Eubie Blake

The centenarian Eubie Blake (1883-1983), a native of Baltimore, was a close friend and colleague of James Reese Europe, and an original member of the Clef Club. Blake went on to score big successes on Broadway in the twenties, and lived long enough to be celebrated again in the ragtime revival of the seventies. Blake already had a well-developed, bues-inflected, highly individual style by 1914, when both the rhythmically effervescent onestep Fizz Water, and bouncy, bluesy tune The Chevy Chase appeared.

Notes by Roy Wiseman