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Eddie Rector
Eddie Rector (December 25, 1890 – January 7, 1963) was an American tap dance artist and master of ceremonies. His career spanned the 1920s-40s as he danced in Harlem, across the US, and in Europe. He is known as a “soft shoe expert,” and he invented the Slap Step.Constance Vallis Hill, "Eddie Rector iography" Tap Dance in America: A Twentieth-Century Chronology of Tap Performance on Stage, Film, and Media, ''Library of Congress'', accessed May 4, 2022, http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.music.tdabio.158/default.html Rector was the protégé of John Leubrie Hill and later danced as a team with Ralph Cooper. He danced in notable revues including ''Darktown Follies'' (1914), ''Tan Town Topics'' (1926), ''Blackbirds of 1928, Hot Rhythm'' (1930), ''Rhapsody in Black'' (1931), ''Blackberries of 1932,'' and ''Yeah Man'' (1932)''. '' Career Rector was born on Christmas day in 1890 in Orange, New Jersey. According tConstance Vallis Hill's biographyon thdatabase, Recto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tap Dance
Tap dance is a form of dance characterized by using the sounds of tap shoes striking the floor as a form of percussion. Two major variations on tap dance exist: rhythm (jazz) tap and Broadway tap. Broadway tap focuses on dance; it is widely performed in musical theater. Rhythm tap focuses on musicality, and practitioners consider themselves to be a part of the jazz tradition. The sound is made by shoes that have a metal "tap" on the heel and toe. There are different brands of shoes which sometimes differ in the way they sound. Ok History The fusion of several ethnic percussive dances, such as West African step dances and Welsh, Irish, and Scottish clog dancing, hornpipes, and jigs, tap dance is believed to have begun in the mid-1800s during the rise of minstrel shows. As minstrel shows began to decline in popularity, tap dance moved to the increasingly popular Vaudeville stage. Due to Vaudeville's unspoken "two-colored rule", which forbade blacks to perform solo, many Vaudevi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Willie Covan
William McKinley Covan (March 4, 1898 – May 7, 1989) was an American tap dancer, actor, vaudeville performer best known for being a member of the tap quartet The Four Covans and a choreographer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Willie Covan was born on March 4, 1898 in Atlanta, Georgia. Shortly after, his family moved to Chicago. By 1903, Willie was already tapping to the rhythms of the city. When was six years old, he began a six-year career as a pickaninny in the numerous vaudeville shows around the city. There he watched dancers and began to pick up technique from miming them. By age 12, he was tired of pick tapping and started out to make a name for himself in the vaudeville circuit. Covan got his first big break winning an amateur tap contest around 1910. From that he was taken under the wings of legendary tap dancers "Slow Kid" Thompson, and Leonard Ruffin. In 1927, he formed the tap quartet, The Four Covans. They became an instant sensation in the United States and in Europe. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Tap Dance Foundation
The American Tap Dance Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose primary goal is the presentation and teaching of tap dance. Its original stated purpose was to provide an "international home for tap dance, perpetuate tap as a contemporary art form, preserve it through performance and an archival library, provide educational programming, and establish a formal school for tap dance." History Originally called the American Tap Dance Orchestra (ATDO), the American Tap Dance Foundation was founded in 1986 by tap dancers Brenda Bufalino, Tony Waag, and Charles "Honi" Coles. Bufalino began working with Coles in 1973 when Bufalino produced the documentary, "Great Feats of Feet: Portraits Of the Jazz Tap Dancer" featuring Coles and ''The Copasetics''. ATDO's first major engagement was on July 4, 1986, at the Statue of Liberty Festival in Battery Park in lower New York City. For the next 15 years, American Tap Dance Orchestra toured the U.S. and Europe. In 1989, ATDO appeared on PB ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shuffle Along
''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 notable 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.Kenrick, John"History of The Musical Stage, 1920s Part III: Black Musicals" musicals101.com. Retrieved August 22, 2009. 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broadway Theatre
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Theatre'' as the proper noun in their names (12 others used neither), with many performers and trade groups for live dramatic presentations also using the spelling ''theatre''. or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. While the thoroughfare is eponymous with the district and its collection of 41 theaters, and it is also closely identified with Times Square, only three of the theaters are located on Broadway itself (namely the Broadwa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flournoy Miller
Flournoy Eakin Miller (14 April 1885 – 6 June 1971), sometimes credited as F. E. Miller, was an American entertainer, actor, lyricist, producer and playwright. Between about 1905 and 1932 he formed a popular comic duo, Miller and Lyles, with Aubrey Lyles. Described as "an innovator who advanced black comedy and entertainment significantly," and as "one of the seminal figures in the development of African American musical theater on Broadway", Jon C. Hopwood, "F. E. Miller", ''IMDb.com'' Retrieved 11 July 2014 he wrote many successful and |
Sullivan Act
