Talking of Josephine Baker – Shuffle Along’s Oriental Blues

Apropos of yesterday’s Josephine Baker post Shuffle Along was an all-black show that the young Josephine Baker was involved in in America in 1921 (as part of the road company) before her life and career transformed with her move to Paris in 1925. It was put together by Eubie Blake (below) the composer and Noble Sissel, the lyricist. It was basically a mash up of musical hall type songs loosely linked together with traditional “plantation” type scenes but also one inspired by some Oriental costumes called the “Oriental Blues”.

Oriental Blues has been rather forgotten particularly in the wake of the show’s stand out hit number “I’m Just Wild About Harry” which many of us can still sign the words to and seem to have absorbed by osmosis somehow (probably due to its long afterlife as Harry Truman’s campaign song).

It seems that Oriental Blues was sandwiched into the show as it happened the company has somehow come into possession of a lot of Chinese costumes and so thought they should use them somehow. there’s a video of someone playing Oriental Blues here.