Eubie Blake

James Hubert "Eubie" Blake (February 7, 1887 – February 12, 1983) was an American pianist and composer of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. Blake began his career in 1912, and during World War I he worked in partnership with the singer, drummer, and comedian Broadway Jones. After the war he began a long-term collaboration with Noble Sissle with whom he wrote Shuffle Along (1921), one of the first Broadway musicals written and directed by African Americans.<ref name="nyt2016">Template:Cite news</ref> When his collaboration with Sissle ended in 1927, he resumed a partnership with Jones which lasted until either 1932 or 1933. Blake's compositions included such hits as "Bandana Days", "Charleston Rag", "Love Will Find a Way", "Memories of You" and "I'm Just Wild About Harry". The 1978 Broadway musical Eubie! showcased his works, and in 1981, President Ronald Reagan awarded Blake the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Early years

Blake was born at 319 Forrest Street in Baltimore, Maryland. Of the many children born to former slaves Emily "Emma" Johnstone and John Sumner Blake, he was the only one to survive childhood. John Sumner Blake was a stevedore on the Baltimore Docks.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Blake claimed in later life to have been born in 1883, but records published beginning in 2003—U.S. Census, military, and Social Security records and Blake's passport application and passport—uniformly give his birth year as 1887.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Prahlad2006">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Music

File:I'm Just Wild About Harry 1b.jpg

Cover of sheet music of "I'm Just Wild About Harry", from the musical Shuffle Along, by Blake and Noble Sissle, 1921

Blake's musical training began when he was four or five. While out shopping with his mother, he wandered into a music store, climbed onto the bench of an organ, and started "foolin’ around". When his mother found him, the store manager told her: "The child is a genius! It would be criminal to deprive him of the chance to make use of such a sublime, God-given talent." The Blakes purchased a pump organ for US$75.00, making payments of 25 cents a week. When Blake was seven, he received music lessons from a neighbor, Margaret Marshall, an organist for the Methodist church.<ref name=koenig>Template:Cite web</ref> At age 15, without his parents' knowledge, he began playing piano at Aggie Shelton's Baltimore bordello. Blake gained his first big break in the music business in 1907, when world champion boxer Joe Gans hired him to play the piano at Gans's Goldfield Hotel, the first "black and tan club" in Baltimore.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Blake played at the Goldfield during the winters from 1907 to 1914, and spent his summers playing clubs in Atlantic City. During this period, he also studied composition in Baltimore with Llewellyn Wilson.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

According to Blake, he also worked the medicine show circuit and was employed by a Quaker doctor. He played a melodeon strapped to the back of the medicine wagon. He stayed with the show only two weeks, however, because the doctor's religion didn't allow the serving of Sunday dinner.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Blake said he composed the melody of "Charleston Rag" in 1899, when he would have been only 12 years old. He did not commit it to paper until 1915, when he learned musical notation.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1912, Blake began playing in vaudeville with James Reese Europe's Society Orchestra, which accompanied Vernon and Irene Castle's ballroom dance act. The band played ragtime music, which was still quite popular. He made his first recordings in 1917, for the Pathé record label and for Ampico piano rolls. In the 1920s he recorded for the Victor and Emerson labels, among others.<ref >Brooks, Tim, Lost Sounds, p. 368-382.</ref> His 1917 Pathé records billed as the Eubie Blake Trio possibly were made with Broadway Jones as the drummer.Template:Sfn Jones, who was primarily a vocalist and comedian but had a background as the leader of a dance band, was Blake's performing partner during World War I. After having already formed a music partnership, the duo created a vaudeville music and comedy act which they toured in 1918.Template:Sfn Blake later became a regular performer at a Harlem nightclub owned by Jones in 1923-1924.Template:Sfn

