Career
On October 1, 1918, Sissle joined the New York 369th Infantry Regiment at New York City where he helped Lieutenant James Reese Europe form the 369th Regimental Band. Sissle played violin and also served as drum major for the 369th that, under Europe as bandmaster, is now considered amongst the greatest jazz bands of all time. Sissle sang several vocals on the last album recorded by the band that was released in March 1919. He left the army after the war as a second lieutenant with the 370th Infantry Regiment and joined Europe’s civilian version of the 369th band. Not long afterwards, on the 9th of May, 1919 James Europe was murdered by a disgruntled band member in Boston, Massachusetts leaving Sissle, with the help of his friend Eubie Blake, to take temporary charge of his band. Years earlier Sissle had struck up a partnership with Blake after they first met in Baltimore in 1915 and had remained in touch during the war.
Sissle is noted for his collaboration with songwriter, Eubie Blake. The pair first performed in vaudeville and later produced the musicals Shuffle Along and The Chocolate Dandies. Sissle is also, famously, the only African-American artist to appear in the Pathé film archives.
Shortly after World War I, Sissle joined forces with Blake to form a vaudeville music duo, "The Dixie Duo". After vaudeville, the pair began work on the musical revue, Shuffle Along, which incorporated many songs they had written, and had a book written by F. E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles. When it premiered in 1921, Shuffle Along became the first hit musical on Broadway written by and about African Americans. The musicals also introduced hit songs such as "I'm Just Wild About Harry" and "Love Will Find a Way."
In 1923, Sissle made two films for Lee DeForest in DeForest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process. They were Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake featuring Sissle and Blake's song "Affectionate Dan", and Sissle and Blake Sing Snappy Songs featuring "Sons of Old Black Joe" and "My Swanee Home". Blake also made a third film in Phonofilm, playing his composition "Fantasy on Swanee River". These three films are preserved in the Maurice Zouary film collection at the Library of Congress.
In 1954, New York radio station WMGM, which was then owned by Loew's Theatre Organization, signed Sissle as a disc jockey. His show featured the music of African-American recording artists.
Sissle was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.
He died in 1975 at the age of 86 Tampa, Florida.
His rendition of the song "Viper Mad" was included in the Woody Allen film Sweet and Lowdown.
Read more about this topic: Noble Sissle
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)