Eubie Blake was an American highly talented and charismatic jazz pianist and composer. Blake was born in 1887 in Baltimore, Maryland. He was one of eight children born to former slaves Emma Johnstone and John Sumner Blake. Shockingly, he was the only one to survive infancy. When he was around four or five, he was shopping with his mother, when he wandered into a music shop and “fooled” around on an organ. When his mother found him, the shop manager said to him “The child is a genius! It would be criminal to deprive him of the chance to make use of such a sublime, God-given talent.”. At 15 he began playing piano at a club. He specialised in ragtime. He was of the first African American to write a musical, Shuffle Along.

Below is an an example of one of his rag time solo pieces performed by himself: