Tap Dance and Eccentric Dance Inside Harlem – Harlem Cabarets Harlem Cabarets

The Harlem tap dance and other jazz dance activities were part of the Harlem cabarets like Small’s Paradise, Cotton Club, Connie’s Inn, and theatres like Lafayette and Lincoln. The Hoofers’ Club in the basement of Lafayette Theatre became perhaps the most important place for serious tap dancers³⁸⁰. It was a place

if there was the Charleston in the play. One of dance numbers was named as ’Black Bottom Dance’. There is no doubt about that refers to the dance.

374Stearns 1994, pp. 110-112.

375Amon Davis, ’Amon’s Pen’, The Chicago Defender, March 27, 1926, p. 6.

376’Stars That Shine’, The Pittsburgh Courier, June 19, 1926, p. 10.

377’Lafayette 7th Avenue, At 132nd Street – One Week, Beginning Monday, June 14 – Clarence E. Muse And His Charleston Dandies’, The New York Amsterdam News, June 9 1926, p. 6.

378’Given Big Ovation In Harlem - Muse Is Taking Harlem By Storm After Long Absence’, The Pittsburgh Courier, June 26, 1926, p. 11.

379This can be concluded from the chapter and its footnotes.

380 This and the next paragraph are based on the sources as follows: Stearns 1994, pp.

153, 173-174, 212, 338. Baby Lawrence (Laurence Jackson) interview February 1960, Marshall Stearns papers, the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University.

where great tap dancers like Honi Coles, King Rastus Brown, Eddie Rector, John W.

Sublett (known as ‘Bubbles’), and Laurence ‘Baby Lawrence’ Jackson rehearsed and performed frequently. The Hoofers’ Club differed from the ordinary rehearsal halls and performance stages because it was not for the ordinary public. There was no regular audience like in cabarets and theatres. The audience consisted only of other performers and musicians.

The performers had to be good to enter the stage there, because otherwise they were booed off of the stage. The significance of the Hoofers’ Club during its existence between the 1920s and the 1940s, was that it kept tap dance standards high, because the performers had to work hard with their steps to convince other tap greats. It created a continuous competitive atmosphere which likely took tap forward, and it was the place where tap dancers were able to perform when their work in ballrooms, cabarets, and theatres was slow. They could keep their performance standards high even when they did not dance in the front of an ordinary audience. The Hoofers’ Club was reminiscent of the Savoy Ballroom’s Circle phenomenon and Corner, which were similar “performance stages”. The dancers had to be good to enter to the Circle and the Corner or they were removed by different methods³⁸¹.

Especially, two theaters, the Lafayette Theatre and the Apollo Theatre, and two clubs, the Cotton Club, and Hoofers’ Club were the places where tap dancers performed in Harlem. The Lafayette started in 1912, and soon changed from the segregated theater to the integrated theater. The theater became a stepping-stone for a successful career. It was in the other end of the TOBA circuit (= Theater Owners’

Booking Association circuit). Tap dancer and choreographer Leonard Reed stated

“you had to work your way up from the TOBA circuit…to Washington. Then you’d go to Philadelphia…and when you got to New York you passed through the Hoofers Club on the way to the Lafayette”. Lafayette Theatre gathered tap stars from Bill Robinson and The Nicholas Brothers to Buck and Bubbles.³⁸²

The Apollo Theatre was known earlier as the Hurtig & Seamon’s Burlesque House, which was partly segregated. When Frank Schiffman bought the Hurtig &

Seamon’s in 1934 and transformed it to the Apollo Theatre, it became an integrated theater and a cultural core of the Harlem African-American community. To perform on the Apollo Theatre stage was a test for performers. Like Apollo Chorus Line dancer Marion Coles put it: “If you got past that audience you were good…If they didn’t like you, they let you know…” The competition between the acts was also fierce. According to tap dancer Howard ‘Sandman’ Sims, the Apollo Theatre audience mostly consisted of other tap dancers when the big name dance acts played at the Apollo. The audience challenged the stage performers who had to do their best to impress the audience. The stage shows were built around well-known orchestras like Duke Ellington, Don Redman, Chick Webb, Lucky Millinder, and Fletcher Henderson. The Apollo Theatre chorus line was especially famous for its dancing

381The Savoy also had ”circles” where ordinary dancers were able to perform. This is discussed in the chapter ’The Savoy Ballroom Between 1926 and 1943’.

