Pianist, lyricist, and composer of ragtime, jazz, and popular music, James Hubert "Eubie" Blake, better known as Eubie Blake was born in Baltimore, Maryland on February 7, 1887, to parents who had been enslaved. At around age five, he showed an extraordinary ability to play the pump organ when he randomly started doing so in a music store. The store manager told Eubie’s mother, “He’s a genius! Buy him an organ.” His mother replied, “I don’t want him to be a musician, I want him to be a preacher.” When Blake was seven, he received music lessons from a neighbor, Margaret Marshall, an organist for the Methodist church. Eubie never applied himself to studies, eventually not meeting eligibility requirements for graduating eighth grade. Blake’s devoutly Baptist mother thought the lessons were a waste of time and that the ragtime he loved producing was sinful and of ill-repute, so she forbade Blake from playing it in the house.
In 1899 he composed his first piano rag later titled the “Charleston Rag” when he was just 12 years old, even though it wasn't published until 1915. At age 15, without his parents' knowledge, he began playing piano at Aggie Shelton's Baltimore bordello, entertaining customers with light classics and popular rags such as “Hello, Ma Ragtime Gal” and “After the Ball”. He immersed himself in the lively and often unfiltered world of early ragtime. Ragtime music was purportedly created in Black bars and bordellos—its syncopated rhythms born out of an amalgamation of march music and the experiences of Black people living in midwestern and east-coast cities. Ragtime was in its heyday after the turn of the century and had a considerable White audience. This experience, though unorthodox for a teenage boy, paid Blake well and afforded him lots of practice time to improve upon his natural abilities. In 1903 Blake danced and played played a melodeon with Dr. Frazier’s Medicine Show. He stayed with the show only two weeks, however, because the doctor's religion didn't allow the serving of Sunday dinner. With little interest in school, Blake sought to become a full time musician, and at age sixteen performed professionally in a Baltimore nightclub.
At 19, Eubie Blake traveled to New York for a brief stint as a buck dancer—a derogatory role for Blacks. Blake brought a new sophistication to the art form and published several rags, Blake gained his first big break in the music business in 1907, when light weight boxing champion Joe Gans hired him to play the piano at Gans's Goldfield Hotel, the first "Black and tan club" in Baltimore, which catered to an integrated clientele. Blake played at the Goldfield during the winters from 1907 to 1914, and spent his summers playing clubs in Atlantic City. He then found steady work at Annie Gilly’s sporting house. He developed his writing skills during this era, composing “Chevy Chase” and “Fizz Water Rag.” Blake related how he “ragged” popular songs and classics from Wagner to Viennese waltzes. Throughout this period, he also studied composition in Baltimore with William Llwellyn Wilson, a composer and teacher at Frederick Douglas High School.
In July 1910, Blake married classical pianist Avis Elizabeth Cecelia Lee. In 1912, Blake began playing in vaudeville with James Reese Europe's Society Orchestra a pioneering ensemble that accompanied the celebrated ballroom dance duo Vernon and Irene Castle. The band played ragtime music, which was still quite popular. Shortly after, Blake was recalled to Baltimore by his mother, where he stayed for a bit before returning to New York and settling there in 1915. It was during the year, he met his longtime song writing partner, Noble Sissle to form the vaudeville act known as the Dixie Duo, further cementing his place in the evolving world of American music. Within a few days, Blake and Sissle wrote the number “It’s All Your Fault” which became an immediate hit for singer Sophie Tucker. She was one of the most popular performers in the early 1900's and included it in her show at the Maryland Theater in Baltimore.
Throughout their careers, Blake and Sissle went on to write, produce, compose for, and perform in several Broadway shows. They would also work with some of history’s best African American performers of the day, including Josephine Baker and Florence Mills. In 1916, the pair became members of the Clef Club: a premier talent agency for Black musicians who played all across the Midwest and east coast for some of the wealthiest people in America at the time. 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. Eubie and Noble, the Dixie Duo, became among the first Black artists at the time to refuse to perform in Blackface. 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.
Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle were part of the generation that helped move Black musical theater away from that tradition, even though they began working in a world where it still existed. They customarily wore tuxedos, breaking with the vaudeville strictures of performing in Blackface. While they worked in an industry still shaped by those traditions, their success helped prove that Black artists could thrive on Broadway without adopting those demeaning conventions, marking a real turning point in American entertainment. Noble Sissle did have early exposure to minstrel-style entertainment, including performing with military bands during World War I (notably when James Reese Europe formed and led the band of the all-Black 369th Infantry Division (“Harlem Hell Fighters”).
