Shuffle Along

Shuffle Along
Sheet music for "Love Will Find a Way", a song from the show
Music	Eubie Blake
Lyrics	Noble Sissle
Book	F. E. Miller Aubrey Lyles
Productions	1921 Broadway 1933 Broadway revival 1952 Broadway revival 2016 Broadway adaptation

Shuffle Along is a musical with music and lyrics by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, and a thin revue-style connecting plot about a mayoral race, written by Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles.

The piece premiered on Broadway in 1921, running for 504 performances – an unusually long run during that decade. It launched the careers of Josephine Baker, Adelaide Hall,Florence Mills, Fredi Washington and Paul Robeson, and became such a hit that it caused "curtain time traffic jams" on West 63rd Street. It had brief revivals in 1933 and 1952. A 2016 Broadway adaptation, Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, has a book by George C. Wolfe about the challenges of mounting the original production and its effect on Broadway and race relations.

The four writers were African-American Vaudeville veterans who first met in 1920 at a NAACP benefit that was held in Philadelphia. None of the four had ever written a musical, or even appeared on Broadway. Promoters were skeptical that a black-written and produced show would appeal to Broadway audiences. After finding a small source of funding, Shuffle Along toured through New Jersey and Pennsylvania. However, with little funding, it was difficult to meet travel and production expenses, and the cast rarely got paid. When the show came back to New York, about a year later, during the Depression of 1920–21, the production owed $18,000 and faced strong competition on Broadway in a season that included Ziegfeld's Sally and a new edition of George White's Scandals. It was only able to book a remote theater on West 63rd Street that had no orchestra pit. In the end, however, the show earned $9 million from its original Broadway production and three touring companies, an unusual sum in its time.