including Henry Creamer, Broadway Jones, Milton Reddie, and Andy Razaf. Blake and Razaf's collaboration produced hit songs for a show called Blackbirds of 1930, which included tunes "Memories of You" and "You're Lucky to Me." Blake and Razaf's musical, Tan Manhattan, written and produced in 1940, was a great success, Eubie Blake's last big success in musical theater until the opening of the Broadway smash hit Eubie!, a musical review of his works, in 1978.
Returned to Ragtime
While serving as a bandleader with the United Servicemen Organizations (USO) during World War II, Blake met and married Marion Grant Tyler, his second wife, in 1945. Tyler was also a performer and a businesswoman, who, after the couple settled in New York, became his valued manager of business and personal affairs.
From 1945 to 1950 Blake attended New York University, graduating at age 67 with a degree in music. It was certainly not uncommon for artists who had enjoyed the success that Blake had to have been considering retirement or, at least, slowing down at this age. However, Blake showed no signs of easing up. Almost prophetically, he was preparing himself for what was to become yet another upswing in his already distinguished career.
In the 1950s a revival of interest in America's ragtime music began to surface and spread throughout the country. Blake, one of the few surviving authentic artists of ragtime, found himself enticed into yet another career as ragtime artist, historian, and educator. In the years that followed, Blake signed recording deals with major companies like 20th Century Records and Columbia Records; he also lectured and gave interviews at major colleges and universities all over the world.
In the 1970s Blake's fame was once again soaring. In his late eighties and nineties, he appeared as special guest performer and clinician in all of the world's top jazz and rag festivals. He was a frequent guest of talk shows such as The Johnny Carson Show and Merv Griffin. Sold - out performances in the world's most prestigious concert halls punctuated his active schedule. Blake had also been featured under the baton of many of the world's great conductors, including Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Fiedler. Virtually every music organization in the country has honored Blake, and articles about him have appeared in Time and Newsweek as well as in all of the magazines related to his trade.
By 1975 Blake had been awarded doctorate degrees from Rutgers, the New England Conservatory, the University of Maryland, Morgan State University, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn College, and Dartmouth. In 1978 he was an invited guest and performer at the Carter White House, and in 1981 James Hubert Blake received the Presidential Medal of Honor.
Blake died five days after his 100th birthday, on February 12, 1983, in Brooklyn, New York. News of his death was carried by major newspapers and television stations internationally. That year a proliferation of concerts celebrating Blake's life and music by the music world honored his memory.
A uniquely gifted artist, Blake has left the world a rich and varied body of music and history. Blake, by his own admission, was very fortunate. Not only did this musical genius rise far above what was expected of or allowed for African American musicians of his time in mainstream musical theater, but he was also granted a life long enough to witness the world's eventual acceptance and appreciation for the music of his youth, ragtime.
Books
Carter, Lawrence T. Eubie Blake: Keys of Memory. Detroit: Balamp Publishing Co., 1979.
Chilton, John. Who's Who of Jazz: Storyville to Swingstreet. New York: DaCapo Press, 1985.
Kimball, Robert, and William Bolcom. Reminiscing with Sissle and Blake. New York: Viking, 1973.
Rose, Al. Eubie Blake. New York: Schirmer Books, 1979.
Wynn, Ron, ed. All - Music Guide to Jazz. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 1994.
