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THE LIFE OF EUBIE BLAKE On February 12, 1883, Emily Blake gave birth to a son, James Hubert Blake, at the home she shared with her husband John Blake at 319 Forest Street in Baltimore, Maryland. Freed slaves, John and Emily had taken the last name of their old owner when they achieved their freedom. The couple had been through childbirth ten times previously, but James Hubert was the first to live past infancy. During the delivery, churchwomen crowded the house, murmuring encouraging prayers and occasionally bursting out shouting, “The Good Lord! We all sinners, Lord,” and “Have mercy, Lord.” This chanting continued until the baby was born, answering the women’s prayers. The sole man to be present, the baby’s father John, turned fifty years old that day. He proudly told his infant son, “Bully, you’re a real boy!” Given the family’s history of failed childbirth, no one dared predict the frail and tiny baby would live a long life. But James Hubert Blake—nicknamed Bully by his father, Wally by his mother, Eubie by relatives and friends, and Mouse by neighbors--would surprise them all. In 1894 the family moved to 414 North Eden Street, then later that decade to 1510 Jefferson Street. John Blake worked as a stevedore, making nine dollars a week if it did not rain. He insisted that his son get a good education, especially that he learn to read. He used to tell Eubie, “Everything I ever know I learned from reading.” When his father came home from work he would sit with the boy and make him read the Baltimore Sun. It was important to John that Eubie keep up with what was going on in the world. John also strongly opposed racism but told his son of his experiences as a slave. He insisted there were good and bad white people, just as there were good and bad African Americans. He related to his son how he once saw President Abraham Lincoln – “Ugliest man I ever saw!” He told Eubie of picking cotton from dawn to dusk and of receiving an unjust whipping by a sadistic overseer. When his master discovered this, he chastised the straw boss and put a stop to the torment. John still had scars from the whipping on his back. While Eubie’s mother objected to John telling his son about slavery, he continued to do so, saying, “I want him to know about it, Emily. Everybody, especially every colored child, needs to know.” In his later years Eubie still remembered the philosophical merits of his father’s words. They encouraged him to control his own rage at the inequity and injustices of American society during the twentieth century. His father’s guidance stamped Eubie’s personality for life. Eubie’s mother, Emily, was a God-fearing churchwoman, and her son considered her a pillar of virtue. In addition to the many hours she spent in church, Emily supplemented the family income by doing other people’s wash. The one negative thing Eubie ever said about his mother was that her unquestionable virtues failed to include any mastery of the culinary arts. “Oh, she was a terrible cook,” he used to say. That was particularly disappointing for someone like Eubie who loved sweets and any kind of dessert. Even at the age of ninety-six he sometimes dispatched four sugar doughnuts and a 7-Up before bedtime. As a child he used to buy a big bag of broken cake and cookies at the nearby bakery for two cents, eat them, and then be too full to eat the supper his mother had prepared. Eubie’s musical experience began when he was just four or five years old. While out shopping with his mother, the boy wandered off on his own. He went into a music store, climbed on the bench of an organ, and started “foolin’” around. When his mother found him, the manager of the store 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.” Impressed by the manager’s estimation of their son, the Blakes soon had a $75 dollar pump organ in their house. When he was seven, Eubie received some music lessons from a next-door neighbor, Mrs. Margaret Marshall, an organist at a Methodist church. Emily Blake believed music was justified only if it was doing the Lord’s work. She insisted Eubie only play “godly music.” To enforce this, she listened with a sharp ear to detect any hint of “Satan’s” syncopated rhythm in his playing. Despite his mother’s best efforts, the sounds from nearby pool halls and houses of ill repute exposed Eubie to a syncopated style of music, known as ragtime. Eubie quickly became a convert to the sounds of ragtime, influenced especially by the playing of Jack the Bear Wilson and the aging Jesse Pickett. Interestingly, Eubie said the first time he even heard the word ragtime was when his mother caught him playing “the devil’s music,” and ordered, “Take that ragtime out of my house!” Emily Blake faced an uphill struggle. Local funeral bands played syncopated music when leaving cemeteries after funerals, and Eubie would follow them, listening eagerly. When an aghast Emily learned of this, she forbade her son from attending funeral processions. In addition to his organ playing, Eubie and three other boys formed a