Six degrees of Artravelist.
Well, sort of…let’s step into the time machine. We’re starting in 1980s Scotland, travelling via tinsel town to Harlem in the 1930s and then Lindy Hopping around the world.
It’s funny how we come to find the things that we love through curiosity and the creativity of others to bring history and places to life. Curiosity is something we have in abundance as a kid but sometimes lose as we get older…
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I am eleven-years-old when I hear Joe Jackson sing Jumpin’ Jive on the radio. It’s 1981 and this song is filled with joy, fun and character. I’d sing it all day long thinking that – for little me at least – this is something really fresh, new and exciting. Then I find out that Jumpin’ Jive was originally recorded by Cab Calloway in July 1939 and sold over a million copies at the time. He co-wrote it too.
I then resolve to discover more about Cab Calloway at my local library where I find a vinyl album of his greatest hits. I’m chuffed that he’s alive and well and still making appearances here and there. Most people know him as a scat man (scoobily-doo), call-and-response bandleader and the singer of Minnie the Moocher.
A few years later I become obsessed with the Francis Ford Coppola film The Cotton Club (1984). The story is inspired by real-life people, places, events and issues in 1930s Harlem. It’s the stories of the Cotton Club performers which fascinate me the most. The film features Larry T Marshall performing as Cab Calloway. I get the soundtrack from the library and play it to shreds. Gregory Hines and his brother Maurice also star in The Cotton Club film as an amazing performing tap duo. Calloway regularly played as a bandleader at The Cotton Club in Harlem as did The Nicholas Brothers, a tap-dancing duo who performed a very acrobatic style of tap called ‘flashdancing’.
Embed from Getty ImagesThis leads me to find out more about Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers (there was no YouTube back in the ’80s). I continue to discover the difficult history behind the real Cotton Club.
I seek out the film Stormy Weather (1943), the first all-black musical motion picture — featuring Bill Robinson, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway and the wondrous Nicholas Brothers (Harold and Fayard). And here is the clip I want to show you. This clip never gets tired:
Two fantastic dancers from this era were Frankie Manning and Norma Miller who also performed at the Cotton Club with Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers dance group…
Frankie Manning begins dancing as a child. Later, he dances at the Renaissance Ballroom and Alhambra Ballroom in Harlem as a teenager and then with a regular group of friends at the Savoy Ballroom. Frankie dances in Kat’s Corner a special place on the dancefloor where, almost every night, dance-off competitions are held. He works all day and goes to The Savoy to dance all night.
It’s 1935. Frankie and dance partner Frieda Washington perform the first-ever aerial move on the dancefloor at the Savoy, a back-to-back roll. This move wows everyone who is there that night.
The Savoy dancers, decide to form a professional group named Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, led by Herbert “Whitey” White. Frankie Manning ends up as the group’s choreographer. He invents amazing acrobatic moves, creating the first Lindy Hop ensemble routines and they perform in films and shows around the world. The youngest member of the group is 15-year-old Norma Miller.
After touring Europe and S America, the group makes appearances in Hollywood films from 1937 and goes on to perform in Rio de Janeiro, stranded there for ten months following the attack on Pearl Harbour. The male dancers were then drafted into the war and the group dissolved.
The absolute show stopper of their cinema appearances, Frankie and Norma perform in Hellzapoppin’ (1941). See the clip below along with the dancers’ credits they deserve:
THE SWING DANCE REVIVAL
Frankie Manning and Fayard Nicholas win a Tony award for best choreography, the stage revue musical Black and Blue in 1989.
Frankie Manning and Norma Miller support the revival of the Lindy Hop in the 1980s. Started by fellow Whitey’s Lindy Hopper Al Minns, Frankie takes over teaching the moves when Minns dies in 1985. Norma also teaches and makes presentations.
Frankie and Norma attend the popular Herräng Dance Camp from 1989 onwards. Herrang is still, today, the swing dance training camp for those serious about perfecting Lindy Hop steps. Each year, the small town of Herräng, Sweden is transformed into an intense month-long dance camp attracting world-famous instructors and dancers alike.
Frankie and Norma’s contribution to the swing dance revival of the mid-1980s onwards has made them legends for international swing dancers today. Frankie, Norma, Cab and the Nicholas Brothers were the connectors, the pioneers of a style of dancing that influenced jive, jazz, break-dancing, disco and urban dance.
The international swing dance revival gives thanks to the dancing skills passed on to students and teachers by Frankie and ‘Queen of Swing’ Norma Miller. Lindy Hop is still popular around the world. I joined that Lindy Hop revival in the early 2000s in Edinburgh and later, in Liverpool and am still in love with those energetic moves invented almost a century earlier but still alive today.
In 2009, to celebrate Frankie’s 95th birthday, swing dancers around the world took part in Shim Sham mob dances filmed on location in their local area. The video is posted on YouTube (see below).
Sadly, Frankie died days before his 95th birthday and the international swing dance community lost their hero. Birthday celebrations became, instead, a memorial event with proceeds going towards setting up the Frankie Manning Foundation. Frankie’s final resting place is at the famous Jazz Corner at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, NY. Watch a documentary about Frankie below featuring Norma and Cab:
A few years later, I made a pilgrimage of sorts to Harlem to quietly give thanks to the talents and struggles of Frankie, Norma, Cab and the Nicholas Brothers and many more.
Although Cab Calloway died in 1994, he made it to the grand age of 86. The Nicholas Brothers also lived to see the 21st Century and well into their vintage years. Frankie Manning died in 2009 aged an incredible 94. Norma Miller was the last surviving member of the original dance troupe but sadly died on May 5, 2019, aged 99! Plans are afoot to commemorate Norma’s final resting place near Frankie and the jazz legends at Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx.
Embed from Getty ImagesThank you, Cab, Frankie, Norma, the Nicholas Brothers, Fayard and Harold…and not forgetting the Central Library in Aberdeen…and a tip of the hat to Joe Jackson and Francis Ford Coppola.
As conscious humans, we are all connected by our journeys through life. Whether it is a journey of the mind, of the heart or through time and space, we all connect through the paths that we choose to take or have to take. Where do they lead to? Who knows? Let’s celebrate and reflect when we get there.
Books:
Jean and Marshall Stearns’s influential book Jazz Dance
Norma Miller’s biography, Swingin’ at the Savoy: A Memoir of a Jazz Dancer
Manning’s autobiography, Frankie Manning: Ambassador of Lindy Hop, written with co-author Cynthia R. Millman, 2007.
