Help: Eubie Blake

Subject: RE: Help: Eubey Blake
From: kendall
Date: 11 Sep 02 - 05:08 AM

He was also somewhat of a wit. In an interview when he was 90, he was asked what it felt like to be 90, and he replied "I don't think of myself as an old man, I think of myself as a young man with some serious problems." I believe it was he who said, "If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."

Subject: RE: Help: Eubey Blake
From: Kaleea
Date: 11 Sep 02 - 03:31 AM

I always enjoyed the wonderful ragtime music of Mr. Blake! I was fortunate enough to see him in concert in his later years, and I thoroughtly loved it! He wrote & performed his ragtime tunes(& songs) most of his life. I once had a terrific (musical heritage society) record of an ensemble playing his works. Ragtime was the pop music of the teenagers of the early 1900's, quite energetic & lively.

Subject: RE: Help: Eubey Blake
From: Amos
Date: 10 Sep 02 - 03:15 PM

Here's a great little excerpt from an interview with Eubie Blake by Max Morath, about playing in bordellos as a teenager:

Morath: Were you . . . when you were a teenager or in your early professional days, were you in that . . .ah, kind of work. I mean were you close enough to that that you could tell us about it?

Blake: Yeah. Now you see when I first start to play in these houses, see, it must have been around nineteen hundred.

Morath: So you were about fifteen . . . sixteen.

Blake: Yeah. I used to have to go across to the pool room. A guy named Rab Walker, he ran the pool room. And I got a pair of long pants to put on, you see, because I can't go in this house with short pants on, see. The pants come way up here, Max, way up here and roll up, and I go and play. The woman paid me three dollars a week. But she never paid me nothing because I made tips. Boy, sometimes I'd make seven and eight, ten dollars, see? I've been lucky all my life: I've always made good money. So, I'd take the guys to the theater, to the burlesque theater. They'd go up in the gallery, you know. Ten cents. If I'd take fifteen guys I'd spend . . . I had ­ Max this is true ­ I had money all under the carpet.
So the lady next door, Harp's mother. When they heard that I was playing, then my mother said, this woman . . . "I heard somebody play just like little Eubie," see. "Little Eubie." She says, "Where?" Says "Up in Aggie Shelton's." Well, she don't know who Aggie Shelton is. She says, "What time?" "Oh, it must have been about twelve o'clock." And I'd steal out at night.

Morath: You'd sneak out of the house at night.

Blake: Sneak out of the house and go get my long pants and put'em on, see. Then I'd come back and put'em back, see. Twenty-five cents I had to pay him. And my mother says, "Oh, it couldn't have been him, that boy went to bed at nine o'clock." I did go to bed, see, but my mother was at the front and I'd go out the alley. Go right out the alley and go across the street, get my long pants, put'em on, go up to Aggie Shelton's to work. Well, I worked up there for about three or four months. Then I went down on what they call the line: sporting houses on this side, sporting houses on that side, see. That was Annie Gilly's and I played down there. That's where the man come and got me to play for the . . .

Morath: Medicine Show?

Blake: Medicine Show! See.

(...snip)...

Regards,


A

Subject: RE: Help: Eubey Blake
From: Amos
Date: 10 Sep 02 - 03:10 PM

Eubie Blake, ragtime composer and performer, was born on February 7,1883 in Baltimore, Md. At the age of four or five, Blake began playing his family's pump organ. Noticing his interest in music, Blake's parents signed him up for piano lessons with a neighborhood teacher. In 1898, at the age of 15, Blake became interested in ragtime, to his mother's dismay. Against her wishes and without her knowing, he began his professional music career by playing ragtime piano in Baltimore brothels, honky tonks and bars. He later played in clubs and saloons.

Blake's work led him to meet the major musicians of the time. One of whom, Noble Sissle, would later become his partner. The pair met in 1915. Sissle joined Blake's band as a singer. Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake created a vaudeville act, the Dixie Duo. They wrote songs and performed. Sophie Tucker sang their first song, "It's All Your Fault," and the song became an instant hit.

Then Blake and Sissle teamed up with another duo to create Shuffle Along. The Broadway all-star cast included Josephine Baker, Florence Mills and Paul Robeson. Many of Blake's most famous songs come from Shuffle Along including "I'm Just Wild about Harry" and "Love Will Find a Way". The play was so popular that in 1921 it was being performed by three different touring companies. After the success of Shuffle Along , Blake and Sissle collaborated on Elsie and Chocolate Dandies.

Blake also created some shows on his own including Swing It, Blackbirds and Eubie! Then, as the popularity of ragtime faded, Eubie Blake took a twenty-three year break from show business. In 1969, at the age of 56 he returned. Blake toured the world playing piano and giving lectures on ragtime music. He made an album called The Fifty-six Years of Blake and he formed his own company. Just over one hundred years after his life began, on February 12, 1983, Eubie Blake died in Brooklyn, New York.

Subject: RE: Help: Eubey Blake
From: Mark Ross
Date: 10 Sep 02 - 02:25 PM

Try a search for EUBIE BLAKE

Mark Ross

Subject: Eubey Blake
From: Bull Am
Date: 10 Sep 02 - 02:20 PM

I am absolutely in love with the song Memories of You, and I know that it is a Eubey Blake number. Does anyone know more about his life, his recordings, etc? I have a book on the history of jazz in french and it has a passing mention, but nothing substantial. Can anyone lend a hand?