Blind Blake — Biography
Blind Blake (Arthur Blake, c. 1896–1934) was one of the most important and technically accomplished guitarists of the early American blues era. A master of ragtime fingerpicking, he combined intricate bass lines, syncopated rhythms, blues phrasing, and remarkable independence between his thumb and fingers. His style earned him the nickname “King of Ragtime Guitar.”
Early life
Very little about Blake's early life is firmly documented, which has made him one of the great mystery figures of prewar blues.
For many years, reference works identified him as being born around Jacksonville, Florida, sometime in the 1890s. More recent research, however, uncovered his 1934 Milwaukee death certificate, which gives his name as Arthur Blake, born in 1896 in Newport News, Virginia, to Winter and Alice Blake. The evidence suggests that he spent significant time in Florida and Georgia, but the details of his childhood remain uncertain.
He was apparently blind from birth, and as a young musician traveled through the South, performing at parties, dances, and other venues. By the early 1920s he had developed an extraordinary guitar technique.
Arrival in Chicago
Blake appeared in Chicago during the 1920s, at a time when the city's growing Black recording industry was attracting musicians from throughout the South.
His abilities quickly made him an important studio musician. He eventually became associated with Paramount Records, one of the major labels recording African-American blues artists during the period.
His first records under his own name appeared in 1926, including “Early Morning Blues” and “West Coast Blues.” They established him as a major recording artist almost immediately.
His extraordinary guitar style
Blake's greatest contribution was his guitar playing.
Rather than simply accompanying his singing with conventional blues chords, he essentially made the guitar function like a ragtime piano. His thumb maintained a steady, alternating bass while his fingers simultaneously played syncopated melodies and chords on the higher strings.
The resulting sound could be extraordinarily fast and complicated:
- alternating walking bass lines
- syncopated treble melodies
- ragtime rhythms
- cross-rhythms and syncopation
- intricate chord changes
- improvised fills
- simultaneous bass and melody lines
His playing was particularly influential on the Piedmont blues tradition, in which guitarists sought to reproduce the rhythmic complexity of ragtime piano on acoustic guitar.
Reverend Gary Davis, himself one of the greatest fingerstyle guitarists of the next generation, famously admired Blake's playing.
Paramount years
Between 1926 and 1932, Blake became one of Paramount's most productive and commercially successful blues musicians. AllMusic estimates that he recorded 79 known sides under his own name, in addition to accompanying numerous other Paramount artists.
He worked with musicians including:
- Ma Rainey
- Gus Cannon
- Papa Charlie Jackson
- Irene Scruggs
- Ida Cox
- Johnny Dodds
- Charlie Spand
- Tampa Red
Blake was not simply a blues singer who happened to play guitar. He was effectively a first-call studio guitarist, capable of adapting his playing to different performers and musical settings.
Among his best-known recordings are:
“Early Morning Blues”
“West Coast Blues”
“Too Tight”
“Southern Rag”
“Diddie Wa Diddie”
“Police Dog Blues”
“Guitar Chimes”
“Blind Arthur's Breakdown”
“That Will Never Happen No More”
“Playing Policy Blues”
“Diddie Wa Diddie” in particular became a standard and was subsequently recorded by numerous musicians.
His musical personality
Blake's recordings are remarkable not only for their technical difficulty but for their lightness and humor.
Unlike some blues performers whose records emphasize anguish and emotional intensity, Blake often sounds relaxed, playful, mischievous, and conversational. His guitar can be astonishingly complicated while his vocals remain casual.
That combination—virtuosity without sounding labored—is one of the reasons guitarists have continued to study his recordings.
Disappearance and death
Blake's recording career effectively ended in 1932, when Paramount collapsed during the Depression. For decades, virtually nothing reliable was known about what happened to him afterward.
This produced numerous legends. Some stories claimed that he was murdered, struck by a streetcar, or froze to death in Chicago. Later research found no convincing evidence for these stories.
Research published in 2011 produced a much more concrete picture. Blake appears to have remained in Milwaukee, where many Paramount musicians had been housed during recording sessions. He suffered serious health problems, including pneumonia, and on December 1, 1934, his wife Beatrice Blake called an ambulance after his condition deteriorated. He suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage and died on the way to the hospital.
He was only about 38 years old.
Legacy
Blind Blake's influence on guitar is much larger than his relatively small body of surviving documentation might suggest.
He helped establish a vocabulary of fingerstyle guitar that later became fundamental to Piedmont blues, ragtime guitar, country blues, and folk guitar. His recordings became study material for generations of players, including Reverend Gary Davis, Ry Cooder, and Jorma Kaukonen.
What makes Blake particularly fascinating is that almost everything we really know about him comes from his recordings. His personality, musical imagination, and extraordinary technique survived far better than the biographical record.
There is also a second musician known as Blind Blake—Bahamian calypso and goombay performer Blake Higgs (1915–1986). He is unrelated to the American blues guitarist.
A good place to start listening
If you're exploring Blake for the first time, I'd start with:
- “West Coast Blues” — an excellent introduction to his ragtime guitar.
- “Early Morning Blues” — his breakthrough recording.
- “Diddie Wa Diddie” — perhaps his most enduring song.
- “Southern Rag” — showcases his extraordinary instrumental technique.
- “Guitar Chimes” — a particularly good example of his fingerpicking.
- “Police Dog Blues” — combines his guitar virtuosity with his relaxed vocal style.
The remarkable thing about these recordings is that they still sound astonishingly modern nearly a century later.