vocal quartet that sang renditions of In the Gloaming, Camptown Races, Beautiful Dreamer, and other popular songs of the day. They were good enough to receive tips from the neighborhood saloon trade. One time, Eubie took some of this money and bought some Overholt whiskey. When his father took him home, his mother prayed all night over him. She then told his father, “This boy ain’t dead, but I’m gonna Kill him.” When Eubie was around twelve, he learned to play the cornet and joined Charlie “Cap” Harris’s band. The band played at picnics at excursions, on furniture wagons, and at many of the activities the church sponsored. Eubie received fifty cents for each job he played with the band. Sometimes, the youngster would fill up the holes in the music with some of his own ideas. Harris would turn to him and sternly say: “Cut that stuff out, Mouse. You don’t play that ragtime in my band.” Eubie soon quit the band, saying that playing the cornet made his neck swell up. In addition to his talent for music, some of Eubie’s other lifelong traits were apparent early in his life. He was always careful with his appearance. As a boy, he dressed up for church in high-button shoes, neatly starched collars, a necktie, and a suit with knickers. His mother demanded cleanliness, and Eubie learned that lesson early. Throughout his life, his ensemble was always tasteful in appearance and carefully color-coordinated. Every item of apparel was flawless, right down to the fashionable folds of the handkerchief in his breast pocket. Another lifelong trait was that Eubie was never interested in competitive sports. Piano gave him his reason for not participating in them as he thought it important he protect his “delicate but powerful” hands. Although he was never fond of physical activity, he did become an excellent buck dancer—a talent that became very useful when he later performed in vaudeville. The educational institutes of Eubie’s day did not have programs for the musically talented. Eubie ingeniously improvised his own musical training during his formative years. Part of his schooling came as he listened to pianist Jesse Pickett. Eubie could see Jesse playing through the open window of a local Baltimore bordello and studied his fingerings. Pickett often talked to Eubie and encouraged him. Eubie taught himself to play many of the popular songs of the 1890s, such as Eli Green’s Cake Walk, Mammy’s Little Pickaninny Boy, and Go to Sleep Kentucky Babe. He also became interested in the music of Edward MacDowell, whose To a Wild Rose Eubie used thirty-two years later as a basis for his hit Memories of You. At the young age of fifteen, and without his mother’s knowledge, Eubie began playing piano at Aggie Shelton’s bordello, considered one of the classiest bordellos in the city of Baltimore. The place had a relaxed atmosphere, and six to eight assorted belles were always on hand to keep a marathon party going. The sound of live music enhanced the ambiance, and Eubie became an immediate favorite with the girls and their customers. Even at his young age, his piano playing showed an extraordinary talent. Eubie amazed listeners as he drifted from playing the popular songs of the day into semi-classical songs such as Rustle of Spring and the Blue Danube Waltz. As the young musician’s reputation continued to progress, so did his popularity with the girls. Eubie once commented that the girls were the main reason why he stayed with the music in the first place. Another benefit was the money. Eubie made a lot of tips from Aggie’s customers. He later recalled, “The more tunes you’d know, the more money you’d make.” It was the money that saved the teenaged Eubie from his mother’s rage when she found out what he was doing. He had kept his job secret by sneaking out of the house after going to bed, stopping at the pool hall to pick up a pair of long pants from a man for a quarter, then dashing over to Aggie Shelton’s. His mother, when first told that her son was playing at Shelton’s, refused to believe it. When she found out it was true, she warned her son, “Wait until your father gets home. You will receive the whipping of your life.” When his father returned home, he took Eubie upstairs and asked, “What have you been doing with the money?” Eubie showed his father the money, amounting to several hundred dollars, which he had hidden under the oilcloth floor covering. It was probably more money than the elder Blake had ever seen in one place. It was now up to his father to placate Eubie’s mother. “Now, Emily,” John remarked, “this boy is doing nothing wrong. He’s gonna have to work, and this is good work with good pay. You just better leave him alone to do his work as he sees it.” Emily Blake never did come to terms with her son working at Shelton’s, though she could not fail to see the improved standard of living in the Blake household from that day on. Years later someone asked her how she felt about her son’s musical career. She answered simply, “He could have been using his talent to do the Lord’s work.” It was during this time period (1899) that Eubie