Eubie Blake, 1887-1983
While Eubie Blake contended that he was born in 1883, U. S. Census, social security and passport records show that he was actually born in 1887.
His tombstone was engraved with 1883 to honor Eubie’s remembrance.
A Natural Born Musician
Eubie Blake, the composer of the first successful all-Black music revue on Broadway, Shuffle Along, began his musical journey at the age most children begin Kindergarten.
James Hubert “Eubie” Blake was around five years old when he wandered away from his mother while they were shopping, went into a music store, sat down at an organ and began playing. Shortly after, his parents bought him that organ and his musical genius flourished.
Eubie began formal lessons with a neighbor, Margaret Marshall, who taught him how to play piano and read music. But his innate musical talent would lead him to become one of the most innovative pianists of all time.
Eubie Blake as a child. The original, by an unidentified artist, is thought to have been illustrated in approximately 1899. Harvard University
Eubie’s parents, Emily Johnstone Blake and John Sumner Blake were both born slaves in Virginia. After slavery was declared unconstitutional, the Blake’s moved to Baltimore where Eubie was born and raised. His mother Emily was a “God-fearing” woman.
“My mother, she carried Jesus around in her vest pocket.”
- Eubie Blake
Emily Blake was totally scandalized when she found out her son Eubie —because of his ability to play any song in his own style— had secured a job playing piano at Aggie Shelton’s, a local bawdy house, when he was only 15 years old.
It was said that he would move smoothly from playing popular songs of the day to playing Classical music such as Johann Strauss’s The Blue Danube, without skipping a beat.
Eubie Blake studied composition with William Llwellyn Wilson, a composer and teacher at Frederick Douglas High School.
The Composer Emerges
“I taught myself how to play... I hear everything in music.”
-Eubie Blake
In 1899 at the age of 16, Eubie composed one of his first piano pieces, Charleston Rag, though he did not write the music on paper until 1915.
Eubie Blake performing his Charleston Rag that he composed in 1899. "Philharmonie", Berlin (Germany), November 4, 1972.
In the early 1900s, Eubie composed a piece that would be the beginning of his unique “wobble bass” style. The piece is known today as Eubie’s Boogie.
Provided to YouTube by Columbia/Legacy Eubie's Boogie · Eubie Blake Eighty Six Years Of Eubie Blake ℗ Originally released 1969. All rights reserved by Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment Released on: 1969-10-06
It was in 1915, that Eubie teamed up with Noble Sissle and the two began writing songs together, with Eubie as the composer and Noble as the lyricist.
Noble Sissle (1889-1975), a native of Indianapolis, was the son of a pastor and school teacher. Having grown up singing in church choirs and in school, Noble attended De Pauw University on scholarship before transferring to Buter University in Indianapolis. After graduating, he joined the gospel circuit before leaving for Baltimore in 1915. He met Eubie Blake when they were both hired at Riverview Amusement Park to perform in Joe Porter’s Serenaders. The two quickly formed a partnership.
The first song they wrote together in 1915, It’s All Your Fault, was an immediate hit, after Sophie Tucker — one of the most popular performers in the early 1900s— heard the song and included it in her show at the Maryland Theater in Baltimore.
Sissle and Blake
Provided to YouTube by Columbia/Legacy It's All Your Fault · Eubie Blake Eighty Six Years Of Eubie Blake ℗ Originally released 1969. All rights reserved by Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment Released on: 1969-10-06 Composer, Lyricist: N. Sissle Composer, Lyricist: E. Nelson
BlackFace Required
Blackface can be traced back to around 1830s New York, when white performers would put shoe polish or burnt cork on their faces, and appear in shows that depicted African Americans “that perpetuated a range of negative stereotypes about African Americans including being lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual, criminal or cowardly...” -Alexis Clark, History.com.
During the early 1900s, the only way that African Americans could break into show business was for them to also employ this demeaning practice of Blackface.
“All Negroes put on cork. Wilbur Sweatman was the first one that didn’t put it on.”
- Eubie Blake
Eubie and Noble formed the Dixie Duo, a Vaudeville act, and they followed in Wilbur Sweatman’s footsteps, to become among the first African-American artists at the time to refuse to perform in Blackface. Eubie and Noble customarily wore tuxedos, breaking with the vaudeville strictures of performing in Blackface. In 1923, they became.two of the first African American performers to record a “talky” film: “Sissle and Blake sing Snappy Songs.”
shuffle Along
Eubie Blake composed hundreds of songs, but arguably his most well-known work is one he created with Noble Sissle in 1921, “Shuffle Along."
Though the performers in "Shuffle Along were" required to appear in Blackface, and the show struggled to take off, it made history by becoming the first hit musical revue on Broadway to be written by and for African-Americans—running for 504 performances to a non-segregated, racially integrated audience. The phrase, “slumming it”, originated in this period.
"Shuffle Along" was an important vehicle for rising stars of the era including Josephine Baker in the chorus line, William Grant Still and Hall Johnson in the orchestra, Florence Mills, Blanche Calloway, and Paul Robeson as performers, to name a few.
It made its way back to Broadway three times after its premiere in 1921—in 1933, 1952 and most recently in a 2016 production starring Audra McDonald, Adrienne Warren, Billy Porter and many more.
A Long Life, A full Career
Eubie Blake performed and lectured about Ragtime, the genre he pioneered in the early 1900s, up until the time of his death, which was just days past his 100th birthday in 1983.
Eubie and Noble’s song “I’m Just Wild about Harry” received new appreciation when Harry S. Truman used the song in his successful 1948 campaign.
Eubie was 65 years old when he enrolled at New York University—he only received formal education up to the fifth grade while growing up in Baltimore—to study music composition with Joseph Shillinger. He graduated in 1950.
Eubie received many honors during his lifetime. In the 1970s and early 80s, Eubie was awarded Doctor of Fine Arts (Rutgers University), Doctor of Fine Arts (University of Maryland), the George Peabody Medal (Johns Hopkins University), Doctor of Music (Howard University), the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan, and many more.
In 1968, Eubie reunited with his long-time collaborator Noble Sissle to record Eighty-Six Years of Eubie Blake on the RCA Label