Shortly after World War I, Blake ceased his partnership with Jones and formed a vaudeville musical act, the Dixie Duo, with performer Noble Sissle. After vaudeville, they began work on a musical revue, Shuffle Along, which incorporated songs they had written, and had a book written by F. E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles. When it premiered in June 1921, Shuffle Along became the first hit musical on Broadway written by and about African Americans. It also introduced hit songs such as "I'm Just Wild About Harry" and "Love Will Find a Way".<ref>Southern, Eileen (2002). "Eubie Blake". In Kernfeld, Barry. ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. London: Macmillan. p. 231.</ref> Rudolf Fisher insisted that Shuffle Along "had ruined his favorite places of African-American sociability in Harlem" due to the influx of white patrons. Its reliance on "stereotypical black stage humor" and "the primitivist conventions of cabaret," in the words of Thomas Brothers, made the show a hit, running for 504 performances with three years of national tours.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1923, Blake made three films for Lee de Forest in de Forest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process: Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, featuring their song "Affectionate Dan"; Sissle and Blake Sing Snappy Songs, featuring "Sons of Old Black Joe" and "My Swanee Home"; and Eubie Blake Plays His Fantasy on Swanee River, featuring Blake performing his "Fantasy on Swanee River". These films are preserved in the Maurice Zouary film collection in the Library of Congress collection. Blake also appeared in Warner Brothers' 1932 short film Pie, Pie Blackbird with the Nicholas Brothers, Nina Mae McKinney and Noble Sissle.<ref>"Pie, Pie Blackbird (1932)", film catalog, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), Turner Broadcasting System, Time Warner, Inc., New York, N.Y. Retrieved February 8, 2018.</ref> That year, he and his orchestra also provided most of the music for the film Harlem Is Heaven.<ref>"Harlem Is Heaven (1932)", TCM. Retrieved February 8, 2018.</ref>

In 1927 Blake's partnership with Noble Sissle came to an end, and he resumed a collaboration with Broadway Jones beginning with performances at Loew's State Theatre in November 1927.Template:Sfn Blake then joined Jones for an extended engagement at the Royal Poinciana Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida where Jones had often performed since 1915.Template:Sfn The pair then formed their own theatre troupe, and toured a new show in vaudeville's Orpheum Circuit called Shuffle Along Jr. after the earlier musical with some of the same performers from the earlier work.Template:Sfn The duo then performed together in numerous musical revues in the early 1930s;Template:Sfn including touring ones led by Fanchon and MarcoTemplate:Sfn and the Broadway musical revue Blackbirds of 1930.Template:Sfn Blake also played in a band founded by Jones until either 1932 or 1933 when financial pressures during the Great Depression led Jones to end the collaboration.Template:Sfn The pair later reunited briefly in the mid 1930s for performances with the Monarch Symphonic Band in Harlem.Template:Sfn

Later life

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Blake receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan (1981)

In July 1910, Blake married Avis Elizabeth Cecelia Lee, proposing to her in a chauffeur-driven car he hired. They met around 1895, when they attended Primary School No. 2 at 200 East Street in Baltimore. In 1910, Blake brought his bride to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he had already found employment at the Boathouse nightclub.Template:Citation needed

In 1938, Avis was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She died later that year, at the age of 58. Of his loss, Blake said, "In my life I never knew what it was to be alone. At first when Avis got sick, I thought she just had a cold, but when time passed and she didn’t get better, I made her go to a doctor and we found out she had TB … I suppose I knew from when we found out she had the TB, I understood that it was just a matter of time."<ref name=koenig/>

While serving as bandleader with the USO during World War II, he met Marion Grant Tyler, the widow of violinist Willy Tyler. They married in 1945. A performer and businesswoman, she became his valued business manager until her death in 1982. In 1946, Blake retired from performing and enrolled in New York University, where he studied the Schillinger System of music composition, graduating in two and a half years. He spent the next two decades using the Schillinger System to transcribe songs that he had memorized but had never written down.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref>

In the 1970s and 1980s, public interest in Blake's music was revived following the release of his 1969 retrospective album The Eighty-Six Years of Eubie Blake.<ref name=":0" />