completed his composition, Charleston Rag, a work that established a foundation for the Eastern “Stride” style of piano playing. Eubie later explained that he did not write it down (with notes) in 1899, but that was when he composed it. “I didn’t learn how to write [music] until 1915.” Eubie saw many touring Negro shows that passed through Baltimore. In 1901, the Dr. Frazier Caravan (Medicine Show) arrived in town. Eubie became a member of the troupe, playing in the band, singing, and showing his talent for buck dancing. After traveling through various cities, he soon resigned from the caravan. Eubie was dissatisfied both by the reception given by the communities and by Dr. Frazier’s operation. He returned to Baltimore and at age nineteen became part of the company In Old Kentucky. Soon the company was on its way to New York City, although that visit lasted only three days. The year 1902 marked the end of Eubie’s career as a buck dancer. Returning to Baltimore, he got a job as a relief pianist for Big Head Wilbur. He began at four p.m. and worked until midnight. During this engagement he wrote a piece called Corner of Chestnut and Low to celebrate the location of the place—Alfred Greenfeld’s saloon. During these years, Eubie continued to develop and refine his piano style, which was evolving into what might be called an “urban-oriented sound.” The characteristics of his bass, his relatively complex harmonies, and the dynamics of his concepts later influenced the playing of James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, and the great Art Tatum. What Eubie was doing then is what can now be regarded as modern. In an article in the Mississippi Rag Magazine, Reid Badger writes this about Eubie’s style of playing: To learn a rag you must master and memorize four bars at a time. After the entire rag is learned, it can be played however one chooses. There is no reason to play the rag exactly as written and the player should insert his own ideas and personality. The more classic rags should not be rushed, but rags containing many single notes and runs benefit from slightly increased tempos. The modern piano players all sound alike because they don’t know how to use the left hand. Eubie had a large span in his left hand, making it easier for him to reach notes others could not. Playing a tenth with his left hand, as Eubie could easily do, was central to his music. In 1903 Eubie left Greenfeld’s saloon and began playing in Annie Gilly’s rowdy sporting house, a large hall where the “Johns” and the girls “whooped” it up and the piano could barely be heard. Eubie was becoming prosperous and soon purchased a Jacobs piano. It was during this time that he developed a musical piece of unique character, one that remained nameless for years and eventually was published as Eubie’s Boogie. It was the beginning of the formalization of his highly identifiable wobble-wobble bass style. In 1905 Eubie traveled again to New York and performed for a time at Edmund’s Cafe on 28th Street, but soon returned to Baltimore, where for most of 1905 he worked at the Middle Section Assembly Club. While he still brought most of his pay home to his mother, Eubie started to take up gambling. This habit was a brief one, however, as a professional gambler called Jew Abie encouraged Eubie to stick to something he was good at—namely, playing music. Eubie listened and swore off gambling forever. From then on, Eubie never even bet on horses, although Pimlico, the racetrack in Baltimore, later started an annual race called the Eubie Blake Purse. Eubie began working in Atlantic City during the summer months, thus avoiding the hot Baltimore summers and the lull in entertainment the heat brought on. It was there that Eubie met a 16-year-old pianist named James P. Johnson. Johnson played for Eubie his Troublesome Ivories piece and impressed Eubie with his talent. After that first summer in Atlantic City, Eubie returned to Baltimore and continued to play at the Middle Section Assembly Club. Eubie and Hughie Wolford worked together in these months. According to Eubie, he actually wrote the piece Raggin’ the Scale, later copyrighted by Ed Claypoole, during this time. A highlight of 1905-06 was when Will Marion Cook came to the Middle Section Club. Eubie later observed, “Much of what I became I owe to ‘Pops’ Cook.” Eubie played a tune he had written for Cook, who named the piece Sounds of Africa. Impressed by the music, Cook brought Eubie to Schirmer’s Publishing Company, which accepted the piece for publication. Cook, however, accused the publisher of criticizing Blake, and this eccentric behavior spoiled the deal. Blake ended up having to wait years for the publication of the song, later renamed Charleston Rag. In 1907, Joe Gans, an African American, won the world’s lightweight boxing championship. With his winnings he opened the Goldfield Hotel in Baltimore. Gans hired Eubie and Boots Butler to play piano. Eubie was twenty-four years old. Eventually, Gans hired an additional piano player, a colorful character named One Leg Willie. Eubie, awed by