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| Year | 1920s |
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The Black Bottom is a dance which became popular during 1920s amid the Jazz Age. It was danced solo or by couples. Originating among African Americans in the rural South, the black bottom eventually spread to mainstream American culture and became a national craze in the 1920s. [1] The dance was most famously performed by Ann Pennington, a star of the Ziegfeld Follies, who performed it in a Broadway revue staged by Ziegfeld's rival George White in 1926. [2]
The dance originated in New Orleans in the first decade of the 20th century. Jazz pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton wrote the tune "Black Bottom Stomp", its title referring to the Black Bottom area of Detroit. [3]
Sheet music from the mid-1920s identifies the composers as Gus Horsley and Perry Bradford and claims the dance was introduced by the African-American dancer and choreographer Billy Pierce. The sheet music's cover photograph features dancer Stella Doyle, who performed primarily in cabarets. [4]
The black bottom was well known among semirural blacks across the South. A similar dance with many variations was commonly performed in tent shows, and "Bradford and Jeanette" had used it as a finale.
The dance was featured in the Harlem show Dinah in 1924 and was then performed by Ann Pennington and Tom Patricola in the musical comedy revue George White's Scandals of 1926 on Broadway, whereupon it became a national craze. [5] The black bottom overtook the Charleston in popularity and eventually became the number one social dance. Some dance critics noted that by the time it became a fad in American society in the mid-20s, it resembled the Charleston. Both dances can be performed solo or as a couple and feature exuberant moves.
The African-American choreographer Billy Pierce, who is credited on "Black Bottom Dance" sheet music with having introduced the dance, was an associate of the African-American choreographer Buddy Bradley. [6] Working out of Pierce's dance studio in New York City, Bradley devised dance routines for Tom Pericola and other Broadway performers.
A different musical accompaniment, composed by Ray Henderson with new lyrics from Buddy DeSylva and Lew Brown also briefly became a nationwide sensation and was widely recorded. [7] A re-creation of that version by choreographer Rod Alexander was featured in the 1956 biopic, The Best Things in Life Are Free , performed by Sheree North and Jacques d’Amboise, leading a stage full of flappers and tuxedoed Johnnies.
The rhythm of the black bottom is based on the Charleston. [8] Bradford's version, printed with the sheet music, gave these instructions:
Hop down front then doodle back [doodle means "slide"]
Mooch to your left then mooch to the right
Hands on your hips and do the mess around,
Break a leg until you're near the ground [break a leg is a hobbling step]Now that's the old black bottom dance
Instructions for the mooch are "Shuffle forward with both feet. Hips go first, then feet."
Broadway historians Kantor and Maslon describe it as a ‘fairly simple step punctuated by a slap on the rear end’ with the hobbling step akin to pulling your feet out of the deep muddy waters of the Swanee. [9] The Alexander recreation expanded this into having his dance partners cheekily bump their posteriors together; although there is no evidence to suggest that was part of the original dance.
"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom", a 1920s blues song by Ma Rainey, makes obvious allusions to the dance but is not itself dance music. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is also the title of a 1982 play by August Wilson, set around recording of the song. [10] Wilson's play was adapted into a 2020 movie of the same name starring Viola Davis as Ma Rainey.
The comedy musician Spike Jones, who became popular in the 1940s, performed a jaunty cover of the black bottom. His version, released on 78-RPM records, repeated a single measure of a piano solo in the middle of the song several times, each time continuing with a loud "crack!" as a joke to make the record sound broken. [11]
The dance was featured in the 1927 Austrian silent film, Café Elektric . [12]
Judy Garland repeats vocal refrains from the song while hoofing in some chorus girl lines in a montage sequence from A Star Is Born (1954).
Jazz dance is a performance dance and style that arose in the United States in the mid 20th century. Jazz dance may allude to vernacular jazz, Broadway or dramatic jazz. The two types expand on African American vernacular styles of dance that arose with jazz music. Vernacular jazz dance incorporates ragtime moves, Charleston, Lindy hop and mambo. Popular vernacular jazz dance performers include The Whitman Sisters, Florence Mills, Ethel Waters, Al Minns and Leon James, Frankie Manning, Norma Miller, Dawn Hampton, and Katherine Dunham. Dramatic jazz dance performed on the show stage was promoted by Jack Cole, Bob Fosse, Eugene Louis Faccuito, and Gus Giordano.
The Charleston is a dance named after the harbor city of Charleston, South Carolina. The rhythm was popularized in mainstream dance music in the United States by a 1923 tune called "The Charleston" by composer/pianist James P. Johnson, which originated in the Broadway show Runnin' Wild and became one of the most popular hits of the decade. Runnin' Wild ran from 28 October 1923, through 28 June 1924. The peak year for the Charleston as a dance by the public was mid-1926 to 1927.
