Shuffle Along

On May 23, 1921 Shuffle Along opened at Daly's 63rd Street Theater and ran for an unprecedented 504 performances. It was the first musical written, performed, produced and directed by African-Americans after a decade of decline of black performers in theater. Langston Hughes described the play's importance this way, "The 1920′s were the years of Manhattan’s black Renaissance. It began with Shuffle Along, Running Wild, and the Charleston... But certainly it was the musical revue, Shuffle Along, that gave a scintillating send-off to that Negro vogue in Manhattan, which reached its peak just before the crash of 1929, the crash that sent Negroes, white folks, and all rolling down the hill toward the Works Progress Administration."

The show was written by Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles with music and lyrics by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake. The four men met on the vaudeville circuit in 1920 in Philadelphia during a benefit for the NAACP. Miller and  Lyles had already begun thinking about an all-black musical and they felt the music that Sissle and Blake were doing would be perfect  for what they had in mind. Miller felt the only way to put black performers in white theaters with dignity was through musical comedy and he presented the group with a sketch about the complicated maneuvers in a small town mayoral race. 

The show was put together quickly using comedy routines and songs from their vaudeville routines with dance numbers, a somewhat circuitous plot and a love story thrown in (the love story would break a long-standing taboo against the depiction of romantic love between black characters). The men pooled what little money they had and sent out a casting call for a show that had no theater, no sets, no costumes and no assurance that it would go on at all. They were flooded with performers wanting to participate.

Miller and Lyles had a connection to the Cort family which owned a crumbling theater empire. John Cort liked the songs of Sissle and Blake and agreed to find a theater, costumes and sets for the show. The theater was a dilapidated lecture hall without a proper stage and no orchestra pit. The costumes were left over from two former flops and still had the sweat stains under the arms. The stage was still being added to during the duration of the show. But the company went to work to make it home.

After a short stint on the road the company returned to New York to open there. The principles were worried about the reception the love song, "Love Will Find a Way" would have with the white audience. Noble Sissle remembered, "On opening night in New York this song had us more worried than anything else in the show. We were afraid that when Lottie Gee and Roger Matthews sang it, we'd be run out of town. Miller, Lyles, and I were standing near the exit door with one foot inside the theater and the other pointed north toward Harlem. We thought of Blake, stuck out there in front, leading the orchestra—his bald head would get the brunt of the tomatoes and the rotten eggs. Imagine our amazement when the song was not only beautifully received, but encored. During the intermission we told Blake what we had been doing, and he came near to killing us. But the biggest moment of all came near the end of the show, with a number called 
"The Baltimore Buzz.” I sang it while Blake and the orchestra played like fury and the girls danced up a storm. People cheered. I almost fell off the stage when I looked out into the auditorium there was old John Cort dancing in the aisles! His faith in us had been borne out. That night it looked like we were home." 

Shortly after opening they started a special midnight show on Wednesday nights to attract the white theater performers who ordinarily couldn't see it. Word of mouth from those performers in the audience went a long way to publicize the show. The pit orchestra was a special attraction of it's own. None of the musicians played with sheet music. They had memorized the entire score. "We did that because it was expected of us," recalled Blake. "People didn't believe that black people could read music-they wanted to think our ability was just natural talent." Sissle and Blake and sometimes the entire orchestra were often hired after the show to perform for wealthy white patrons.

Shuffle Along launched the careers of many notable performers including a 16 year old Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson, Adelaide Hall and the sensational Florence Mills. For Noble Sissle the chorus girls were the heart of the show and others, besides Baker went on to fame. The jazz dancing in the show was a new sensation and Flo Ziegfeld and George White opened special studios and hired the dancers from the show to teach the steps to white chorus girls. 

Many of the songs from the show are considered standards today, "Love Will Find A Way", "In Honeysuckle Time", "Bandanna Days", "Daddy Won't You Please Come Home" and "I'm Just Wild About Harry" which became Harry Truman's campaign theme song. There were no cast albums made during that era but many of the songs were recorded by Sissle and Blake and other cast members.

According to Harlem historian James Weldon Johnson, Shuffle Along marked a breakthrough  for the African-American musical performer and legitimized the African-American musical, proving to producers and managers that mixed audiences would pay to see African-American talent on Broadway. The show would pave the way for nine more black musicals to open on Broadway between the years of 1921 and 1924.