One Leg Willie’s skill, remarked; “Nobody could copy him. He knew everything, the heaviest classic and any kind of rags. I learned plenty from just watchin’ him.” During the three years he played at the Goldfield, Eubie’s creativity blossomed and he wrote The Baltimore Todolo, Kitchen Tom, Tricky Fingers, Novelty Rag, and Poor Katie Redd. Playing at the Goldfield also enabled Eubie to hobnob with the famous and powerful. The Goldfield became the place where wealthier Baltimoreans, as well as famous sports and entertainment celebrities, gathered. Blake received the opportunity to accompany a number of great singing stars such as Mary Stafford, Lottie Dempsey, Alberta Hunter and others. Entertainers such as Eddie Foy and George M. Cohan came and heard Eubie play. In July of 1910 Eubie married Avis Lee, proposing to her in a car driven by a hired chauffeur. Eubie had met Avis fifteen years earlier while attending Primary School No. 2 at 200 East Street. Avis lovingly called him “dummy” because of his notoriously undistinguished academic performance. Avis was also an accomplished pianist and was said to have been a mathematical genius, besides being very beautiful. That summer Eubie brought Avis to Atlantic City and introduced her to his world. He was then working at the Boathouse nightclub. Eubie’s career from the end of 1910 to May of 1915 was a succession of good jobs playing piano at various locations. He continued to compose, writing Chevy Chase and Fizz Water in 1911. That year also saw the Brittwood Rag. As to the naming of the Brittwood Rag, Eubie recalled, “One day in the thirties I walked into the Brittwood Club in Harlem just to say hello to Willie Gant, a fine piano player. A man I had known for years. Now before I talk to him, I hear a piece he’s playin’ and I know it and I don’t know it. I’m tryin’ to think and it’s so familiar, but I just can’t place it. So he gets finished playin’ it and we say hello and I ask him, ‘What’s the name of that piece you just played?’ He gives me a funny look. He says, ‘I never did know the name of it. You wrote it. In fact you taught it to me almost 20 years ago.’” Eubie then remarked, “I never did give it a name, but then in honor of the place where Willie Gant was workin’ I named it the Brittwood Rag.” During these years, Eubie never imagined that events were about to unfold which would lead to a legendary entertainment partnership between him and a man named Noble Sissle. It was May 16, 1915 that he and Sissle met for the first time. Joe Porter’s band was to play at Riverview Park in Baltimore with Eubie on piano. Singer Noble Sissle was coming from out of town to attend the engagement but was late. When Sissle finally arrived, long after the band had left without him, Eubie began talking with him, mentioning that he needed a lyricist. Thus was born a long and fruitful partnership. The partners achieved immediate success with their first song together, It’s All Your Fault. Sophie Tucker heard it, liked it, and incorporated it into her act at the Maryland Theater in Baltimore. It was an instant hit. In 1915 the team wrote See America First. With Sissle’s New York connection, Eubie found himself working in Long Island as a full-time pianist. During this time Sissle and Blake met James Reese Europe and became close friends with him. Eubie’s admiration for Europe survived Europe’s murder by his drummer; Blake always venerated Europe’s memory profoundly. The duo of Sissle and Blake inevitably became well-known as society entertainers throughout the Eastern seaboard, playing for the Goulds, Dodges, Schwabs, Wanamakers, and other wealthy members of society. Eubie also played big dance jobs with Europe’s band. Europe was booked into the best hotels and had excellent musicians in the band. The musicians in Europe’s band were all “reading” musicians, a fact that many white people could not comprehend, remarking in surprise that, “Isn’t it wonderful how these untrained, primitive musicians can pick up all the latest songs instantly without being able to read music?” As performers, both Sissle and Blake fit the James Europe model of the African American professional entertainer perfectly. Sissle, as described by the Freeman in March 1916, always “appears in ‘straight’ dress – never resorts to slap-stick stuff,” and his appeal “is to the higher senses” while adding “a bit of comedy relish to his numbers.” Blake’s ability as a pianist and composer, the paper added, “has already set a new pace in instrumental productions,” and “together the pair provides an incentive to those in and out of the business to strive for nobler and higher ends in the art of ‘holding the mirror up to nature’ for the edification of mankind.” The friends were split up for a time, as Europe and Sissle enlisted into the Army when the United States entered the First World War. Blake formed a vaudeville duo with an entertainer named Broadway Jones. It was for Jones that Jerome Kern wrote Old Man River. The team of Jones and Blake lasted until Sissle got out of the Army, when Eubie and Sissle decided to work up