Editing Eubie Blake (section)

==Music==
[[File:I'm Just Wild About Harry 1b.jpg|right|thumb|200px|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>{{cite web|url=http://www.mdhs.org/eubieblake/subs/06.html|title=The Life of Eubie Blake|publisher=Maryland Historical Society|author=Koenig, Karl|access-date=February 17, 2007|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927015146/http://www.mdhs.org/eubieblake/subs/06.html|archive-date=September 27, 2007}}</ref> At age 15, without his parents' knowledge, he began playing piano at Aggie Shelton's [[Music of Baltimore|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 clubs|black and tan club]]" in Baltimore.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Joe Gans: A Biography of the First African American World Boxing Champion |last1=Aycock |first1=Colleen |date=2008 |publisher=McFarland |last2=Scott |first2=Mark |isbn=978-0786439942 |location=Jefferson, N.C. |page=[https://archive.org/details/joegansbiography00ayco/page/228 228] |oclc=228498035 |url=https://archive.org/details/joegansbiography00ayco/page/228 }}</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 [[William Llewellyn Wilson|Llewellyn Wilson.]]<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Blake |first1=Eubie |last2=Southern |first2=Eileen |author2-link=Eileen Southern|date=1973 |title=A Legend in His Own Lifetime |journal=The Black Perspective in Music |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=50–59 |doi=10.2307/1214125 |jstor=1214125}}</ref>

According to Blake, he also worked the [[medicine show]] circuit and was employed by a [[Quaker]] doctor. He played a [[Melodeon (organ)|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>{{cite news|newspaper=New York Amsterdam News|first1=Constance|last1=Curtis|first2=Cholie|last2=Herndon|title=Know Your Boroughs – Orchestra Men Talk About Show Business|date=April 30, 1949|page=15}}</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>{{Cite news|url=https://syncopatedtimes.com/james-hubert-eubie-blake/|title=James Hubert "Eubie" Blake|last=Price|first=Gary|date=February 1, 2017|website=The Syncopated Times|language=en-US|access-date=November 30, 2019}}</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 Records|Pathé]] record label and for [[American Piano Company|Ampico]] piano rolls. In the 1920s he recorded for the [[Victor Records|Victor]] and [[Emerson Records|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 (performer)|Broadway Jones]] as the drummer.{{sfn|Carlin|2020|page=73}} 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.{{sfn|Carlin|2020|page=82}} Blake later became a regular performer at a Harlem nightclub owned by Jones in 1923-1924.{{sfn|Carlin|2020|page=208}} 

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 [[Musical theatre#Book musicals|book]] written by [[F. E. Miller]] and [[Aubrey Lyles]]. When it premiered in June 1921, ''Shuffle Along'' became the first hit musical on [[Broadway theatre|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.<!--ISSN/ISBN needed--></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>{{Cite book|last=Brothers|first=Thomas|title=Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism|publisher=W.W. Norton & Company|year=2014|isbn=978-0-393-06582-4|location=New York, NY|pages=341–44}}</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>[https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/400613/pie-pie-blackbird "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>[https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/554919/harlem-is-heaven "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 (New York City)|Loew's State Theatre]] in November 1927.{{sfn|Sampson|2014|page=507}} Blake then joined Jones for an extended engagement at the [[Royal Poinciana Hotel]] in [[Palm Beach, Florida]] where Jones had often performed since 1915.{{sfn|Carlin|2020|pages=208-209}} 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.{{sfn|Carlin|2020|pages=210-211}} The duo then performed together in numerous musical revues in the early 1930s;{{sfn|Carlin|2020|pages=2013-2014}} including touring ones led by [[Fanchon and Marco]]{{sfn|Carlin|2020|pages=212-213}} and the Broadway musical revue ''[[Lew Leslie's Blackbirds|Blackbirds of 1930]]''.{{sfn|Carlin|2020|pages=218}} 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.{{sfn|Carlin|2020|page=240}} The pair later reunited briefly in the mid 1930s for performances with the Monarch Symphonic Band in Harlem.{{sfn|Carlin|2020|page=2015}}