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I'm Just Wild About Eubie—Memories of Eubie Blake

The 1969 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival featured one of the best collections of musical talent ever assembled. It starred Count Basie and His Orchestra (whose members included Buck Clayton, Dicky Wells, Buddy Tate, and Earl Warren). The six-day festival also included performances by Benny Carter, Roy Eldridge, Bobby Hackett, Clark Terry, Zoot Sims, Milt Hinton, Jacki Byard, Alan Dawson, and Bob Green. New Orleans bands led by Jim Robinson, Sharkey Bonano, Pete Fountain, Al Hirt, Louis Cottrell, and Johnny Wiggs also appeared. Barry Martyn brought his group of young jazzmen from England, and Papa Bue's Viking Jazz Band came from Denmark. Dizzy Gillespie, Roland Kirk, Gerry Mulligan, Paul Desmond, Eddie Miller, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Zutty Singleton, Harry Shields, Tony Parenti, and Sarah Vaughan rounded out the roster of jazz giants.

An 86-year-old charmer, Eubie Blake, recalled an era when ragtime was the vogue. After shocking his southern audience with a few irreverent bars of "Marching Through Georgia," the composer-pianist exchanged some ad-lib remarks with Willis Conover before striding into his "Charleston Rag."

After the concert, I noticed the pianist standing alone in a quiet corridor backstage. I complimented him on his excellent performance and requested permission to take his picture. He graciously agreed and posed with bassist Milt Hinton, who approached at that moment. When I offered to send him a copy of the picture, he scoffed and quipped: "You guys have been takin' my pictures for seventy years—and I've never seen one of them!"

Eubie Blake
Pianist-Arranger.
Composer of Shuffle Along
I'm Just Wild About Harry
Lou Leslie's Blackbirds

That was three decades ago. The card, with my scrawled notation "SEND PIC," is still in my Eubie Blake file.

Hello there, friend,

Then, switching to red ink, he added,

And I do mean friend.
Like Geo. M. Cohan used to say—

Then, alternating ink colors on each line, he continued:

My Mother thanks you [green ink]
My Father thanks you [blue ink]
My Sister thanks you [red ink]
My Marion (my wife) thanks you [black ink]
And I thank you! [blue ink]

Sincerely, Your friend

Eubie Blake

P.S. I love the picture with Milt Hinton. I'll have it blown up and hang it in my gallery of great artists.

In 1995, when his image appeared on a thirty-two-cent stamp, my photo of Eubie and Milt Hinton was printed on the first-day-of-issue cachet, mailed during the annual jazz festival at Monterey, California.

His name was Willie Joseph. His mother worked for some rich white people who recognized his talent and sent him to the Boston Conservatory. He was the first Negro to graduate as a classical pianist. He lost a leg in a skating accident in 1900. In those days, Negros weren't supposed to read music. We pretended we couldn't read and people would marvel at the way we could play show music and rags—they thought by ear. The only arrangement I ever copied was Willie's "Stars and Stripes Forever"—I still play it.

In December 1979, the Huntington Hartford Theater in Hollywood hosted the West Coast premiere of Blake's Broadway show, "Eubie!" Lucille and I sat with Eubie and Marion in the front row. The gleam of a pinpoint spotlight hung like a halo over Eubie's bald head during the entire first act. After the final curtain calls, an on-stage ceremony honoring him featured surprise appearances from members of the show's New York cast, including Maurice and Gregory Hines. The after-show reception glittered with Hollywood stars, musicians, and fans.