Blake was a frequent guest of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin. He was featured by leading conductors, such as Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Fiedler. In 1977 he played Will Williams in the Jeremy Kagan biographical film Scott Joplin.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> By 1975, he had been awarded honorary doctorates from Rutgers, the New England Conservatory, the University of Maryland, Morgan State University, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn College, and Dartmouth. On October 9, 1981, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan.<ref name="reaganlibrary">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="WashPost19811010">Template:Cite news</ref>

Eubie!, a revue featuring Blake's music, with lyrics by Noble Sissle, Andy Razaf, Johnny Brandon, F. E. Miller and Jim Europe, opened on Broadway in 1978. It was a hit at the Ambassador Theatre, where it ran for 439 performances. It received three nominations for Tony Awards, including one for Blake's score. The show was filmed in 1981 with the original cast members, including Lesley Dockery, Gregory Hines and Maurice Hines.

Blake performed with Gregory Hines on the television program Saturday Night Live on March 10, 1979 (season 4, episode 14).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Death

Blake continued to play and record until his death, on February 12, 1983, in Brooklyn, five days after events celebrating his purported 100th birthday<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> (which was actually his 96th birthday).

He was interred in Cypress Hills Cemetery in Queens, New York. His headstone, engraved with the musical notation of "I'm Just Wild About Harry", was commissioned by the African Atlantic Genealogical Society.

Blake was reported to have said, on his birthday in 1979, "If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself",<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> but this has been attributed to others and has appeared in print at least as early as 1966.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Honors and awards

• 1969: Nomination for a Grammy Award for The Eighty-Six Years of Eubie Blake in the category of "Best Instrumental Jazz Performance, Small Group or Soloist with Small Group"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Selected discography

Source:<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

• Victor Orchestra- Chevy Chase Fox Trot (1914), Victor
• Victor Military Band- Bugle Call Rag (1916), Victor
• Eubie Blake and His Shuffle Along Orchestra- Bandana Days (1921), Victor
• Paul Whiteman Orchestra- I'm Just Wild About Harry (1922), Victor
• Bert Lown and the Hotel Biltmore Orchestra - Loving You the Way I Do (1930), Victor
• Duke Ellington, Dick Robertson, and the Cotton Club Orchestra- Memories of You (1930), Victor
• Louis Armstrong and the Cotton Club Orchestra- You're Lucky to Me (1930), Okeh
• Eubie Blake- The Eighty Six Years of Eubie Blake (1969), Columbia<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

See also

• African American musical theater
• Black and tan clubs
• Age fabrication
• Black and Blue (musical)
• List of ragtime composers

References

Bibliography

• Brooks, Tim, Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1919, 363–395, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
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• The New York Times; December 27, 1982, Monday. "Eubie Blake Birthday Party. In honor of Eubie Blake's 100th Template:Sic birthday, St. Peter's Church, at Lexington Avenue and 54th Street, will hold a 24-hour celebration beginning at midnight February 6. The tribute to the composer will feature a host of musicians, vocalists and dancers, including Billy Taylor, Bobby Short, Dick Hyman, Honi Coles and the Copacetics, Bill Bolcom and Joan Morris, Max Morath, Marianne McPartland, Maurice Hines and Cab Calloway. Mr. Blake, born in Baltimore February 7, 1882, may attend."
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• Williams, Iain Cameron Underneath a Harlem Moon: The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall. Bloomsbury Publishers, Template:ISBN. Chapter 3: Shuffle-Along Nicely - recounts the Shuffle Along musical.

External links

• Eubie Blake oral histories at Oral History of American Music
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• Eubie Blake recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.
• The Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center, Baltimore, MD
• The Eubie Blake Collection at the Maryland Historical Society
• Eubie Blake & Ragtime Template:Webarchive includes transcription of 1970 interview with Blake
• William D. and Peggy Smith collection of Eubie Blake correspondence, printed sheet music, and other material, 1970-1977 at Isham Memorial Library, Harvard University