Eubie Blake made his first recordings in 1917, for the Pathé record label and for Ampico piano rolls. In the 1920s he recorded for the Victor and Emerson labels, among others. In 1921, Blake and Sissle wrote "Shuffle Along". When it premiered in June 1921, "Shuffle Along" became the first hit musical on Broadway written by and about Blacks. Ultimately, "Shuffle Along" made a major contribution to the Harlem Renaissance, most significantly by opening the way for a number of other Black shows that laid a foundation for the “Jazz Age” of the 1920s. It 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. The musical also introduced hit songs such as "I'm Just Wild About Harry" and "Love Will Find a Way". The show broke from the tradition of minstrel shows and presented Black performers in dignified, romantic roles. After 504 performances, Shuffle Along closed with a reported gross of eight million dollars.
By the time the show opened in New York, Blake had already won fame as a composer, and ragtime was present in pure form in "Shuffle Along”. People of all classes were now beginning to acquire a taste for ragtime, including performing icon Irving Berlin, whom Blake knew personally in the days prior to Berlin’s stardom. In 1923, Blake and Sissle became two of the first Black performers to record a “talky” film: “Sissle and Blake sing Snappy Songs.” Blake's other compositions included such hits as "Bandana Days", "Charleston Rag", and "Memories of You". In 1927 Blake's partnership with Noble Sissle came to an end when he went overseas to Europe. He resumed a collaboration with Broadway Jones beginning with performances at Loew's State Theatre in November 1927.
He also appeared in Warner Brothers' 1932 short film "Pie, Pie Blackbird" with the Nicholas Brothers, Nina Mae McKinney, and Noble Sissle. That same year he and his orchestra provided most of the music for the film "Harlem Is Heaven". Blake contributed to other Broadway musicals and revues such as “Elsie,” Andre Charlots' “Revue of 1924,” and Lew Leslie’s “Blackbirds" of 1930. When ragtime faded in popularity by the early 1920s, Blake shifted to jazz and performed continuously until 1946 when he took a twenty-three year hiatus from show business. In 1932 Blake resumed working with Sissle for a brief period as the authors and stars of the musical revue Shuffle Along of 1933. It failed to make a profit during the hard times of the depression. They would not work together again until World War II. While serving as bandleader with the USO during World War II, he met and married Marion Grant Tyler, his second wife, in 1945. Tyler was also a performer and a businesswoman, who, after the couple settled in New York, became his valued manager of business and personal affairs.
Eubie was 65 years old when he enrolled at New York University to study the Schillinger System of music composition. In just two and a half years, he completed the program, refining his understanding of musical structure and notation. Over the next two decades, he applied this system to transcribe numerous compositions that he had previously committed to memory but had never formally written down. In the ’50s Blake demonstrated and lectured on ragtime, but his day seemed to be past. In 1969, at the age of 86, Blake’s fortunes were revived when John Hammond recorded the old man playing piano and talking about his life. The concurrent vogue for ragtime helped his comeback and the next years were filled with honors, recordings, concerts, festivals, and television appearances, such as "The Tonight Show" and "The Merv Griffin Show". He was featured by leading conductors, such as Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Fiedler.
In 1977 he played Will Williams in the Jeremy Kagan biographical film Scott Joplin. In 1978, his life and music were celebrated in a Broadway show, “Eubie,” which was also televised in the USA and later staged in London. On October 9, 1981, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by President Ronald Reagan. Blake continued to play and record until his death, on February 12, 1983, in Brooklyn. Although Blake is often associated with ragtime, his work helped bridge the gap between ragtime and early jazz. His compositions were more harmonically complex than traditional ragtime pieces, and his performances featured improvisation, a key element of jazz. His contributions to American music are immeasurable. As a composer, he helped elevate Black music to the Broadway stage. As a pianist, he pushed the boundaries of ragtime and laid the groundwork for jazz improvisation. His compositions remain beloved standards, and his influence can be heard in the work of countless jazz and ragtime musicians.
Honors and awards
1969: Nomination for a Grammy Award for The Eighty-Six Years of Eubie Blake in the category of
"Best Instrumental Jazz Performance, Small Group or Soloist with Small Group"
1972: Omega Psi Phi Scroll of Honor
1974: Doctor of Fine Arts, Rutgers University
1974: Doctor of Humane Letters, Dartmouth College
1978: Doctor of Fine Arts, University of Maryland
1979: Doctor of Music, Morgan State University
1980: George Peabody Medal, Johns Hopkins University
1981: Presidential Medal of Freedom, October 9, 1981, awarded by President Ronald Reagan
1982: Doctor of Music, Howard University
1984: A joint resolution designating February 7, 1984, as "Eubie Blake Day" was introduced in the U.S. Congress
1995: United States Postal Service stamp issued in his honor
1995: Induction into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, New York City