a new vaudeville routine. The year 1919 found them on the Keith Vaudeville circuit as the “Dixie Duo.” They opened in Bridgeport, Connecticut, then proceeded to the Harlem Opera House and then right into the Palace, a mecca for vaudeville entertainers. The reunited partners soon signed with Witmark & Sons as a songwriting team. The contribution of the Witmarks to the development of African American musical talent cannot be overestimated. They produced the landmark Will Marion Cook’s Clorindy, the Origin of the Cakewalk. The songwriting duo was with Witmark for ten years, being paid twenty-five dollars each per week, as well as two cents a copy for all sheet music sold. The team joined Warner Brothers in 1929 when the movie company bought out the Witmarks. Eubie and Sissle were in Chicago about 1916 playing at an Erlanger Theater while Al Jolson was playing at another local theater. This is when Al Jolson began putting on cork to appear in blackface. When Jolson left town, Eddie Cantor arrived and began using cork, too. At that time, white audiences enjoyed seeing African American men sing, as long as the singers were really white men wearing cork. Sissle & Blake were the first African American act in history to succeed in show business, often playing for white audiences, without cork. Before this, the white public would never take seriously African American entertainers claiming to have the same creativity and emotional capacities as whites. The precedent of Sissle and Blake prepared the way for the artists of color who followed them. Thus, the duo represented a giant step forward in American culture and provided a major achievement for American theater. In 1920 the pair toured for the Keith Vaudeville circuit through Canada and the Northeast. It was during this time that Eubie wrote Florodora Girls for a Shubert Brothers Review. The pair also wrote Oriental Blues and Pickaninny Shoes, a number that was to be a feature for Sissle in the act for many, many years. The act became increasingly well developed, with songs and sophisticated patter. It contained a series of set pieces with a few openings to accommodate the latest hit songs and any improvising that seemed appropriate for the moment. The finale, with Sissle singing On Patrol in No Man’s Land and Eubie providing the bombardment on the piano, was almost too much for an audience to bear without cheering and stomping. They became a major theatrical attraction of the era. Fate stepped in at the Paul Laurence Dunbar Theater in early 1920. Sissle and Blake performed, and on the same bill was the team of Miller and Lyles. Meeting for the first time it became a mutual admiration society, leading to work on a project called The Mayor of Jimtown. Not long after, in 1921, the project matured into the historic Shuffle Along, perhaps the most influential and important African American musical in the history of theater. The show ran for 504 performances and spawned three Shuffle Along road companies, which broke color barriers in theaters all across the country. In the book “American Musical Theatre” by Gerald Bordman we find a synopsis of the musical: The book represented no step forward for the musical theatre, but the music certainly did. Blake’s was a foot-stomping score. Its rhythms provoked an orgy of giddy dancing that had audiences shouting for more tap routines, soft shoes, buck and wing, and precision numbers. The hit of course was I’m Just Wild About Harry. Originally conceived as a waltz, it was much more at home as a fast-moving fox trot. Romberg and Friml tried the same trick for several years, but so innate was the waltz to their thinking that nothing productive resulted. But for Blake the waltz was alien, and his native rhythms, just coming to be understood by the more advanced critics and public, offered the more logical frame for his melodies. Though I’m Just Wild About Harry alone is remembered, the score was first class all the way. Whether in a stunning, ahead-of-its-time ballad like Love Will Find a Way (sung by Matthews and Lottie Gee as his girl, Jessie) or in the racy festivity of Bandana Days (essentially a chorus number), Blake’s melodic gift and taste were unfailing. The brighter critics hailed the show, and the public slowly began to find its way uptown. Then midnight performances were added on Wednesday. Theatre and society people caught these late shows and spread the word. Suddenly Shuffle Along was a smash. By the time it was through it had reached 504 performances on Broadway alone. The show launched a flock of great names – Florence Mills, Josephine Baker, Hall Johnson. Single-handedly, Shuffle Along made black shows voguish, or at least, acceptable. With the success of Shuffle Along, the careers of the Sissle and Blake blossomed. The years 1923-25 would be considered the golden years for the team. At the time, they had no reason to suspect that within a decade the popularity of vaudeville would be dimming with the maturing of the Hollywood talkies. In September 1925, the duo embarked on what became a sensational European tour, earning