Eubie Blake at the Village Gate, Fall 1968
| In the fall of 1968 Don Ewell and Willie The Lion Smith were holding forth at The Village Gate. I was always short of funds in those years. Normally, I couldn’t afford to spend an evening at the Gate, but because Don Ewell was sleeping on my couch at the time and knew how to get the cover charge waived, as well placing my bar bill on his tab, I was able hang out and listen to the two giants go at it on an almost nightly basis. I don’t remember how long the duo performed at the Gate, but I remember a Saturday evening when something out of the ordinary happened. The place was jammed, and an enthusiastic audience urged Willie and Don to go at it well past the customary first set. Willie finally called a halt to the good-natured cutting, and announced there was another great pianist in the house. High praise from The Lion. Willie said that Eubie Blake had agreed to play a couple of tunes during intermission, and asked Eubie to the bandstand. There was polite applause, but not much of it, and it’s unlikely more than a handful of people in the room had even heard of Eubie. At the time, Eubie was about 85 years old, rarely played in public and not well-known. I knew about him only because I had some of his old records, notably a late 1950s LP entitled The Marches I Played on the Ragtime Piano, but I had no idea he was still alive, or could play at a serious level. I was in for a surprise. A frail, stooped, bald, but well-dressed man walked slowly to the piano. He played something, I don’t remember the first song, but it was greeted with the same polite applause as when he was announced. Then he spoke to the audience. His remarks were fun and entertaining, and at the end of his comments he said, “Now I want to play something I wrote in 1898”. That seemed to get some attention, and Eubie launched into a rollicking version of the Charleston Rag. He tore it up, and when this seemingly frail old man finished there was sustained applause. Then he said something like, “Now I want to play something an American President used as his theme song.” It was I’m Just Wild About Harry.” By this time, he had everyone’s attention. Following Harry, it was the longish, concert version of Memories of You. When he finished, everyone was standing and cheering. Willie was off to one side, derby cocked, and beaming. Eubie retreated to his table, and the evening continued at a less emotional level. One of the reasons I found the experience so interesting was that Eubie Blake was a “pre-jazz” artist. He was living in Baltimore in 1898, when he wrote Charleston Rag, and didn’t have any of the influences associated with New Orleans; Buddy Bolden was only 20, Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton were 13. Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag wasn’t published until 1899. Where did this man come from, I thought, and how could he still be playing so well? At the end of the next set, I asked Willie if he could “please introduce me to Mr. Blake”, which he did. I was very enthusiastic and told Eubie I’d never heard anything like what he’d just done, at least not by a living pianist. After a short conversation, he suggested I should come out and visit him at his home in Brooklyn. A few days later I found myself in front of 284A Stuyvesant Avenue, preparing to walk into another world. I asked him about many things, but the main thing I stressed that day was he should make a recording, maybe even a live recording, in front of a cheering audience. I’ll never forget his response. It was something like, “You’re the second white boy who’s asked me to make a record this week.” I asked who was the other “white boy”. He replied, “John Hammond”. I said, “Mr. Blake, that’s the white boy you pay attention to.” The rest of the time we spent together that first day was figuring out a way for him to sneak a cigarette away from his wife’s prying nose. He managed by suggesting we take a walk around the block. Once I was back in Manhattan, I telephoned John and told him about my meeting with Eubie. John said it was true. He wanted to record Eubie for Columbia, but couldn’t because the engineers were on strike and no one could get any studio time. And he was terrified. Eubie was 85 years old and even though he was playing very well, John was afraid he might die at any moment. I told John he shouldn’t worry. I had a fine studio at my disposal, one with two fine Steinway pianos, and I wasn’t on strike. He asked, “Where?” I said, “At Sherman Fairchild’s, 17 East 65th Street.” John said if I could deliver the studio, he could deliver Eubie. We both delivered the goods, and in late November, everyone assembled at Sherman’s home. By everyone I mean, John, Eubie, Noble Sissle, Marian McPartland, and Sherman himself. We recorded for two days and got good takes of seventeen songs, including two vocals with song-writing partner. Then, in December, the striking engineers gave Columbia a Christmas present and returned to work, but there was such a backlog, there was still no room for Eubie. Fate intervened when Horowitz cancelled a recording scheduled for December 26th. Eubie took the slot and began the process that would eventually lead to The Eighty-Six Years Of Eubie Blake. The recordings we made at Sherman’s remain unissued, but since Sony seems disinclined to put Eubie back into the marketplace, perhaps I’ll dust off the old tapes and get Eubie back into print. Of course, to everyone’s surprise, except Eubie, he had 14 years to go, and I was able to work and socialize with him on many occasions. He was a frequent guest at Downtown Sound and I featured him with Teddy Wilson, Claude Hopkins and Dill Jones at a New School concert in 1972. Eubie stole the show and no one was surprised. This was something he did on a regular basis for the better part of a decade. Columbia’s interest in their octogenarian was short lived, but Eubie’s cause was taken up by Carl Seltzer, a man who was even more enthusiastic about his playing than I. Carl went so far as to establish a record label, Eubie Blake Music, and released a number of fine LPs. In 1977 I released about half of the New School concert and then in 1999, the entire concert was released on a Chiaroscuro CD. Eubie wasn’t the finest pianist I ever heard, far from it, but a case could be made he was the most joyous. In his later years Artur Rubenstein missed a lot of notes, but there was nothing quite like being in his presence. Eubie was much the same. He’d tear into a run and get it about 90 percent of it, but it was still wonderful because he was having so much fun getting the 90 percent. The last time I heard Eubie was in the Shubert Theater, on 7 February 1983. It was his 100th birthday celebration. Eubie was in ill health, he was to die five days later, but he was part of the proceedings via a telephone hook-up. He heard everything and made a little speech at one point. A thousand or so of his friends crammed into the theater that day, and one great artist after another performed. Fifteen years earlier I’d seen a frail looking Eubie Blake wipe up Don Ewell and Willie The Lion. Had he been at the Shubert, he’d have found a way to wipe up everyone there, and just as Willie stood there beaming at The Village Gate, it would have been all smiles at the Shubert. |
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