Blake, Eubie

February 7, 1883
February 12, 1983

The jazz pianist and composer James Hubert "Eubie" Blake was born in Baltimore, Maryland. The son of former slaves, he began organ lessons at the age of six and was soon syncopating the tunes he heard in his mother's Baptist church. While still in his teens, he began to play in the ragtime style then popular in Baltimore sporting houses and saloons. One of his first professional jobs was as a dancer in a minstrel show, In Old Kentucky. During this time Blake also began to compose music, with his first published piece, "Charleston Rag," appearing in 1899. In his twenties Blake began performing each summer in Atlantic City, where he composed songs (e.g., "Tricky Fingers," 1904) and came in contact with such giants of stride piano as Willie "The Lion" Smith (1897–1973), Luckey Roberts (1887–1968), and James P. Johnson (1894–1955). His melodic style and penchant for waltzes were influenced by the comic operettas of Victor Herbert, Franz Lehar, and Leslie Stuart. Blake soon began to perform songs in his mature style, which was marked by brokenoctave parts, arpeggiated figures, sophisticated chord progressions, and altered blues chords. In 1910 Blake married Avis Lee, a classical pianist.

In 1916, with the encouragement of the bandleader James Reese Europe (1881–1919), Blake began performing with Noble Sissle (1889–1975) as "The Dixie Duo," a piano-vocal duet. Sissle and Blake performed together on the B. F. Keith vaudeville circuit, and they also began writing songs together. In 1921, Sissle and Blake joined with the well-known comedy team of Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles to write Shuffle Along, which became so popular in both its Broadway and touring versions that at one point three separate companies were crisscrossing the country performing it. In 1924 Sissle and Blake teamed up with Lew Payton to present In Bamville, later known as The Chocolate Dandies. After the closing of the show in 1925, Sissle and Blake returned to vaudeville, touring the United States, Great Britain, and France. In 1927 Sissle remained in Europe, while Blake teamed up with Henry Creamer to write cabaret shows. In 1928 Blake joined with Henry "Broadway" Jones and a cast of eleven performers to tour the United States on the Keith-Albee Orpheum circuit with Shuffle Along Jr. In that year he also wrote "Tickle the Ivories." Two years later Blake set lyrics by Andy Razaf to music for Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1930, which included "Memories of You," one of the best-known of Blake's many songs. In 1932, after the death of Lyles, Sissle and Blake reunited with Miller to present Shuffle Along of 1933, but the show closed after only fifteen performances. During the Great Depression, Blake wrote several shows with Milton Reddie. Swing It, which included the songs "Ain't We Got Love" and "Blues Why Don't You Leave Me Alone," was produced by the Works Project Administration. During the war years, Blake performed in U.S.O. shows and wrote Tan Manhattan (1943). When "I'm Just Wild About Harry," from Shuffle Along, became popular during the 1948 presidential campaign of Harry Truman, Sissle and Blake reunited to update the show. The new version failed to gain popularity, however, and Blake retired from public life.

In the 1960s there was a renewed public interest in ragtime, and Blake recorded The Eighty-Six Years of Eubie Blake (1969), an album that led to a resurgence in his career. Thereafter, Blake performed regularly in concert and on television, and continued to compose songs, such as "Eubie's Classic Rag" (1972). He also performed at jazz festivals in New Orleans (1969) and Newport R.I. (1971). Even in his last years, he retained his remarkable virtuosity on piano, vigorously improvising melodic embellishments to a syncopated ragtime beat. In 1978 the musical revue Eubie! (featuring many songs written by Blake) enjoyed a successful run on Broadway and received three Tony Award nominations. A scaled-down version of the show was revived in 1997, and it has played at small theaters since then. Blake also established a music publishing and recording company and received numerous honorary degrees and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981. Blake, whose more than three hundred compositions brought a sophisticated sense of harmony to the conventions of ragtime-derived popular song, was active until his ninety-ninth year, and his centennial in 1983 was an occasion for many tributes. However, the 1982 death of his wife, Marion, to whom he had been married since 1945 (his first marriage had ended with the death of his wife, Avis) led to a decline in his own health. He died on February 12, 1983 in Brooklyn, N.Y., only five days after his hundredth birthday. In 1995, Blake was featured on a U.S. postage stamp.

See also Europe, James Reese; Ragtime

Bibliography

Berlin, E. Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Bolcom, William, and R. Kimball. Reminiscing with Sissle and Blake. New York, 1973.

Graziano, John. "Black Musical Theater and the Harlem Renaissance Movement." In Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays, edited by Samuel A. Floyd, Jr.. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.

Rose, A. Eubie Blake. New York: Schirmer Books, 1979.

john graziano (1996)
Updated by publisher 2005