the nickname the American Ambassadors of Syncopation. Sissle loved England, but Eubie could not wait to get home. States, Eubie immediately went to Baltimore to see his mother. By this time, Eubie was a celebrity, and the hometown paper’s headline read: “Eubie Blake Back from Foreign Tour.” His mother was then living at 915 Ruland Avenue, a widow following the death of John Blake at age eighty-three in 1917. Despite Eubie’s success and wealth, his mother remained suspicious of his activities, convinced that if the police did not catch him and punish him for misdeeds, inevitably the devil would. She did not question his musical talent but bemoaned the fact that it was not directed to doing the work of the Lord. Several years later, in 1927, Eubie was in Bridgeport, Connecticut, when he received a telegram telling him of his mother’s death. Another blow came in the summer of 1927. Sissle entered the duo’s dressing room and sat down. He stared at the floor and said to Blake, “I’m going to the American Legion convention in Paris.” Blake asked him, “When you coming back?” When Sissle did not answer, Blake said, “Well, I guess this is the end of Sissle and Blake.” Sissle’s eyes remained on the floor, then he got up and left. That was the end of Sissle and Blake. Sissle went to Paris and became a successful bandleader. Blake spent the rest of the year writing floorshows with lyricist Henry Creamer and composing a number of great popular songs. When Sissle was asked in 1948 about his relationship with Blake, he remarked, “Sometimes I get lonesome for the old man. You know I’ve never had the same satisfaction in collaborating with anyone else. He’s a real genius. Most people don’t recognize it yet, but someday there’ll be songs of his that nobody’s ever heard that everybody will know.” In September of 1927 Blake formed a new act with ‘Broadway’ Jones and opened at the Lincoln Theater in Union City, New Jersey. The new duo played Patchogue and Lynbrook, Long Island, and New Britain, Connecticut. Their salary was $50 a day. Eubie was satisfied, as it was never the money but the thrill of an audience that was his desire. He had enough money coming from ASCAP for royalties for his songs. In 1928 the two organized a “tab-show” version of Shuffle Along entitled Shuffle Along Jr. This venture lasted through 1929, but by then vaudeville was doomed and talking pictures were everywhere. Adding to the demise of vaudeville was the stock market collapse and the beginning of the Great Depression. In 1930 Lew Leslie approached Blake to work on one of his shows, which Leslie called Blackbirds. Eubie, working with the great lyricist Andy Razaf, supplied twenty-eight songs for an advance of $3000. Andy Razaf later spoke of his relationship with Blake in these terms: It was during this time that Eubie wrote You’re Lucky to Me and Memories of You, both numbers for Razaf’s show. The latter became a huge hit, recorded as an instrumental by Benny Goodman, and became a best seller in a version by the Casa Loma Orchestra. Critics considered seventeen-year-old Sonny Dunham’s sensational trumpet solo on the record the instrumental achievement of the year. When Dunham formed his own orchestra, he used “Memories” as his theme song. For Eubie, Blackbirds’ success was welcome, particularly as he conducted the show and was making $250 a week, big money for 1930. The 1930s began on an up note for Eubie, with the success of Blackbirds and of a song for which he had written the melody, Loving You the Way I Do, the Broadway hit of the year. Unfortunately, the rest of the 1930s were not as favorable for Eubie. A revival of Shuffle Along, presented in 1933, was a first class show; among the performers was a then-unknown Nat King Cole. However, the show came across as too outdated for the present scene on Broadway and failed. In 1938, tragedy struck as Avis, Eubie’s wife, developed tuberculosis and moved into a sanitarium. Avis died at the age of 58. Eubie later reflected: “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.” After her death, every mention of Avis saddened Eubie. He said, “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have any reason to do anything. No kids, nobody.” The coming of World War II drastically altered the direction of Eubie’s life. He was invited to lead an entertainment unit to play for the soldiers under the auspices of the USO. He was now sixty years old and threw himself into the project, writing and performing for camps from Savannah to Seattle. He loved it. He had been too old for World War I and much more so for World War II, but the show had plenty of girls and very appreciative audiences. Eubie would never be too old for that. Toward the end of the war his loneliness came to an end. Something wonderful happened. He met Marion Gant Tyler. They married on December 27, 1945. The couple returned to New York and moved into Marion’s three-story brownstone house in Brooklyn. Eubie liked to be looked after, and Marion was the perfect wife for him. Having experienced the world of show business, she had the temperament