Gertrude "Ma" Rainey was an American blues singer and influential early-blues recording artist. Dubbed the "Mother of the Blues", she bridged earlier vaudeville and the authentic expression of southern blues, influencing a generation of blues singers. Rainey was known for her powerful vocal abilities, energetic disposition, majestic phrasing, and a "moaning" style of singing. Her qualities are present and most evident in her early recordings "Bo-Weevil Blues" and "Moonshine Blues".
The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical revue productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 to 1931, with renewals in 1934, 1936, 1943, and 1957. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air.
Charles Luckyth Roberts, better known as Luckey Roberts, was an American composer and stride pianist who worked in the jazz, ragtime, and blues styles. Roberts performed as musician, band/orchestra conductor, and dancer. He taught music and dance. He also owned a restaurant and bar in New York City and in Washington, D.C. Luckey Roberts noted compositions include "Junk Man Rag", "Moonlight Cocktail", "Pork and Beans" (1913), and "Railroad Blues".
The United States of America is the home of the hip hop dance, salsa, swing, tap dance and its derivative Rock and Roll, and modern square dance and one of the major centers for modern dance. There is a variety of social dance and performance or concert dance forms with also a range of traditions of Native American dances.
George White's Scandals were a long-running string of Broadway revues produced by George White that ran from 1919–1939, modeled after the Ziegfeld Follies. The "Scandals" launched the careers of many entertainers, including W. C. Fields, the Three Stooges, Ray Bolger, Helen Morgan, Ethel Merman, Ann Miller, Eleanor Powell, Bert Lahr and Rudy Vallée. Louise Brooks, Dolores Costello, Barbara Pepper, and Alice Faye got their show business start as lavishly dressed chorus girls strutting to the "Scandal Walk". Much of George Gershwin's early work appeared in the 1920–24 editions of Scandals. The Black Bottom, danced by Ziegfeld Follies star Ann Pennington and Tom Patricola, touched off a national dance craze.
Ned Wayburn(néEdward Claudius Weyburn; 30 March 1874 – 2 September 1942) was an American choreographer.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a 1982 play – one of the ten-play Century Cycle by August Wilson – that chronicles the 20th-century African-American experience. The play is set in a recording studio in 1920s Chicago, and deals with issues of race, art, religion, and the historic exploitation of black recording artists by white producers.
Classic female blues was an early form of blues music, popular in the 1920s. An amalgam of traditional folk blues and urban theater music, the style is also known as vaudeville blues. Classic blues were performed by female singers accompanied by pianists or small jazz ensembles and were the first blues to be recorded. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and the other singers in this genre were instrumental in spreading the popularity of the blues.
Anna Pennington was an American actress, dancer, and singer who starred on Broadway in the 1910s and 1920s, notably in the Ziegfeld Follies and George White's Scandals.
"Ballin' the Jack" is a popular song from 1913 written by Jim Burris with music by Chris Smith. It introduced a popular dance of the same name with "Folks in Georgia's 'bout to go insane." It became a ragtime, pop, and traditional jazz standard, and has been recorded hundreds of times.
Black Vaudeville is a term that specifically describes Vaudeville-era African American entertainers and the milieus of dance, music, and theatrical performances they created. Spanning the years between the 1880s and early 1930s, these acts not only brought elements and influences unique to American black culture directly to African Americans but ultimately spread them beyond to both white American society and Europe.
George White was an American theatrical and film producer and director who also was an actor, choreographer, composer, dancer, dramatist, lyricist and screenwriter, as well as a Broadway theater owner.
Irvin Colloden Miller was an American actor, playwright, and vaudeville show writer and producer. He was responsible for successful theater shows including Broadway Rastus (1921), Liza (1922), Dinah (1923), which introduced the wildly popular black bottom dance, and Desires of 1927 starring Adelaide Hall. For thirty years he directed the popular review, Brown Skin Models, influenced by the Ziegfeld Follies but exclusively using black performers. "In the 1920s and 1930s, he was arguably the most well-established and successful producer of black musical comedy."
Buddy Bradley was an African-American dancer and choreographer of the 1930s and later.
Tom Patricola was an American actor, comic and dancer who starred in vaudeville and motion pictures. Born in New Orleans, Patricola established his fame as a hoofer, becoming a leading interpreter of the Black Bottom dance.
Billy Pierce was an African American choreographer, dancer and dance studio owner who has been credited with the invention of the Black Bottom dance that became a national craze in the mid-1920s.
Leonard Harper was a producer, stager, and choreographer in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s.
Mae Barnes was an American jazz singer, dancer and comic entertainer. She was responsible for introducing the Charleston dance to Broadway in the 1924 revue Runnin' Wild. After her career as a dancer ended, she became a successful nightclub singer and recording artist.
