One of the first Black regulars on a TV variety show, he brought tap to millions of viewers on “The Lawrence Welk Show” after Betty White gave him his first big break.
Premise The following is a light piece on a man. The dream of becoming a tap dancer. A white kid from West Virginia (via San Fran and Guam) who got the Big Apple bug, that is, the Great White Way bug to be a hoofer on Broadway. The man comes to me via my volunteer […]
Imagine how Bruce Springsteen would feel if rock 'n' roll lost its popularity overnight and you'd know, I guess, how the great tap dancers felt in the early 1950s. One day, tap dancing was enormously popular (I can remember half the kids in my grade school class taking lessons at Thelma Lee Ritter's Dance Studio, up above the Princess Theater on Main Street in Urbana). The next day, it was passe - blown away by rock. And there was another cruel blow for many of the tap stars, who were black: As the civil rights movement gained strength, tap dancing itself was seen as projecting the wrong image of black people.