and understanding that was needed to be married to a creative talent. Eubie’s star began to shine again with Marion’s help. She upgraded his ASCAP rating and began to supervise the use of his time. Eubie had only to perform if and when he pleased. Although Marion took charge of his career, when artistic matters needed to be resolved, she left it up to Eubie. Feeling secure in his new life, at age sixty-three he decided to enroll in New York University to study composition with Joseph Schillinger. In June of 1950, Eubie, at the age of sixty-seven, graduated from the university with a degree in music. In 1955 his thesis, a musical composition entitled Dictys on Seventh Avenue, was published. These years also saw the renewal of Eubie’s association with Noble Sissle, his old partner, although the relationship was more social than musical. Impetus for the reunion came around 1948 when their old song I’m Just Wild About Harry was used as a campaign song by President Harry Truman. From this reunion came another attempt at a revival of Shuffle Along in 1952. The revival failed, probably because drastic last-minute changes destroyed the original concept. Also, by then, it was noticeably outdated. It ran for only four performances. Eubie had his luck change for the better, however, as Rudi Blesh published They All Played Ragtime. The book brought to an ignorant public a rediscovery of Joplin, Lamb, Marshall, Blake, and other giants of early ragtime. Shortly afterward, Max Morath began his ragtime series on television. A ragtime revival was under way with the music of Turk Murphy and others. Eubie made an appearance in a television production that featured him and three other pianists: Hoagy Carmichael, Dick Wellstood, and Ralph Sutton. Twentieth Century Records in 1958-59 made two LPs featuring Eubie, The Wizard of Ragtime Piano and The Marches I Played on the Old Ragtime Piano. In 1967 Marion and Eubie accepted an invitation for Eubie to appear at the Ragfest in St. Louis. Eubie’s rapport and love of his audience were fulfilled beyond what even he could have anticipated. Eubie gave his first “real” concert in the Theater of the Goldenrod. After an introduction, Eubie sat down at the piano in the pit of the theater—there was no piano on stage. Eubie first spoke to the audience: “Ladies and gentleman. I’ve been playing the piano for seventy years.” (Applause) “But this is a first. This is the first time I ever played with my back to the audience.” (More applause) “With your permission, after each number I’ll turn around and we’ll talk awhile.” (The audience stood and cheered.) Then Eubie played. After Eubie finished, the audience was nearly delirious and almost could not contain itself. All those present had expected was to see Eubie in person and perhaps get an idea of how he had sounded fifty years before. They could not have imagined anyone giving the astonishingly skilled performance Eubie provided for them. How did Eubie feel after his performance? “I was just doin’ what I always done.” Eubie continued to impress critics as well. Regarding a performance in the 1969 New Orleans Jazz Fest, a reviewer wrote: “The festival’s most impressive segment may have been a 12-minute interval by a frail, eighty-six year old pianist. He needed assistance entering the stage when producer Willis Conover announced his name. As the applause mounted, his halting gait became a vigorous stride, until at last the little man was scampering toward the piano bench with his hands clasped over his head like a prizefighter. The next few moments were sheer magic. The pianist played with power and joy, juxtaposing an intricate right hand melody against an electrifying left-handed ‘oom-pah’ bass to create an intense ragtime syncopation.” In 1969 John Hammond issued a double LP album with Eubie Blake on Columbia Records. Eubie was again a big celebrity, receiving bags of fan mail. Leading jazz magazines and news publications such as Mississippi Rag, Rag Times, the Ragtimer, the Times and Newsweek printed stories on the elderly jazz musician. Refusing to slow down, in 1972 Eubie made at least 40 public appearances. The following year Eubie was even busier. On January 27, 1973, he made the first of many appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. This made him familiar to millions in the general public. Throughout the 1970s, Blake appeared on a remarkable number of television shows. In addition to his regular appearances on Johnny Carson, he also could be seen on shows hosted by Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, Jack Paar, Ralph Story, Bill Rose, and Leonard Feather, as well as on the Jerry Lewis Telethon. On June 5, 1973, Brooklyn College awarded an honorary doctorate to Eubie. On June 10, the owners of the Thompkins Theater in New York renamed it the Eubie Blake Theater. And on June 28 came an award that Eubie wished he could have shared with his mother—he was honored by the Abyssinian Baptist Church! On February 12, 1983, Eubie and Marion celebrated in New York on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. The