The Sullivan Act was a gun control law in New York state that took effect in 1911. Chapter 195, enacted May 25, 1911, effective September 1, 1911. The NY state law requires licenses for New Yorkers to possess firearms small enough to be concealed. Private possession of such firearms without a license was a misdemeanor, and carrying them in public is a felony. The law was the subject of controversy regarding both its selective enforcement and the licensing bribery schemes it enabled. The act was named for its primary legislative sponsor, state senator Timothy Sullivan, a Tammany Hall Democrat. For handguns, the Sullivan Act qualifies as a ''may issue'' act, meaning the local police have discretion to issue a concealed carry license, as opposed to a ''shall issue'' act, in which state authorities ''must'' give a concealed handgun license to any person who satisfies specific criteria, often a background check and a safety class. According to a 2022 study, the law had no impact on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lew Leslie
Lew Leslie (born Lewis Lessinsky; April 15, 1888 – March 10, 1963) was an American writer and producer of Broadway shows. Leslie got his start in show business in vaudeville in his early twenties. Although white, he was the first major impresario to present African-American artists on the Broadway stage. He had two well-known wives, torch singer Belle Baker and Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Irene Wales. Career He became famous for his stage shows at the Cotton Club and later for his ''Blackbirds'' revues, which he mounted in 1926,Jazz Age Club, Les Ambassadeur Blackbird show, 1926 article and pictures. 1928, 1930, 1933 and 1939. '' |
Charles Coles
Charles “Honi” Coles (April 2, 1911 – November 12, 1992) was an American actor and tap dancer, who was inducted posthumously into the American Tap Dance Hall of Fame in 2003. He had a distinctive personal style that required technical precision, high-speed tapping, and a close-to-the-floor style where "the legs and feet did the work". Coles was also half of the professional tap dancing duo Coles and Atkins, whose specialty was performing with elegant style through various tap steps such as "swing dance", "over the top", "bebop", "buck and wing", and "slow drag". He appeared in the films '' The Cotton Club'' and '' Dirty Dancing'', as well as the documentary '' Great Feats of Feet''.Hill, Valis Constance. “Charles "Honi" Coles iography” In Tap Dance in America: A Twentieth-Century Chronology of Tap Performance on Stage, Film, and Media, Library of Congress, accessed May 4, 2022, https://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.music.tdabio.43/default.html Coles was also a tap-dan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bill Bailey (dancer)
Willie Eugene Bailey (December 8, 1912 – December 12, 1978), known professionally as Bill Bailey was an African-American tap dancer. The older brother of actress and singer Pearl Bailey, Bill was considered to be one of the best rhythm dancers of his time and was the first person to be recorded doing the Moonwalk, although he referred to it as the "Backslide," in the film '' Cabin in the Sky'' (1943), starring Ethel Waters, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson and Lena Horne. Early life Bill Bailey was born Willie Eugene Bailey in the small town of Sedley, Virginia in Southampton County, Virginia to Joseph James Bailey and Ella Mae Ricks Bailey. He was named after Eugenia V. Turner who was the midwife that helped deliver him. He spent his adolescence in Newport News, Virginia and Philadelphia. His father, Reverend Bailey, raised all his children Christian and hoped that Bill would also choose to become a minister. Career At eighteen years old, Bailey was discovered in New York by L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John W
John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second Epistle of John, often shortened to 2 John * Third Epistle of John, often shortened to 3 John People * John the Baptist (died c. AD 30), regarded as a prophet and the forerunner of Jesus Christ * John the Apostle (lived c. AD 30), one of the twelve apostles of Jesus * John the Evangelist, assigned author of the Fourth Gospel, once identified with the Apostle * John of Patmos, also known as John the Divine or John the Revelator, the author of the Book of Revelation, once identified with the Apostle * John the Presbyter, a figure either identified with or distinguished from the Apostle, the Evangelist and John of Patmos Other people with the given name Religious figures * John, father of Andrew the Apostle and Saint Peter * Pope Jo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cotton Club
The Cotton Club was a New York City nightclub from 1923 to 1940. It was located on 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue (1923–1936), then briefly in the midtown Theater District (1936–1940).Elizabeth Winter"Cotton Club of Harlem (1923- )" Black Past (retrieved September 9, 2014). The club operated during the United States' era of Prohibition and Jim Crow era racial segregation. Black people initially could not patronize the Cotton Club, but the venue featured many of the most popular black entertainers of the era, including musicians Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Fats Waller, Willie Bryant; vocalists Adelaide Hall,Iain Cameron Williams, Chapter 15, ''Underneath A Harlem Moon: The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall'', Continuum, 2002. Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, Aida Ward, Avon Long, the Dandridge Sisters, the Will Vodery Choir, The Mills Brothers, Nina Mae McKinney, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
