Ragtime Guitar's Foremost Fingerpicker

Biography

There are at least two artists with the name Blind Blake 1. Arthur "Blind" Blake (c. 1893-c. 1933) was an influential blues singer and guitarist. There is only one photograph of him in existence. Very little is known about his life. His birthplace was listed as Jacksonville, Florida by Paramount Records, but even that is in dispute. Nothing is known of his death. Even his name is not certain. During recordings he was asked about his real name and he answered that his name was Blind Arthur Blake...

There are at least two artists with the name Blind Blake

1. Arthur "Blind" Blake (c. 1893-c. 1933) was an influential blues singer and guitarist. There is only one photograph of him in existence.
Very little is known about his life. His birthplace was listed as Jacksonville, Florida by Paramount Records, but even that is in dispute. Nothing is known of his death. Even his name is not certain. During recordings he was asked about his real name and he answered that his name was Blind Arthur Blake which is also listed on some of the song credits, strengthening his case on his real name, although there is a suggestion that his real name was Arthur Phelps.
Blake recorded about eighty sides for Paramount Records in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was one of the most accomplished guitarists of his genre, with a surprisingly diverse range of material. He is best known for his distinctive guitar sound, whose complex and intricate fingerpicking was comparable in sound and style to a ragtime piano.
His first recordings were made in 1926 and his records sold well. His first solo record was "Early Morning Blues", with "West Coast Blues" on the B-side. He made his last recordings in 1932, the end of his career being aided by Paramount's bankruptcy.
One would surmise, given Blake's importance, celebrity status, popularity and sizeable recorded output that we would know something about the man. And after more than five decades of searching conducted by experts on behalf of Blind Blake, we still don't know anything verifiable about Blake which he doesn't tell us on his records. Practically all of what is "known" about Blind Blake outside of that is a combination of conjecture, rumor, slander and nonsense. At one point a theory was advanced that Blind Blake's true name was "Arthur Phelps" and it is under this name that Blake's entry is filed in Sheldon Harris' Blues Who's Who. But the theory is easily debunked by Blake himself, who states on his 1929 recording "Blind Arthur's Breakdown" that his name is "Arthur Blake." He briefly breaks into Geechee dialect during the course of "Southern Rag," and this advanced a theory that Blake was really born in the Georgia Sea Islands and spoke Geechee as a first language, accounting for his "uncomfortable negro dialect" on records like "Early Morning Blues." But there is nothing wrong with Blake's "negro dialect," thus it was easy to disprove this ridiculous notion.
Blind Blake is known to have had family in the area of Jacksonville, Florida and was likely born there; Blake may have grown up in Georgia. Blake was first seen in Chicago in the mid-1920s. His birth date is assumed to be sometime between 1895-1897, as the only existing photo of Blind Blake, taken at his first Paramount session in August, 1926, shows a man of about thirty. Interviews with some of the musicians personally acquainted with Blake only reveal that he had a seemingly inexhaustible appetite for liquor. No one has discovered any reliable account of what happened to Blind Blake after his last Paramount session in June 1932. The story that has Blake murdered in Chicago shortly after his Paramount date did not hold up after an intensive search of local police files. The most reasonable notion about what might've happened to Blind Blake after 1932 is that he drifted back to Jacksonville and lived a few years more, with 1937 suggested as a possible date of death. In the summer of 1935, Mary Elizabeth Barnicle led an Archive of Folk Song expedition into the area where Blake is likely to have resettled and canvassed it for black musicians, yet never encountered him.
Many of the recordings made by Blind Blake are singled out as classic early blues performances, too many to be listed in detail here. But a few that stand out include "Early Morning Blues," "Too Tight," "Skeedle Loo Doo Blues," "That Will Never Happen No More," "Southern Rag," "Diddie Wa Diddie," "Police Dog Blues," "Playing Policy Blues" and "Righteous Blues." Several of Blind Blake's original tunes are by now country-blues standards, and judging from the further developments in Atlanta-based Piedmont blues, Blake's influence there must've been formidable, even if it came only by way of recordings. Anyone who hears Blind Blake can't help but be astonished by his sincerity, his gentle, off-the-cuff humor and the sheer effortlessness with which he plays some of the most treacherously complex finger-work on the face of creation.

Blind Blake is not to be confused, incidentally, with Blake Higgs, a Bahamian Calypso artist who also recorded as "Blind Blake."

2. Blind Blake was a Bahamian singer active in the 1930s and 1940s, often entertained rich visitors to the island. One of these was the former Edward VIII, who became governor general of the islands. Blind Blake's best known song, "Love, Love Alone", was written in praise of the things the former monarch gave up for love Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.