382Hill 2010, pp. 99-100, 102, 110 and 112. Haskins and Mitgang 1988, pp. 167-168.

Schiffman 1971, p. 47. See also for Lafayette: Hoefer 1964.

skills. According to dance historian Constance Valis Hill, the Apollo Chorus line dancers were considered to be the best female dancers in New York.³⁸³

The Cotton Club, which was located in Harlem between 1924 and 1936, and after that on Broadway near Times Square³⁸⁴, was a segregated nightclub for whites. It was also a showplace for African-American dancers who frequently were recruited for performances at the club. Where jazz dance and its dances like tap and the Lindy Hop were concerned, the artists usually underlined the high level of performances at the Cotton Club. It seems that in spite of segregation and underpayment in some cases, these artists considered performing at the club as a step to higher artistic level in their career.³⁸⁵ Savoy Lindy Hopper Frankie Manning even thought that he was ready for a professional career after he had proven his skills at the Cotton Club³⁸⁶.

Tap was regularly included in the Cotton Club shows. The Cotton Club had tap artists like the Nicholas Brothers, Bill Robinson, Peg Leg Bates, Tip, Tap and Toe, the Four Step Brothers, Buck and Bubbles, with other jazz dance acts like the Berry Brothers, Three Chocolateers, Earl ‘Snakehips’ Tucker, and Dynamite Hooker, just to mention a few of the countless acts working there. Although the club blatantly exploited African-American stereotypes and had, according to the Cotton Club Orchestra leader Cab Calloway, been decorated in that way whites could feel they were being catered to and entertained by African-American slaves³⁸⁷, there also was a certain kind of “integration” as Calloway explained, “There was integration to a certain extent…the performers could go [to the club]. Even if whites come to see blacks perform, you still have integration…when we were performing, when we were making it possible for the people to come see us.”³⁸⁸ It could be argued with Calloway to what extent those performers could represent the attitudes of ordinary African-American people and how that helped the audience to communicate with ordinary African-Americans if they were not allowed to come to the Cotton Club.

The Cotton Club seemed to divide its entertainers, where its wage and racial politics are concerned. Musician Sonny Greer stated that concerning the wage he earned and the owners of the Cotton Club, who were related to organized crime, ”I keep hearing how bad the gangsters were…All I can say is that I wish I was still working for them.”³⁸⁹ On the other hand, singer and actor Lena Horne stated:

The Cotton Club veterans felt that they were blocked and used by white people. They were full of stories about how white people had drawn on their experience, taken their ideas for individual numbers –

383See for the Apollo Theatre: Hoefer 1964. See also: Hill 2010, p. 102-103 and 107.

384The exact opening date on Broadway is unknown, but that happened between February 1936 and September 1936. See: Haskins 1977, pp. 111 and 116. See also: ’Cotton Club’ advertisement, The New York Times, December 7, 1924, p. X12. Cotton Club was described as ”Society’s newest rendezvous’ in the advertisement.

385Malone 1996, pp. 87-88.

386Manning and Millman 2007, p. 123.

387Malone 1996, pp. 87-88.

388Haskins 1977, p. 91.

389Ibid., pp. 58-59.

even for complete shows – and given them nothing in return. Not even a credit line in a program, much less any payment³⁹⁰.

Thus, it stays contradictory how much performing in the Cotton Club really helped its African-American entertainers financially and artistically.

3.5 The Charleston as Social Dance in Harlem Between