president of the United States sent birthday greetings. From New York they returned to Baltimore, where, on February 14, the city officially honored its native son on “Salute Eubie Blake Day.” It was a hectic schedule for a man half Eubie’s age. Interestingly, Eubie had done all his traveling to that point by land. He had always had a fear of flying, saying, “I’ve never been on a plane and never expect to unless I’m handcuffed to a sheriff.” But, after ninety years on the ground or at sea, Eubie at last took to the air. On May 19, 1973, Eubie made his initial flight to Buffalo, New York, to make some piano rolls. Having conquered his fears, this flight would lead to many others. Perhaps the highlight of Eubie’s career as an African American musician was his appearance with Dr. Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra. Up on the podium Dr. Fiedler fronted an orchestra of 105 of the finest musicians in the land. The downbeat came and the orchestra launched into Blake’s Memories of You. Right on cue, the spotlight came on Eubie, and he began to play. Then he treated the audience to some ragtime. When it was over, Eubie sat with tears of joy rolling down his cheeks. His life had had many ups and downs, many crescendos, but this one, he felt, was the ultimate accolade. He could not see the audience through the bright lights and the tears, but he could hear the thunderous applause as he gave them his customary over the head handclasp. When it was over, he signed autographs, with the crowds waiting just to see him, touch him, or say a word to him. Finally, Eubie and Marion got into a waiting car. Eubie turned nonchalantly to Marion and said, “Where do we go from here?” He need not have worried. There was plenty left to do. In 1974 Eubie continued to play at jazz festivals and events throughout the United States and overseas. His 1975 birthday was spent giving a concert at Harvard University. In early 1976, he celebrated his ninety-third birthday at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. An appearance at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival offered an opportunity to see a lot of old friends. He played Chevy Chase and Poor Katie Redd with the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra of Bill Russell, the noted jazz historian. Back in Los Angeles he helped salute Irving Berlin on April 27, and on July 22 he played the part of Will Williams, the proprietor of the Maple Leaf Club in the movie of Scott Joplin’s life. One appearance by Eubie spotlighted him in a way he had not expected. He attended a gathering of ragtime stars and scholars in Sedalia, Missouri, the home of Scott Joplin. In the audience were scholars who could relate, to Eubie, the events of his career. They could name the catalog numbers on his recordings and the hundreds of compositions he had written. These facts astonished Eubie, a modest man. He had no idea that highly regarded scholars were focusing so intensely on his work. On February 7, 1983, a two-hour concert celebrated Eubie’s one-hundredth birthday. Adelaide Hall came from London to sing a medley of tunes from Shuffle Along, and pianists Dick Hyman, Dick Zimmerman, John Arpin, Max Morath, Billy Taylor, Terry Waldo, and Bobby Short added their talents to the show. The rhythm section featured Howard Alden on banjo and guitar, Milt Hinton on bass, and Ron Traxler on drums. Eubie was not able to attend the concert in person, as he was suffering from pneumonia at the time. However, he was able to watch the concert via closed circuit television. It was a sad day in history, when, five days after his one-hundredth birthday, the last remaining original player of ragtime music died. Eubie Blake lived a long and successful life, not without pitfalls, but like a phoenix, always rising and gaining higher pinnacles. His music was revolutionary in its time, yet it was not until later that people appreciated how his music forged new paths in American popular music. His profound character broke fresh ground in the way the American public looked at African American artists. The classy manner in which he presented his vaudeville act with Sissle showed that the African American artist did not have to rely on stereotypical presentations to be accepted. Eubie’s playing style was responsible for developing a totally new form of playing jazz. With his stride, wobble-wobble bass, and new harmonic progressions, his music was the bridge between the ragtime style of playing syncopated music and jazz. His individual self-esteem, his work ethic, his attention to the way he dressed, his cleanliness, his attention to his father’s words, his love for his mother, his admiration and helpfulness to fellow musicians, all spoke well for a new image for the African American musician and artist. Most of all, Eubie Blake never disappointed his audiences, giving all he had to each and every performance. His many compositions will always be regarded as works of art and will remain influential to all composers. |
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