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Eubie Blake

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Eubie Blake
Background information
Birth nameJames Hubert Blake
Born(1887-02-07)February 7, 1887
Baltimore,Maryland,U.S.
DiedFebruary 12, 1983(1983-02-12)(aged 96)
Brooklyn,New York City,U.S.
GenresJazz,popular,ragtime
Occupation(s)Composer, musician
Instrument(s)Piano
LabelsEmerson,Victor

James Hubert"Eubie"Blake(February 7, 1887 – February 12, 1983) was an American pianist and composer ofragtime,jazz,andpopularmusic. In 1921, he and his long-time collaboratorNoble SisslewroteShuffle Along,one of the firstBroadway musicalswritten and directed by African Americans.[1]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 musicalEubie!showcased his works, and in 1981, PresidentRonald Reaganawarded Blake thePresidential Medal of Freedom.

Early years[edit]

Blake was born at 319 Forrest Street inBaltimore,Maryland. Of the many children born to formerslavesEmily "Emma" Johnstone and John Sumner Blake, he was the only one to survive childhood. John Sumner Blake was astevedoreon theBaltimore Docks.[2]

Blake claimed in later life to have been born in 1883, but records published beginning in 2003—U.S. Census,military, andSocial Securityrecords and Blake's passport application and passport—uniformly give his birth year as 1887.[3][4][5][6][7]

Music[edit]

Cover of sheet music of "I'm Just Wild About Harry",from the musicalShuffle Along,by Blake andNoble 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 forUS$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 theMethodistchurch.[8]At age 15, without his parents' knowledge, he began playing piano at Aggie Shelton'sBaltimorebordello. Blake gained his first big break in the music business in 1907, when world champion boxerJoe Ganshired him to play the piano at Gans's Goldfield Hotel, the first "black and tan club"in Baltimore.[9]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 withLlewellyn Wilson.[10]

According to Blake, he also worked themedicine showcircuit and was employed by aQuakerdoctor. He played amelodeonstrapped 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.[11]

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.[12]

In 1912, Blake began playing invaudevillewithJames Reese Europe's Society Orchestra, which accompaniedVernon and Irene Castle's ballroom dance act. The band playedragtimemusic, which was still quite popular. Shortly afterWorld War I,Blake formed a vaudeville musical act, the Dixie Duo, with performerNoble Sissle.After vaudeville, they began work on a musical revue,Shuffle Along,which incorporated songs they had written, and had abookwritten byF. E. MillerandAubrey Lyles.When it premiered in June 1921,Shuffle Alongbecame the first hit musical onBroadwaywritten by and about African Americans. It also introduced hit songs such as "I'm Just Wild About Harry"and" Love Will Find a Way ".[13]Rudolf Fisher insisted thatShuffle 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.[14]

Blake made his first recordings in 1917, for thePathérecord label and forAmpicopiano rolls. In the 1920s he recorded for theVictorandEmersonlabels, among others.[15]

In 1923, Blake made three films forLee de Forestin de Forest'sPhonofilmsound-on-filmprocess: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"; andEubie 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 theLibrary of Congresscollection. Blake also appeared inWarner Brothers' 1932 short filmPie, Pie Blackbirdwith theNicholas Brothers,Nina Mae McKinneyandNoble Sissle.[16]That year, he and his orchestra also provided most of the music for the filmHarlem Is Heaven.[17]

Later life[edit]

Blake receiving thePresidential Medal of FreedomfromRonald 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 toAtlantic City, New Jersey,where he had already found employment at the Boathouse nightclub.[citation needed]

In 1938, Avis was diagnosed withtuberculosis.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."[8]

While serving as bandleader with theUSOduring 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 inNew York University,where he studied theSchillinger Systemof 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.[18]

In the 1970s and 1980s, public interest in Blake's music was revived following the release of his 1969 retrospective albumThe Eighty-Six Years of Eubie Blake.[18]

Blake was a frequent guest ofThe Tonight Show Starring Johnny CarsonandMerv Griffin.He was featured by leading conductors, such asLeonard BernsteinandArthur Fiedler.In 1977 he played Will Williams in theJeremy Kaganbiographical filmScott Joplin.[19][20]By 1975, he had been awarded honorary doctorates from Rutgers, the New England Conservatory, theUniversity of Maryland,Morgan State University,Pratt Institute,Brooklyn College,andDartmouth.On October 9, 1981, he received thePresidential Medal of Freedomfrom PresidentRonald Reagan.[21][22]

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

Blake performed withGregory Hineson the television programSaturday Night Liveon March 10, 1979 (season 4, episode 14).[23][24]

Death[edit]

Blake continued to play and record until his death, on February 12, 1983, inBrooklyn,five days after events celebrating his purported 100th birthday[25](which was actually his 96th birthday).

He was interred inCypress Hills CemeteryinBrooklyn, 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",[26]but this has been attributed to others and has appeared in print at least as early as 1966.[27]

Honors and awards[edit]

Selected discography[edit]

Source:[39]

See also[edit]

"I'm Just Wild About Harry"
Instrumental version of "I'm Just Wild About Harry"recorded May 17, 1922. Duration 3:54
Problems playing this file? Seemedia help.

