Richard Carlin is a Grammy Award-winning author of numerous books on popular music, including Country Music: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2019), The Big Book of Country (1995), and Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways (2008). Ken Bloom is a Grammy Award-winning author of Show and Tell: The New Book of Broadway Anecdotes (OUP, 2016), Broadway Musicals: The 101 Greatest Shows of All Time (2004), and Broadway: An Encyclopedia (2004). He is the co-founder of Harbinger Records, has been a Broadway correspondent for NPR and the CBC, and has directed and produced shows at Town Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, among other venues.
Carlin and Bloom have created an all embracing and unique musical chronicle of Eubie Blake that is compelling, heartbreaking and ultimately joyous thanks to his late life rediscovery. With the use of voluminous first hand research artifacts, they have created a multi faceted account of Blake's life and in the process, have given us one of the truest depictions of the endemic racism and cut throat culture of 20th Century show business. -- Michael Feinstein well-written ... a significant achievement. -- Steve Ramm, The Antique Phonograph Authors and music specialists Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom present a densely packed, meticulously researched, and painstakingly incisive portrait of a jazz icon and his times. -- Deb Miller, DC Metro Theater Arts Blake, in his ten decades of life, persevered through some highs and many lows, only to be truly celebrated for his remarkable talents when he reached his nineties.AThat we never, ever really know a person is a much-said truism. And yet, Carlin and Bloom, through their extensive and exhaustive research, will make a reader feel and believe that he indeed does know Eubie Blake. -- Peter Filichia, critic emeritus of The Newark Star-Ledger Along with many others, I have been waiting for a new, scholarly, thorough, and insightful biography of this one-of-a-kind American figure. Finally, we have one, nicely-illustrated and carefully documented. -- John Edward Hasse, author of Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington