Blues Musician. A popular and influential performer of the 1920s, known as the "King of Ragtime Guitar". His recordings display a fingerstyle pulsing with irresistible rhythms and a peerless ability to make a six-string sound like a ragtime piano. Musicologist Barry Hansen (radio's Dr. Demento) hailed him as "the finest, most booty-shakin' dance musician that acoustic blues ever knew". Little is known of Blake's life. He was born blind, either in Newport News, Virginia or Jacksonville, Florida; he had family in the latter city and across the Georgia border. When Paramount Records brought him to Chicago in August 1926 he already had a strong word-of-mouth reputation in the Southeast. Starting with the hit "West Coast Blues" (1926) Blake recorded 80 singles as a soloist or in collaboration with Ma Rainey, Gus Cannon, Papa Charlie Jackson and others. They include "Early Morning Blues", "Too Tight", "Skeedle Loo Doo Blues", "That Will Never Happen No More", "Southern Rag", "Diddie Wa Diddie", "Police Dog Blues", and "He's in the Jailhouse Now". Unlike his labelmate Blind Lemon Jefferson, who began recording around the same time, Blake was not a great all-around musician. As a singer he could carry a tune, no more, and his lyrics were passably humorous. But his virtuoso finger-picking gave Blind Lemon a run for his money. Blake's style was so intricate that on many tracks one would swear two guitars were being played, and so ebulliently syncopated that his songs are danceable at any tempo. He was Paramount's top-selling artist until the Great Depression brought both of them down. In 1932 Blake moved to Milwaukee's Bronzeville neighborhood and made his final recordings at Paramount headquarters in Grafton, Wisconsin. The label went bankrupt soon afterwards and Blake's subsequent fate was a mystery for decades. Recent research discovered that he stayed in Bronzeville with his wife Beatrice, his last years clouded by poverty, alcoholism and failing health. He died at 38, in an ambulance en route to Milwaukee County Emergency Hospital; the cause was undiagnosed tuberculosis. In 2011, blues historians located Blake's unmarked gravesite at Milwaukee's Glen Oaks Cemetery and helped raise funds for a headstone. If Blake himself largely slipped through the cracks of history, his music was never forgotten. It was a formative influence on Piedmont-style blues and inspired the guitar playing of Big Bill Broonzy, Reverend Gary Davis, Blind Boy Fuller, Jorma Kaukonen, Ry Cooder, and many others. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1990.