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[[image - Eubie Blake]]

HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY! A TRIBUTE TO EUBIE BLAKE 
BY ABIOLA SINCLAIR 

On February 7, 1883, James Hubert Blake was born to John sumner Blake and Emily Johnson Blake in Baltimore. His father, a steveadore and mother a laundress, were both former slaves. Eubie's father was also born Feb. 7 1833.

Of the couple's eleven children, Eubie was the only one to survive. All the others died in childbirth or shortly thereafter. Eubie's father said Eubie'survival was his birthday present.

A Host Of Tributes

I listened intensely to a 30-hour marathon tribute to Eubie Blake's 100th birthday on radio WKCR. Several versions of Eubie's Charleston Rag composed in 1902 were heard along with Love Will Find A Way from Shuffle Along. There were also gosples, spirituals, love songs, boggie woogies, blues and My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More. 

Eubie has composed over 200 works, and in addition to his own pieces, love to play Cole Porter, Fats Waller, Gershwin and Harold Arlen. I heard snatches of popular pieces of the past interspersed with his own floral style. Also played were a good number of piano rolls Eubie recorded for posterity. Mostly rags by himself and old peers like Scott Joplin and Chris Smith.

Billy Taylor gave a concert at the New School auditorium in triubte to Eubie at 6:00 p.m., Feb. 7.

Then there was the giant tribute held at Jazz Vespers, St. Peters Church, 54th St. and Lexington Ave. from midnight, Feb. 6 to midnight, Feb. 7. Bands such as the Sidney Bechet Legacy, The Harlem Jazz Blues, Buster Brown and the Copasetics, Billy Taylor and many more paid tribute to Eubie Blake who stayed at home due to illness and the inclement wheatehr, listening to the show broadcast live over WBAI.

Rev. Gensel led all of us in the birthday song around 10:00 p.m., feeling Eubie might drift off to sleep about that time.

A Talk With Eubie Blake 

I met Eubie Blake in 1975 at a tribute given by the American Guild of Authors and Composers at the Waldorf. It was then his 92nd birthday and he good-naturedly played I'm just Wild About Harry "for the 2 millionth time," he chided.

I later got him to autograph a program from one of my shows entitled 'Abiola Speaks.' for the rest of the day he called me "Miss Speaks," assuming that to be my last name, but during a refreshment brake, I corrected him and got a chance to ask him about his life.

"My wife'll tell you," said Eubie, "Marion'll tell you, I'd be nothing without her. She handles everything. She's my manager you know—business and personel. I thank God the day I met her. I was starving to death." I began to laugh. "You're laughing?" he asked. "Listen, times were so hard my stomach was saying hello to my back bone. During and after the war, I got a job with the U.S.O. doing shows. But that petered out, and there I was, Noble too! My first wife had died. I met Marion in '45, married her and moved into her brownstone in Brooklyn."

Eubie feels his illustrious past could not illuminate the future, but he kept active anyway. "Noble and I got a show together in '54, a revue. After that, nothing," he said.

It wasn't until Marvin Hamelch [[Hamlisch]] revived the music of Scott Joplin for the motion picture The Sting that interest began to focus on ragtime "I was asked to make piano rolls," said Eubie, "and I have to thank Marion again. She made me practice two hours every day! Sometimes I just didn't feel like it, and would cut it short. She'd come up from the kitchen before I could get out of the room good and tell me "You have another 25 minutes to go.' "

Marion Blake was on hand in '75, composed and friendly but watchful and protective of Eubie. I could see why he loved her, I could also see why she loved him.

The shows 

Eubie started playing piano at age six. In his teens he played the beer halls and after-hour joints in Baltimore. During the summer, he would play at resorts. In 1915, he met Noble Sisle. They had done some vaudeville together but those were lean times for Black performers since the untimely death of George Walker and the brake-up of the Williams and Walkers company. Bert Williams became the only Black performer to play Broadway for a decade—from 1911 to 1921.

In the spring of 1921 Noble Sisle and Eubie Blake together with comedians Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, put on the show Shuffle Alone [[Along]] at the 63rd Street Theatre.

They had gone out of town to try out with little or no money, and the cast was reluctant to get further out on a limb. But they did well in Washington and Philadelphia, and so came back to New York. But still money was tight. Josephine Baker and Florence Mills and Ethel Waters were in the chorus. Thanks to this show, Florence Mills who had been struggling for years became a hit.

Shuffle Along heralded in the Negro Renaissance of the 20's and gave a reluctant Black theatre producers now courage. Shuffle Along was a big hit and toured Europe after an almost 2-year broadway stint. 

In 1924, Sisle and Blake came back to Broadway with another revue, Chocolate Dandies, featuring Josephine Baker. This show was successful also.

By 1930, Noble Sisle had gone to Europe with his own band. Eubie Blake teamed up with Andy Razaf of Ain't Misbehavin' fame, and wrote a

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