References[edit]

  1. ^Sullivan, John Jeremiah (March 24, 2016)."'Shuffle Along' and the Lost History of Black Performance in America ".The New York Times Magazine.RetrievedMarch 27,2016.
  2. ^"The 93 Years Of Eubie Blake".American Heritage.RetrievedFebruary 11,2021."Did you have brothers and sisters?" "Ten. But I never saw any of them. None of them lived to be over three or four months old."... "Tell me about your parents, your memories of them." "I loved my mother and father. I had the best mother and father! My mother would kill you, then sit down and cry. My father never knew where his hat was. He'd come in, and instead of hanging his hat he'd put it anywhere. Then I'd look under a chair somewhere and find his hat. I was crazy about him. John Sumner Blake. Don't leave that Sumner out—he'll turn over in his grave. My father was fifty years old when I was born. My birthday is his birthday: seventh day of February, 1833, for him, '83 for me. He was a big, tall man, never was sick in his lifetime. He was a stevedore, a Boss stevedore, unloaded boats—piecework. So many feet of lumber, so many cents. My father made nine dollars a week when he worked. He lived to be eighty-three years old." "Had both of your parents been slaves?" "Well, my mother would say, 'I was never no slave.' That's the only willful lie I ever heard her tell. Then my father would say, 'Did you pick cotton?' 'Yes.' 'Did the white man pay you?' 'No. My father'd wink at me."...
  3. ^Waldo, Terry (2009).This is ragtime.p. 233.
  4. ^Brooks, Tim (2004).Lost sounds: Blacks and the birth of the recording industry, 1890–1919.University of Illinois Press. p. 564n1.ISBN9780252028502.
  5. ^Green, Jeffrey;Lotz, Rainer E.; Rye, Howard (2013).Black Europe.Vol. 2. p. 268.
  6. ^Prahlad, Anand (2006).The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore: A-F.Greenwood Press. p. 141.ISBN978-0-313-33036-0.
  7. ^Peter Hanley."Portraits from Jelly Roll's later travels. April 1923–1941".doctorjazz.co.uk.
  8. ^abKoenig, Karl."The Life of Eubie Blake".Maryland Historical Society. Archived fromthe originalon September 27, 2007.RetrievedFebruary 17,2007.
  9. ^Aycock, Colleen; Scott, Mark (2008).Joe Gans: A Biography of the First African American World Bo xing Champion.Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. p.228.ISBN978-0786439942.OCLC228498035.
  10. ^Blake, Eubie;Southern, Eileen(1973). "A Legend in His Own Lifetime".The Black Perspective in Music.1(1): 50–59.doi:10.2307/1214125.JSTOR1214125.
  11. ^Curtis, Constance; Herndon, Cholie (April 30, 1949). "Know Your Boroughs – Orchestra Men Talk About Show Business".New York Amsterdam News.p. 15.
  12. ^Price, Gary (February 1, 2017)."James Hubert" Eubie "Blake".The Syncopated Times.RetrievedNovember 30,2019.
  13. ^Southern, Eileen (2002). "Eubie Blake". In Kernfeld, Barry. ed.The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.2nd ed. Vol. 1. London: Macmillan. p. 231.
  14. ^Brothers, Thomas (2014).Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism.New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company. pp. 341–44.ISBN978-0-393-06582-4.
  15. ^Brooks, Tim,Lost Sounds,p. 368-382.
  16. ^"Pie, Pie Blackbird (1932)",film catalog,Turner Classic Movies(TCM), Turner Broadcasting System, Time Warner, Inc., New York, N.Y. Retrieved February 8, 2018.
  17. ^"Harlem Is Heaven (1932)",TCM. Retrieved February 8, 2018.
  18. ^abWilson, John S. (February 13, 1983)."Eubie Blake, Ragtime Composer, Dies 5 Days After 100th Birthday".The New York Times.ISSN0362-4331.RetrievedFebruary 24,2019.
  19. ^"Scott Joplin (TV Movie 1977)".IMDb.RetrievedJune 1,2018.
  20. ^Goldsmith, Melissa U. D.; Willson, Paige A.; Fonseca, Anthony J. (October 7, 2016).The Encyclopedia of Musicians and Bands on Film.Rowman & Littlefield.ISBN9781442269873.RetrievedFebruary 12,2017– via Google Books.
  21. ^ab"Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1981".Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum.October 9, 1981.RetrievedFebruary 11,2021.
  22. ^abRomano, Lois (October 10, 1981)."Medals of Freedom For Six Americans".Washington Post.RetrievedFebruary 11,2021.
  23. ^"Saturday Night Live".TVGuide.RetrievedFebruary 11,2021.Episode 14 - Gary Busey; Eubie Blake; Gregory Hines - Sat, Mar 10, 1979 - 90 mins Gary Busey hosts; Eubie Blake and Gregory Hines perform "I'm Just Wild About Harry." Bill Murray interviews Mr. Ed's widow, Mrs. Ed; a panel of men discusses women's problems.
  24. ^"Musical guests Eubie Blake and Gregory Hines perform on March 10, 1979..."Getty Images.January 21, 2015.RetrievedFebruary 11,2021.(Photo by: Fred Bronson / NBCU Photo Bank / NBC Universal via Getty Images)
