| 3. Tap and the Shim Sham |
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Tap dancing as such may have begun in the 1830s in the Five Points neighborhood of New York City as a fusion of the Irish Jig and the African Shuffle. Dancers from different immigrant groups would get together to compete and show off their best moves. It's believed that as the dances fused, a new American style of dancing emerged. Master Juba was a prominent dancer in this period. Wikipedia |
| The Nicholas Brothers Fred Astaire thought their "Jumpin Jive" Weather the greatest tap-dance number ever filmed. Balanchine and Baryshnikov said they were among the greatest dancers ever. Fred Astaire thought laimedGregory Hines that if they ever made that if they ever made a biopic about them a biopic about them they'd have to use computer-generat ed effects since nobody could successfully emulate them. |
See Wikipedia page for more information, including a step-by- step description. The Shim Sham Shimmy, Shim Sham, or just Sham is a tap-dance routine credited to Leonard Reed, who originally called it Goofus, and Willie Bryant. For swing dancers, today it is kind of line dance that recalls the roots of swing.... Reed and Bryant created the routine in 1927 using four popular steps of the period: the Shim Sham, the Pushbeat and Crossover, the Tack Annie, and the Half Break. Originally done as a comedic farm dance to the song “Turkey in the Straw,” the dance was performed by Reed and Bryant around the South while they were touring with the Whitman Sisters Troupe. The dance was then taken to the Shim Sham Club in New York where the farm theme was dropped and chorus girls were added to the dance. The chorus girls further varied the dance by shaking their shoulders while doing the first step, and soon the dance became known as the Shim Sham Shimmy. |
| 'Master Juba'—William Henry Lane |
| Leonard Reed (above), Willie Bryant (below) |
The "Shim Sham" or "Sham" was originally a pre-tap- dance routine done by vaudeville performers in the early 1900s and consisted of a mixture of standard steps done in no particular order. The Shim Sham Shimmy is said to be the creation of Willie Bryant and Leonard Reed and was changed to accommodate a larger group in the theaters they were working it and performed it in 1931 at Connie's Inn when they got everyone involved in it at the end of the show, which is how they got credit for it, says Leonard. Vin and Roberto based a whole act on the Shim Sham and were known as one of the best dance teams of the time (1935). |
The Shim Sham was changed somewhat by Bryant and Reed over the years into the Shim Sham Shimmy for swing dancers and is done by lindy dancers today, similar to a type of Line Dance.... Originally the Shim Sham Shimmy could be done as a solo, couple or group dance (2 or 3 couples up to the whole room), and as a group each person's arms were around the next, but today is done apart. The Sham was done at one time at the Savoy ballroom to the song entitled "The Song of the Freaks," written by Luis Russell. The music usually builds in intensity as do the dancers making a sort of Crescendo and Diminuendo. The Sham's basic is the "Time Step" that is done by Tap dancers, except the dancers use a more falling off the log. The Sham also incorporates the "break" (or stop-time) which can be as short as 3 beats and as long as a minute. Usually the dancers would sing along with the music, such as "Oh, Shim-Sham ---- Shimshamshimmy! - shim - sham ---- ShimShamShimmy!" When the dance would end everyone would "truck" back to their tables etc. Around the early 1930s the Shim Sham Shimmy became a favorite finale on the vaudeville stage. Cab Calloway's Jittering-Jitterbugs musical short has the original group form of the shim sham shimmy routine and is led by Calloway. Dean Collins did it on the Merv Griffin Show as well. |
| Happy 40th Birthday, Marian |
Eleanor Torrey Powell was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. A dancer since childhood, she was discovered at the age of 11 by the head of the Vaudeville Kiddie revue, Gus Edwards. When she was 17, she brought her graceful, athletic style to Broadway, where she starred in various revues and musicals. During this time, she was dubbed "the world's greatest tap dancer" due to her machine-gun footwork, and in the early 1930s appeared as a chorus girl in a couple of early, inconsequential musical films. In 1935, the leggy, fresh-faced Powell made the move to Hollywood and did a specialty number in her first major film, George White's 1935 Scandals, which she later described as a disaster due in part to her accidentally being made up to look like an Egyptian due to a mix-up prior to filming her scene. She was well received in her first starring role in 1935's Broadway Melody of 1936 and delighted 1930s audiences with her endless energy and enthusiasm, not to mention her stunning dancing. According to dancer Ann Miller, quoted in the "making-of" documentary about That's Entertainment! III, MGM was headed for bankruptcy in the late 1930s, but the films of Eleanor Powell, particularly Broadway Melody of 1936, were so popular they made the company profitable again. Miller also credits Powell for inspiring her own dancing career, which would eventually lead her to become an MGM musical star a decade later. Powell would go on to star opposite many of the decade's top leading men. All these movies featured her amazing solo tapping, although her increasingly huge production numbers began to attract criticism. Broadway Melody of 1940, in which Powell starred opposite Fred Astaire, featured an acclaimed musical score by Cole Porter. Together, Astaire and Powell danced to Porter's "Begin The Beguine," which is considered by many to be one of the greatest tap sequences in film history. According to accounts of the making of this film, including a documentary included on the DVD release, Astaire was somewhat intimidated by Powell, who was considered the only female dancer ever capable of out-dancing Astaire. In his autobiography Steps in Time, Astaire remarked: "She 'put 'em down like a man', no ricky-ticky-sissy stuff with Ellie. She really knocked out a tap dance in a class by herself." —Wikipedia |
| "Astaire was somewhat intimidated by Powell, who was considered the only female dancer ever capable of out-dancing Astaire...." |
| See the "Begin the Beguine" number, below right |
| Eleanor Powell |