Eubie Blake

Composer

• Born: February 7, 1887
• Birthplace: Baltimore, Maryland
• Died: February 12, 1983
• Place of death: Brooklyn, New York

Ragtime musician and composer

While Blake was one of the most important composers and performers of ragtime piano music in the early twentieth century, he is best known for the hundreds of songs he wrote. He cowrote the musical Shuffle Along, which played a major role in making the Broadway stage more accessible for African American performers.

Areas of achievement: Entertainment: vaudeville; Music: composition; Music: jazz

Early Life

James Hubert Blake was born in 1887 to two former slaves, dockworker John Sumner Blake and laundress Emily Johnston Blake. Blake’s father called him “Bully,” and local children called him “Mouse,” but the nickname that stayed with him was “Eubie.” Blake’s parents had tried ten times to have a child, but he was the first to survive more than two months. The family’s neighborhood of shops and homes in Baltimore was exclusively African American, and while poor, most residents got by.

At the age of five, Blake became fascinated with a pump organ in a music store, and his mother was persuaded to rent the instrument for her son at a quarter per week. However, she disapproved of the music that Blake began playing on it—a new style of syncopated music heard in the streets called ragtime. This music was mostly performed in saloons, burlesque shows, and brothels.

At age fifteen, Blake got a job playing piano to entertain the white patrons at Aggie Shelton’s brothel; Blake would sneak out of his room at night to perform there after his parents had gone to bed. When his mother discovered his deception, she was furious, but the generous tips Blake earned persuaded his father to allow him to keep the job. His musical talents and ample spending money made him popular with local girls. For the next several years, Blake performed in saloons and bordellos, playing popular tunes of the day as well as his own compositions. Around the turn of the century, he composed one of his more famous works, the “Charleston Rag,” although he did not learn how to write it down until 1915, when he submitted it to a publisher. It included his signature playing technique, sometimes called the wobble bass, in which quick alternations of octaves in the left hand give the music a propulsive energy. This style made him a popular and sought-after performer.

Life’s Work

From 1907 to 1910, Blake played piano at Baltimore’s Goldfield Hotel, which had been built by the African American Joe Gans from his winnings as the lightweight boxing champion of 1906. There, Blake had the opportunity to mingle with wealthy and famous patrons, mostly white, from around the world. He married his first wife, Avis Lee, in 1910, and she was willing to travel with him during summers to perform in Atlantic City and New York.

On May 16, 1915, Blake met Noble Sissle, who would become his longtime performing and songwriting partner. Their talents complemented each other’s, and they were soon writing songs together. In 1919, Blake and Sissle formed the Dixie Duo, a vaudeville act that performed on a circuit of major theaters across the country. Significantly, unlike most other African American performers at the time, they did not see the need to perform in blackface, a degrading form of black caricature popular in minstrel shows.

In 1921, the two performers teamed up with Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles to create the Broadway musical Shuffle Along. Produced with almost no budget, the show went on to gross nearly eight million dollars. It ran in New York and other cities with its original cast before a touring company was spawned. Shuffle Along was the first African American musical to play in a major Broadway theater. Most of the songs in it by Sissle and Blake, such as“I’m Just Wild About Harry” and “Love Will Find a Way,” were published in sheet music arrangements. The success of the venture persuaded theater producers to employ more African Americans in subsequent productions.

In 1925, Sissle and Blake performed in England, Scotland, and France on an eight-month tour and appeared in a couple of early sound motion pictures. In 1927, however, Sissle left to pursue other performing projects. During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, radio and film—both dominated by white performers—superseded most other live entertainment, and many African American artists struggled. Blake was still well connected enough to find work in New York, such as writing the 1937 production Swing It, subsidized by the Works Progress Administration, and conducting at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. The death of his wife, Avis, of tuberculosis in 1939 capped off a difficult decade for Blake.

During World War II, Blake toured the country performing at military bases and hospitals under the auspices of the United Service Organizations (USO). On one of these tours, he met his second wife, Marion Gant Tyler, whom he married in 1945. She became his business manager and made sure he was collecting royalties from the hundreds of songs he had written. “I’m Just Wild About Harry” was adopted as the theme song for President Harry S. Truman’s 1948 reelection campaign, vastly increasing its sales. Various performing opportunities arose over the next couple of decades, including an unsuccessful revival ofShuffle Along, but Blake was content to settle into retirement, especially as the music he was so adept at playing had long since fallen out of favor.

In the 1960’s, ragtime experienced a revival of popularity, and Blake’s 1967 performance at Ragfest in St. Louis introduced him to a new generation. By 1973, he had been a guest on dozens of television shows, such as The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, made concert appearances with the Boston Pops Orchestra and others, and was awarded honorary doctorates by Brooklyn College and Rutgers University. Interest in Blake and his music peaked in 1978 with the opening of a Broadway revue, aptly called Eubie!, that featured his best songs and ragtime works from his career.

Although he was a lifelong smoker, Blake remained in good health into his nineties. His death in 1983 was attributed to natural causes.

Significance

Born to former slaves in an era when opportunities for African Americans were limited, Blake was one of the innovators of ragtime music. His ability to please audiences helped him make inroads into other fields, such as Broadway musicals and songwriting, that previously had been all but closed to blacks. He spent his final years basking in the spotlight once again, charming audiences with stories of his early life and entertaining them with his musical talents. Capping his illustrious career, Blake was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan on October 9, 1981.

Bibliography

Kimbell, Robert, and William Bolcom. Reminiscing with Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000. A richly illustrated volume that includes hundreds of pictures, newspaper reviews, and personal stories of Blake and his songwriting partner.

Perlis, Vivian, and Libby Van Cleve. “On Ragtime and Eubie Blake.” In Composers’ Voices from Ives to Ellington: An Oral History of American Music. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005. This chapter offers a description and history of ragtime music and its major writers and performers, but the most compelling section is a transcribed interview with Blake himself in which he describes his childhood, introduction to music, and subsequent career.

Rose, Al. Eubie Blake. New York: Schirmer Books, 1979. A thorough examination of Blake’s life primarily based on personal reminiscences by the composer.