Eubie Blake

Rags, Rhythm, and Race

Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom

Draws on Eubie Blake's extensive personal archive, including correspondence and financial records
First major biography of Eubie Blake, a forgotten figure among African American composers
Offers understanding of a key figure in American cultural life

Eubie Blake

Rags, Rhythm, and Race

Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom

Description

A new biography of one of the key composers of 20th-century American popular song and jazz, Eubie Blake: Rags, Rhythm and Race illuminates Blake's little-known impact on over 100 years of American culture. A gifted musician, Blake rose from performing in dance halls and bordellos of his native Baltimore to the heights of Broadway. In 1921, together with performer and lyricist Noble Sissle, Blake created Shuffle Along which became a sleeper smash on Broadway eventually becoming one of the top ten musical shows of the 1920s. Despite many obstacles Shuffle Along integrated Broadway and the road and introduced such stars as Josephine Baker, Lottie Gee, Florence Mills, and Fredi Washington. It also proved that black shows were viable on Broadway and subsequent productions gave a voice to great songwriters, performers, and spoke to a previously disenfranchised black audience. As successful as Shuffle Along was, racism and bad luck hampered Blake's career. Remarkably, the third act of Blake's life found him heralded in his 90s at major jazz festivals, in Broadway shows, and on television and recordings.

Tracing not only Blake's extraordinary life and accomplishments, Broadway and popular music authorities Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom examine the professional and societal barriers confronted by black artists from the turn of the century through the 1980s. Drawing from a wealth of personal archives and interviews with Blake, his friends, and other scholars, Eubie Blake: Rags, Rhythm and Race offers an incisive portrait of the man and the musical world he inhabited.

Eubie Blake

Rags, Rhythm, and Race

Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom

Prelude: "It's Getting Dark On Old Broadway"
Acknowledgments

1. Family and Early Life: 1887-1903
2. Becoming an Established Musician: 1904-1915
3. Blake Meets Sissle: 1915-1919
4. Vaudeville: 1919-1921
5. Shuffle Along: 1921
6. Shuffling On: 1922-1923
7. Chocolate Dandies and the End of Sissle and Blake: 1924-1930
8. Hard Times: 1930-1936
9. Government Worker: 1937-1946
10. After the War: 1946-1952
11. Lean Times to Revival: 1953-1970
12. Final Years: Concert Stage and a Return to Broadway, 1971-1983

A Partial List of Eubie Blake's Compositions
Abbreviations for Source Notes
Bibliography

Eubie Blake

Rags, Rhythm, and Race

Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom

Author Information

Richard Carlin is a Grammy Award-winning author of numerous books on popular music, including Country Music: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2019), The Big Book of Country (1995), and Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways (2008).

Ken Bloom is a Grammy Award-winning author of Show and Tell: The New Book of Broadway Anecdotes (OUP, 2016), Broadway Musicals: The 101 Greatest Shows of All Time (2004), and Broadway: An Encyclopedia (2004). He is the co-founder of Harbinger Records, has been a Broadway correspondent for NPR and the CBC, and has directed and produced shows at Town Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, among other venues.

Eubie Blake

Rags, Rhythm, and Race

Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom

Reviews and Awards

"Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers." -- K. R. Dietrich, CHOICE

"Carlin and Bloom have created an all embracing and unique musical chronicle of Eubie Blake that is compelling, heartbreaking and ultimately joyous thanks to his late life rediscovery. With the use of voluminous first hand research artifacts, they have created a multi faceted account of Blake's life and in the process, have given us one of the truest depictions of the endemic racism and cut throat culture of 20th Century show business." -- Michael Feinstein

"well-written ... a significant achievement." -- Steve Ramm, The Antique Phonograph

"Authors and music specialists Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom present a densely packed, meticulously researched, and painstakingly incisive portrait of a jazz icon and his times." -- Deb Miller, DC Metro Theater Arts

"Blake, in his ten decades of life, persevered through some highs and many lows, only to be truly celebrated for his remarkable talents when he reached his nineties.ÂThat we never, ever really know a person is a much-said truism. And yet, Carlin and Bloom, through their extensive and exhaustive research, will make a reader feel and believe that he indeed does know Eubie Blake." -- Peter Filichia, critic emeritus of The Newark Star-Ledger

"Along with many others, I have been waiting for a new, scholarly, thorough, and insightful biography of this one-of-a-kind American figure. Finally, we have one, nicely-illustrated and carefully documented." -- John Edward Hasse, author of Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington

Eubie Blake

Rags, Rhythm, and Race

Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom

From Our Blog

10 little-known facts about Sissle and Blake's Shuffle Along

Written, staged, and performed entirely by African Americans, Shuffle Along was the first show to make African-American dance an integral part of American musical theater, eventually becoming one of the top ten musical shows of the 1920s. Authors Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom provide a list of ten little-known facts about the show.

Posted on December 8, 2020

Read the blog post