Noble Sissle was one of the nation's premier jazz composers and bandleaders, particularly in the early days of American popular song and theater. Sissle was one of the nation's premier jazz composers, lyricists, vocalist and bandleaders, particularly in the early days of American popular song and theater. As half of the duo that composed “Shuffle Along,” he helped to bring creativity to a new level on the Broadway stage. He was born in Indianapolis, IN on July 10, 1889. His father was a pastor in the AM&E Zion church and his mother a school-teacher and juvenile probation officer. In 1906, the family moved to Cleveland where young Sissle sang on a vaudeville circuit. He attended the integrated Central High School where he was in the high school chorus and a mixed-race male vocal quartet. As a youth Sissle sang in church choirs and as a soloist with his high school’s glee club in Cleveland, Ohio.
The family returned to Indianapolis in 1913 after his father’s death. Noble was in and out of school as he went out on the road with Edward Thomas’ Male Quartet and Hann’s Jubilee Singers to help support his family. In the fall of 1913, Sissle attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, for one semester before transferring to Butler University in Indianapolis. Sissle’s time at Butler came to an early end, however, as he moved into a full-time music career. Since childhood, Sissle had been interested in singing and writing songs. Though he had very little formal training as a musician, he had gained quite a reputation in high school and college as an entertainer with an excellent tenor singing voice. While at Butler, he even wrote several “yells” for the football team. Sissle was working at the Severin Hotel in Indianapolis in 1914 when, at the request of the owner of the Severin Hotel, Sissle formed a 12-piece orchestra to play regularly there.
Moving to Baltimore in 1915, Sissle landed a job singing with a vocal group called Joe Porter's Serenaders. Performing in a Baltimore park one evening, he met James Hubert "Eubie" Blake, a ragtime pianist who was a star of the city's music scene and was known up and down the East Coast. The two men hit it off creatively. Sissle had written lyrics for a song called "It's All Your Fault," and soon Blake had set it to music. The pair found immediate success when Sophie Tucker, one of the leading White female vocal stars of the day, introduced the song at a Baltimore performance. With this experience under his belt he was hired into the dance orchestra of New York bandleader James Reese Europe, whom he had known since his Indianapolis days.
In 1916 Sissle joined with Lieutenant Europe's band, performing and touring. Sissle played violin, guitar, sang vocals and also served as drum major for the 369th. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Sissle and Europe enlisted in the U.S. Army and were assigned to the 369th Infantry Regiment (The Harlem Hell Fighters) and formed a military band. During training in North Carolina, when Europe, Noble Sissle, attempted to buy a newspaper from a hotel shop, they were refused service. Tensions rose as officers of the 27th division, a White New York National Guard unit threatened to boycott and burn down stores who refused to serve Black officers. The men of Europe’s unit were willing to peacefully abide by Jim Crow segregation, as ordered by commanding officer, Col. William Hayward, but the 27th would not stand for it. In order to keep the peace, Europe’s unit was sent to France to finish their training.
The 369th Infantry Regimental Band was a smash success, and Sissle thus became one of the first Black musicians to find and enjoy the appreciation of audiences across the Atlantic. It was at this moment in 1918 that the enduring French love affair with American jazz was born. The band traveled over 2,000 miles and introduced jazz to European audiences, boosting morale. A few weeks after the Armistice the "Hell Fighters" of the 369th Infantry Regiment were awarded France's highest military honor, the Croix de Guerre. When James Reese Europe and Noble Sissle came home in February 1919, Europe's unit was cheered unanimously by thousands in a victory parade from 5th Avenue to Harlem. Sissle left the army after the war as a second lieutenant with the 370th Infantry Regiment and joined Europe’s civilian version of the 369th band. The two men rejoined Blake and attempted to revive Black theatrical shows.
Not long afterwards, James Europe was murdered by a disgruntled band member in Boston, Massachusetts in 1919. This left Sissle, with the help of his friend, Eubie Blake, to take temporary charge of Europe's band. Sissle and Blake formed the vaudeville act, called “The Dixie Duo”. This act differed from other Black stage presentations of the day in two important respects. First, Sissle and Blake worked, not in theaters that catered primarily to African Americans, but, rather, in the circuit under the control of the country's leading theatrical promoters. Sissle and Blake were able to partly break down the segregated seating arrangements that prevailed in many theaters. Bookers wanted them to do something more akin to a “coon” act, and they did retain some minstrelsy, but they were intent on doing a tuxedoed, higher-class musical act-the kind of thing they’d been used to doing in the Tempo club gigs.
Most important, though they did not cater to the stereotypes of Blacks that pervaded productions of the day, they did not wear the burnt-cork blackface makeup that was conventional for both White and Black minstrel performers. Sissle and Blake are thus credited with a major step in the creation of a more dignified image for Black entertainers. Among their hit songs in vaudeville was "Gee; I’m Glad I’m From Dixie". Not long after these events, Sissle married Harriet Toye. He helped to raise Toye’s daughter and together they had two more children. In 1920, Sissle and Blake met vaudevillians Flournoy E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles. Back when Europe, Blake, and Sissle would talk about producing a show, they discussed how they might find a story to base the show on, and the names of Miller and Lyles came up. The “Dixie Duo” was playing a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) fundraiser in Philadelphia, and when the show was over, they got together and started to discuss it. But Miller and Lyle didn’t think White folks would go to see a Black show, so nothing happened. Then Henry Cort, member of a wealthy White New York theatrical family, had decided to back the show and joined formally as producer.
