Shuffle Along: History and Key Facts

Shuffle Along is a musical composed by Eubie Blake, with lyrics by Noble Sissle and a book written by the comedy duo Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles. One of the most popular all-Black hit Broadway shows, it was a landmark in African-American musical theater, credited with inspiring the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and '30s.

The show premiered at the 63rd Street Music Hall in 1921, running for 504 performances, a remarkably successful span for that decade. It launched the careers of Josephine Baker, Adelaide Hall, Florence Mills, Fredi Washington and Paul Robeson, and was so popular it caused "curtain time traffic jams" on West 63rd Street.

A 2016 adaptation, Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, focused on the challenges of mounting the original production as well as its lasting effects on Broadway and race relations.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Shuffle Along by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.