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Swinging at the Savoy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Barbara Engelbrecht
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Extract

With the passing of the Savoy Ballroom, a part of the show business is gone. I feel about the same way I did when someone told me the news that Bill (Bojangles) Robinson died.

—Count Basie, 1958. The demolition of Harlem's Savoy Ballroom.

Like Bojangles, by 1958 the Savoy had become an institution in the world of entertainment, and like Bojangles, it caught the imagination of thousands upon thousands of people during its 32-year history. The Savoy was a building, a geographic place, a ballroom, and the “soul” of a neighborhood. It personified a community and an era, and became a monument to the music and dance of “swing.” On its huge and shiny mahogany floor, the Lindy Hop was born, a dance that took the world by storm and would become as seminal as the waltz in the history of social dance. The Lindy Hop, together with countless other dances like the Flying Charleston, the Stomp, the Shim Sham Shimmy, Rhumboogie, Suzie-Q, Big Apple, Black Bottom and the Scrontch, were taken to an extraordinary level of performing perfection at the Savoy. Within its inner circle, great dancers and musicians set trends and styles in dance and music that ricocheted throughout the world. There were other ballrooms and clubs—Connie's Inn, Small's Paradise, The Cotton Club, The Lenox Club, The Kentucky Club, and the downtown clubs on 52nd Street—but there was only one Savoy.

Type
Articles on Popular Dance in Black America
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , Spring 1983 , pp. 3 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 1983

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References

NOTES

1. “Savoy, ‘The Home of Happy Feet,’ Falls Under Auctioneer's Gavel,” Jet, Oct. 16, 1958, pp. 60–61Google ScholarPubMed.

2. “The Savoy Story,” 25th Anniversary of the Savoy Ballroom Brochure, 1951.

3. Stearns, Marshall and Stearns, Jean, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance (New York: Schirmer Books, 1979), p. 321Google Scholar.

4. Ibid.

5. Ross, Leonard Q., The Strangest Places (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc., 1939), pp. 179–180Google Scholar.

6. “The Savoy Story.”

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Tirro, Frank, Jazz: A History, (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1977), p. 216Google Scholar.

10. Ellington, Edward Kennedy, Music is My Mistress (New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1973), p. 63Google Scholar.

11. Malcolm, X and Haley, Alex, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine Books, 1973), pp. 82–83Google Scholar.

12. Ross, Leonard Q., The Strangest Places (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., Inc., 1939), p. 186Google Scholar.

13. “The Savoy Story.”

14. Woltman, Frederick, “King of the Savoy,” Negro Digest, July, 1951, pp. 95–96Google Scholar.

15. Payne, Philip W., ed., The Swing Era: Swing As a Way of Life 1941–1942 (New York: Time-Life Records, 1970), p. 18Google Scholar.

16. Woltman, Frederick, “King of the Savoy,” p. 96Google Scholar.

17. X and Haley, p. 64.

18. Ibid., p. 66.

19. Ibid.

20. Stearns and Stearns, p. 325.

21. Observations based on his appearance in the film After Seben, 1929, Paramount, from the Ernest Smith Film Collection, New York City, 1981Google Scholar.

22. Hodeir, André, Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1979), p. 198Google Scholar.

23. Ibid., p. 230.

24. X and Haley, p. 74.

25. Ellington, p. 100.

26. Payne, Philip W., ed. The Swing Era: Where Swing Came From 1938–1939 (New York: Time-Life Records, 1970), p. 55Google Scholar.

27. X and Haley, p. 63.

28. Stearns and Stearns, p. 324.

29. Hodeir, p. 174.

30. Payne, p. 8.

31. Ibid., p. 17.

32. Calloway, Cab and Rollins, Bryant, Minnie the Moocher and Me (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1976), p. 102Google Scholar.