In 1921, the four men pooled their resources to write, direct, manage, and star in the historic shows "Shuffle Along" and "The Chocolate Dandies". "Shuffle Along", first produced for Broadway in 1921, ran for over 500 performances. It was the first all-Black musical to become a box office hit. The reason for the show’s success was probably the rhythmic excitement of the songs and dancing, which were very different than what customers were used to seeing on Broadway. The singers, dancers and instrumentalists were all highly trained. On opening night, Blake was on stage playing, "Love Will Find A Way", while his partners stood near the door ready to flee. Sissle and Noble had thought that the theater may have erupted in violence at the suggestion of romantic love between a Black actor and actress. Unexpectedly, the song was well received and the longstanding theater taboo was finally broken.
The show’s most popular song was written as a waltz, but the singer disliked the tempo so Sissle revised it into the hit, "I’m Just Wild About Harry." Aside from the stage, Sissle recorded over 30 vocals during the early and mid-'20s, many times accompanied by Blake. "Shuffle Along" inaugurated the careers of future stars Josephine Baker, Florence Mills and Paul Robeson, who were part of the company. The show toured many cities, generating wide press coverage and generating income from recordings and sheet music sales. Once the show left New York, it toured for three years and was the first all-Black musical to play in White theaters across the United States. Then they wrote 10 songs in 1923 for the production of Elsie, which never made it out of Chicago. They joined forces again on "The Chocolate Dandies" (1924), written to showcase Josephine Baker, and other shows, and went on tour in Europe as "The American Ambassadors of Syncopation." The pair also appeared in some pioneering sound film shorts in the early '20s that can be considered the first jazz music on film.
In 1925, Sissle and Blake toured Europe, as they were a hit in Europe and Charles Cochran, “the Ziegfield of London,” asked them to write his next show. But Sissle's traveling ways led to a split with Blake. One of the issues was that Blake wanted to return to the U.S, while Sissle hoped to pursue opportunities in France's expanding jazz scene. Encouraged by songwriter Cole Porter, Sissle put together a band of top jazz expatriates that included clarinetist Sidney Bechet. Trumpet player Tommy Ladnier provided much of the improvisational punch in the orchestra. Sissle’s band played at formal parties at London embassies and he was a favorite of the Prince of Wales, who was a guest drummer at one of his concerts. Sissle and his band appear in a 1930 British Pathétone short filmed at Ciro’s nightclub in London, performing Walter Donaldson's "Little White Lies" and "Happy Feet", written by Jack Yellen and Milton Ager.
Sissle was informed that CBS had a 15-minute daily radio slot open, so he decided to return to the US in 1931 and got the slot. After his return from Europe, the “Dixie Duo” performed and Sissle freelanced as a vocalist on recordings for Okeh, Brunswick, and Edison. In February 1931, Sissle accompanied Adelaide Hall on piano at the prestigious Palace Theatre (Broadway) in New York during her 1931-32 world tour. In 1932, Sissle appeared with Nina Mae McKinney, the Nicholas Brothers, and Eubie Blake in "Pie, Pie Blackbird", released by Warner Bros. Also in 1932, Sissle appeared in a short film with a plot of sorts, That’s The Spirit, in which he conducts, dances, and mugs. Sissle and Blake reunited for the Broadway show "Shuffle Along of 1933". It was less successful than its predecessor but spawned another significant career--that of Nat "King" Cole, who performed on keyboards.
Yet another performer whose career Sissle helped along was that of Lena Horne, who became the featured female vocalist with his orchestra in a 1936 session. Noble Sissle helped organize the Negro Actors Guild of America in 1936 and became its first president when the organization began operating in 1937. He eventually used it as a platform to establish a Concert Varieties Program for young performers. Around 1940, Sissle started taking in shows at the Cotton Club—he was famous enough to get in despite the color line at the club. Sissle returned to Europe to entertain U.S. troops during World War II as an early participant in the formation of the United Service Organizations (USO). In the presidential election of 1948, Harry Truman used “I’m Just Wild About Harry” as a campaign song and rejuvenated interest in Shuffle Along. Throughout the 1940s, Sissle wrote columns for the New York Age and Amsterdam News.
Sissle succeeded Bill "Bojangles" Robinson as honorary mayor of Harlem in 1950, and played at Eisenhower's inaugural in 1953. In the 1960s Sissle held a number of occupations. He was WMGM's first Black disc jockey in 1960. His show featured the music of African American recording artists. Sissle ran his own publishing company, and owned a nightclub. Repeated muggings caused him to retire to Florida. Sissle and Blake had continued to perform and to write until 1968. Their last song was “Didn’t the Angels Sing for Martin Luther King”. In 1968, he and Blake recorded, “86 Years of Eubie Blake.” Noble Sissle, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, died on December 17, 1975. Unlike many other Black musicians, Sissle had succeeded in maintaining ownership of many of his works. Noble Sissle’s contributions to the arts and his efforts in breaking racial barriers in the entertainment industry were significant. He paved the way for future generations of Black American musicians and performers. His work helped popularize jazz and shaped the cultural landscape of the Harlem Renaissance.