Jazz Dance: The Story Of American Vernacular Dance

By Marshall & Jean Stearns (1966)

"Describing an incident at the Savoy [dance ballroom in Harlem NYC] in 1937, Leon James [Lindy Hop dancer] remarks: 'Dizzy Gillespie was featured in the brass section of Teddy Hill's screaming band. A lot of people had him pegged as a clown, but we loved him. Every time he played a crazy lick, we cut a crazy step to go with it. And he dug us and blew even crazier stuff to see if we could dance to it, a kind of game, with the musicians and dancers challenging each other. 

One of the reasons for the early development of great big-band jazz at the Savoy was the presence of great dancers" Jazz Dance, page 325 

Largely written by suit & tie Ivy Leaguer Marshall Stearns, but when the writer died suddenly before finishing Jazz Dance, Jean Stearns, also a recognized jazz buff, and Marshall's wife, finishes and publishes his historical opus. I can't even recall for sure where I got the reference but the title definitely came up in one of my turtle-slow reading projects investigating, in this case, the roots of 20th c music in 19th c music. Going in I expected a snobby ballroom dancing take. And wasn't entirely disappointed when Stearns dismisses all rock & roll dancing as sloppy ripoffs of the great dance crazes of the Jazz Age (1920s) and Swing Eras (1930s and 1940s). But by the end of the book I've fully forgiven him. Jazz Dance is a rich history, largely first person (from copious interviews); a history of Black song and dance entertainers and their contributions to Jazz music, going all the way back to the minstrel music performers of the 1830s and 1840s. Actually, Black stars rarely appear on Broadway or in Hollywood up to the 1950s but by the 1920s, despite the racism and segregation, Black music is stylistically dominant in popular music. If it's not Black people playing and performing the music then it's white people trying to play like them. Hot Jazz and the Swing Era were a pinnacle for tap dancing, and another American invention. Few dancers could keep up with the frantic changes in Bebop in the 1950s, though. And tellingly one of the few that could, Cholly Atkins, of Atkins & Coles tap fame in the 1940s and '50s, went on to become the house choreographer for Motown and coached the dancing of such rock & roll stars as the Cadillacs, Shirelles, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, Little Anthony & the Imperials, all the way up to the O'Jays and the Sylvers in the disco 1970s. Curiously, there is a chapter devoted to Fred Astaire, who is given his due as a first rate "hoofer" with his own style. But barely a mention in the book of Gene Kelly, maybe because by the 1950s jazz music isn't scoring the big musicals the way it was in Astaire's 1930s? The ending feels abrupt, not surprisingly, given Marshall's premature death. And all the dance crazes while curious wash over me, leaving few to memory. But the power of Black music and dance in the social history of America, overcoming racism to dominate the Jazz Age and Swing Era is a heck of a story and told here with unassuming legibility and dedicated enthusiasm.  

Norma Miller tells the story of how she came to dance at the Savoy when she was 12 years old. 

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson does his "sand dance" on a river boat loaded with cotton bales, transcending his shuffling minstrel image of the happy slave with his own irrepressibly joyful dancing and, coincidentally, the invention of the pogo or pogoing dance style. A 1940s version of Ska-Punkers Fishbone provide backup. From Cabin in the Sky (1943):  

Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin" in peak form but sadly he dies shortly after the release of Stormy Weather (1943). This version of his hoary classic is a long sly blues windup, Fats mugging for the camera, and then an all out boogie-woogie and '20s hot jazz blowout. A living legend at likely his most florid on film: "The joint is jumpin'." 

Fred Astaire says the Nicholas Brothers "Jumpin' Jive" dance with Cab Calloway in Stormy Weather is "the greatest movie musical number he'd ever seen." 

The Lindy Hop scene in Hellzapoppin' (1941): A mini jazz history lesson culminating and amalgamating in a dance craze at or near at the pinnacle of the Swing Era. 

* To be honest, I can't whole heartedly recommend any of these movies. Stormy Weather comes closest, for its sheer volume of strong musical performances. But these are big moments in the story Stearns tells.