Noble Lee Sissle was an American lyricist, singer, and bandleader.
Background
He was born on July 10, 1889 in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, to George Andrew Sissle, a Methodist minister, and Martha Angeline, a teacher. Noble was from an early age exposed to music, because the Reverend Sissle played the organ and Noble was a boy soprano in the church choir. He was also given ample opportunity to enjoy the popular music of the day, for the grounds behind his father's church accommodated the carnivals, circuses, and various parades that were held throughout the year.
Education
In 1906 Noble enrolled in Central High School, where he played on the baseball and football teams and was a member of the glee club. A tenor, he was a featured soloist and in his senior year was elected leader of the glee club and was class vocalist at his graduation in June 1911.
In the fall of 1913, Sissle enrolled at De Pauw University in Greencastle, on a full music scholarship. He remained at DePauw for only one semester. The following January, he enrolled at Butler University in Indianapolis, where he continued his music studies until the summer of 1915.
Career
He had begun to sing professionally in 1908 with the Edward Thomas Male Quartet, which played evangelical circuits throughout the Midwest. Because he had taken time off from school to tour with this group, Sissle did not graduate until he was twenty-one. This was to be the pattern he would follow even with his college studies: intermittent periods of performing and schooling.
Upon graduating from high school, he joined the Hann's Jubilee Singers. Performing with this group took him as far west as Denver and as far east as New York City. In Greencastle he became a vocalist with the Harry Farley Dance Orchestra, a popular college dance band of the day.
While a student at Butler, Sissle held a variety of odd jobs and in early 1915 worked as a waiter at one of the larger hotels in Indianapolis. The owner of this hotel persuaded Sissle to organize and conduct an orchestra to perform there. It became his first professional job as a bandleader. In the spring of 1915, Sissle became a vocalist for Joe Porter's Serenade, which performed at the Riverview Park in Baltimore, Maryland.
It was while with this group that Sissle met the pianist and composer Eubie Blake, who came to play a crucial role in Sissle's musical career. Blake was impressed with Sissle's lyric-writing ability and expressed an interest in collaborating with him at their very first meeting. After the disbanding of Joe Porter's Serenade, Sissle stayed in Baltimore and accepted a job as singer and bandolin player with Bob Young's ten-piece orchestra at the Kernan Hotel in Baltimore. This group obtained a winter engagement at the Royal Poinciana Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. While playing a benefit for the Palm Beach Red Cross, the group was seen by E. F. Albee, head of the Keith Vaudeville Circuit, who invited them to perform at the Palace Theatre in New York as part of a special "Palm Beach Week at the Palace, " which featured Sissle as vocalist.
Settling in New York City in 1916, Sissle was integrated into the Clef Club and Tempo Club of James Reese Europe, conductor of the most influential society band in New York. Europe hired Noble to work for some of his more important society dances and events. In the summer of 1916, Blake joined Sissle as part of the James Reese Europe Clef Club Society. Sissle and Blake began immediately to collaborate on popular songs, though this collaboration was interrupted when, in December 1916, Sissle and Europe enlisted in the U. S. Army, where they organized an all-black regimental band.
Sissle recruited band members and eventually became drum major. After training at Camp Whitman in Peekskill, New York, the regiment entertained camps in South Carolina and New Jersey before being shipped to France in 1918. The 369th Regimental Infantry Band, under the direction of James Reese Europe, was in great demand and won many honors in France.
Shortly after the conclusion of the war, the band returned to the United States and began a national tour. After a performance in Boston on May 9, 1919, Europe was stabbed to death by a disgruntled member of the band. The company that had provided financial backing for the tour asked Sissle to continue as leader of the fifteen-piece group. Instead, Sissle persuaded them to back him and Blake as a duo, continuing an act that Sissle and Europe had started in France.
The new duo had its first performance in Bridgeport, Connecticut, after which it played at the Harlem Opera House and was immediately booked at the Palace Theatre. Taking the name "The Dixie Duo, " Sissle and Blake followed the practice of Bob Young's group and performed without minstrel makeup, elevating the status of American black performers in the United States.
At a 1920 benefit for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Philadelphia, Sissle and Blake met the successful comedy team of Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles. Their show Shuffle Along was in some respects a fusion of the two teams' vaudeville acts, drawing dance numbers from Sissle and Blake and throwing in a continuous plot and a love interest. Miller and Lyles were friends with the backer and producer Al Mayer of New York City. With his support, auditions and rehearsals began for the show.
Opening on May 23, 1921, with lyrics by Sissle and music by Blake, Shuffle Along contained a number of songs that became part of the standard Broadway repertoire, among them "I'm Just Wild About Harry", "In Honeysuckle Time" and "Memories of You. " The impressive list of performers who went on to later success included Josephine Baker, Florence Mills, Paul Robeson, William Grant Still, Adelaide Hall, and Hall Johnson.
After its successful run in New York City, the show took to the road, including performances in Chicago, Boston, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlantic City. Building on the fame of Shuffle Along, Sissle and Blake collaborated on the musical Chocolate Dandies (1924). After the closing of Chocolate Dandies in 1926, Sissle and Blake performed at the Kit Kat Club in London and returned to the United States in August.
Sissle returned to London in 1927 with a solo act and then formed his own band for residency at Les Ambassadeurs in Paris in December 1928. Sissle had tremendous success with his bands in Europe, performing for British royalty and befriending important European composers. In 1932, after the death of Aubrey Lyles, Sissle, Blake, and Flournoy Miller reworked their original Broadway hit as Shuffle Along of 1933, which ran only fifteen weeks in New York City and fared no better on the road, finally breaking up in Los Angeles in the spring of 1933.
With the show's close, Sissle and Blake went their separate ways. Sissle reorganized his orchestra and in 1935 returned to Paris with Lena Horne as his singer. He continued to perform throughout the United States, and his orchestra was in residence at Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe in New York from 1938 to 1942 and again from 1945 to the mid-1950's.
During World War II, Sissle toured on behalf of the USO, and from the 1960's until his death, he managed his own publishing company and worked occasionally as a bandleader.
In 1972, Sissle and Blake reunited for a series of performances and recordings. The Broadway musical Eubie (1978) featured many songs on which Sissle and Blake had collaborated. In the early 1970's, Sissle moved to Florida, where he lived until his death in Tampa.
Achievements
Connections
It was during an engagement at Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe that he met and married Ethel Harrison; they had two children. His first marriage (in 1919) to Harriet Toye, the widow of pianist Patrick E. Toye, had resulted in divorce.