  25. ^Wilson, John S. (February 13, 1983)."Eubie Blake, Ragtime Composer, Dies 5 Days After 100th Birthday".The New York Times.RetrievedDecember 5,2014.Mr. Blake's lawyer, Elliot Hoffman, said the composer died shortly after noon. Mr. Blake, who had suffered a bout of pneumonia, was too ill to attend Monday's birthday celebrations but he heard a concert in his honor at the Shubert Theater by way of a special telephone hookup.
  26. ^Haberman, Clyde; Krebs, Albin (February 5, 1979). "Notes on People: Eubie Blake Is Almost Not at the Show on Time".The New York Times.p. C12.ProQuest120969930.
  27. ^Gold, Bill (November 24, 1966). "The District Line...".The Washington Post.p. G20.ProQuest142887941.
  28. ^"Eubie Blake".grammy.
  29. ^"Past Rutgers University Honorary Degree Recipients | Office of the Secretary of the University".universitysecretary.rutgers.edu.RetrievedFebruary 24,2019.
  30. ^"Honorary degrees".The University Archives.University of Maryland.RetrievedFebruary 11,2021.Blake, Eubie - D.F.A. - 1978
  31. ^"Recipients of the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America".George Peabody Medal. Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University.RetrievedFebruary 11,2021.1980 - Leonard Bernstein - Eubie Blake - John Brademas
  32. ^Editorial Staff (1982)."Commencement".New Directions.Vol. 9, no. 4. Howard University. Article 2.RetrievedFebruary 11,2021.Eubie Blake, one of the greatest exponents of ragtime, has spent more than three quarters of a century performing and composing in show business. Starting as a young pianist, he moved on through vaudeville, night clubs and musical comedies to television, concerts, jazz festivals and recordings. A native of Baltimore, Blake composed is first piece of music, 'Sounds of Africa,' in 1899 at the age of 16. Among his honors are membership in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, The Ellington Medal awarded by Yale University and the U.S. Army's medal for Distinguished Civilian Service.
  33. ^"Recipients of Honorary Degrees and Other University Honors (by Alphabetical Order)".Howard University.RetrievedFebruary 11,2021.1982 - BLAKE, Eubie - Commencement - D.Mus.
  34. ^Towns, Edolphus (March 24, 1983)."H.J.Res.213 - 98th Congress (1983-1984): A joint resolution designating February 7, 1984, as 'Eubie Blake Day'".US Congress.RetrievedFebruary 11,2021.
  35. ^"Eubie Blake - Jazz Composer and Pianist".National Postal Museum.RetrievedFebruary 11,2021.The Eubie Blake stamp was issued on September 16, 1995.
  36. ^"American Theatre Hall of Fame Inductees (1995)",nyu.edu; accessed April 6, 2016
  37. ^Thomson, Candus."For schools, the game of the name can be nerve-wracking You can get a real education trying to decide what to call a new school".The Baltimore Sun.RetrievedFebruary 11,2021.The community narrowed its choice to two late Maryland artists: jazz legend James Hubert 'Eubie' Blake and Muppets creator Jim Henson. Henson won a straw poll, forcing Principal Goodman to fend off jokes about 'Muppet High.' But just before the name became official, the Henson foundation declined the honor. Goodman says despite the last-minute switch, she was pleased with the outcome. Until, that is, someone pointed out a potential nickname for the school: U-B High. 'So we go by Blake,' says Goodman.
  38. ^2006 National Recording Registry Choices,loc.gov; accessed May 18, 2016.
  39. ^"Eubie Blake".Discography of American Historical Recordings.RetrievedDecember 14,2023.
  40. ^Bloom; Carlin, Ken; Richard (2006).""The Eighty-Six Years of Eubie Blake" --Eubie Blake (1969) "(PDF).libraryofcongress.gov.RetrievedDecember 14,2023.{{cite web}}:CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Further reading[edit]

  • Brooks, Tim,Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1919,363–395, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
  • Carlin, Richard and Ken Bloom.Eubie Blake: Rags, Rhythm, and Race.Oxford University Press, 2020.
  • Rose, Al (1979).Eubie Blake.New York: Schirmer Books.ISBN978-0-02-872170-5.
  • The New York Times;December 27, 1982, Monday. "Eubie Blake Birthday Party. In honor of Eubie Blake's 100th [sic] birthday, St. Peter's Church, at Le xing ton 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 Colesand 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. "
  • Waldo, Terry (2009).This is Ragtime.New York: Jazz at Lincoln Center Library Editions.ISBN978-1-934793-01-5.
  • Williams, Iain CameronUnderneath a Harlem Moon: The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall.Bloomsbury Publishers,ISBN0-8264-5893-9.Chapter 3: Shuffle-Along Nicely - recounts theShuffle Alongmusical.

External links[edit]

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