Happy Birthday, Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson, the Greatest Tap-Dancer Ever

[PalJoey]

Happy Birthday, Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson, the Greatest Tap-Dancer Ever#1

Posted: 11/25/11 at 11:05am

Born in 1878, the grandson of a slave, and orphaned shortly after birth, he started in all-Negro vaudeville. At age 42, he began to perform in from of white audiences and soon became a headliner on the Keith, Albee and Orpheum circuits. He even headlined at the Palace, and he never appeared in blackface.



He influenced dancers from Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell and Gene Kelly to Sammy Davis Jr, the Nicholas Brothers, Gregory Hines and Michael Jackson. This is why:

http://youtu.be/a8JUwdziLGQ



In 1928, while starring in the Broadway revue Blackbirds of 1928, he first did his signature step routine, which exists in this extraordinary 1930 footage.

Click this link for an amazing look at the master at work with just a piano, a simple step-pyramid and his amazing feet:

http://youtu.be/fIQJzcldzAw

He later taught the step-routine to Shirley Temple and performed it with her in her movie The Little Colonel:



There are statues and plaques remembering him in Harlem and in Richmond, where he was born:





Fred Astaire sang a tribute to him called "Bojangles of Harlem" in the movie Swing Time:




His funeral was attended by over 100,000 people, and the procession went from Harlem to Times Square:



Jerry Jeff Walker wrote a song about a sad minstrel dancer called "Mr Bojangles." Sung memorably by Sammy Davis Jr, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Neil Diamond, it was a sentimental story-in-song that represented a generation of men, but it wasn't about Bill Bojangles Robinson. The real Bill "Bojangles" Robinson never drank, was never down and out and always dressed fastidiously.

Bojangles is buried in the Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn:



Here he is, in the movie Stormy Weather, at age 65:

http://youtu.be/wY1x7Gd2ygA

Updated On: 11/25/11 at 11:05 AM

[romantico]

Happy Birthday, Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson, the Greatest Tap-Dancer Ever #2

Posted: 11/25/11 at 11:31am

Awesome tribute PalJoey. Could not agree with you more.The man was a legend.

'There are three sides to every story. My side, your side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each one differently' -Robert Evans-