Newport Jazz Festival 1980: Swinging Taps
Green, Charles "Chuck"
performer
Sims, Howard "Sandman"
performer
Coles, Charles "Honi"
performer
Bufalino, Brenda
performer
Mitchell, Deborah
performer
Copasetics
performer
Festival
1980-07-03
Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center
Newport Jazz Festival (June 27-July 6, 1980)
July 3, 1980 program at Avery Fisher Hall titled Swinging Taps.
music by the Benny Carter Orchestra and the Widespread Depression Orchestra.
Whitney Balliett wrote: "The little renaissance of tap-dancing begun in the early sixties by the late Marshall Stearns has probably reached its height. The number of first-rate dancers is low (Chuck Green, Sandman Sims, Honi Coles, Bunny Briggs) and is not likely to be replenished [!!!!]. The competitive, charged, echoing back room environment that the great dancers knew is gone. Tonite, the Widespread Depression Orchestra played half a dozen numbers, several of them with Bob Wilber, who did his unimpeachable Johnny Hodges. Then the band began "Caravan" and there was Chuck Green--a square, flapping scarecrow moving in half time, his head bent forward in concentration, his arms loose. He danced in the space of a card tale, and his simplicity and elegance were flawless. Green's dancing is designed to be heard; he is a snare-drum dancer. Abetted by two perfectly placed and pitched floor microphones, he filled the hall with crystalline clicking and rattling, with square, loping four-four rhythms from the late thirties. On "Take the A Train" he inserted some sharp double-time patterns and some oily slide steps. He dedicated his final number to his model, John W. Bubbles. Green has gotten heavier and slower in the past ten years, but his dancing remains precise and gleaming. Sandman Sims, who followed, is a flash dancer. He uses most of the stage, and he is fond of hitting his heels together, opening and closing his toes, dancing on one foot, and flinging his legs off to one side. He aims at our eyes. He closed with a couple of sand dances, using a three-by-four board covered with fine sand. The first was shuffling and subtle, and the second an ingenious improvisation on the sounds of a steam locomotive. After intermission, Benny Carter, joined by Doc Cheatham, Jimmy Maxwell, Budd Johnson, Curtis Fuller, and the violinist Oliver Jackson, played four numbers before settling down to accompany Honi Coles and the Copasetics--Charles Cook, Buster Brown, Bubba Gaines, Brenda Bufalino, and Debbie Mitchell. They did four or five numbers, ending with "Bugle Call Rag" but they had had to wait too long for Carter to finish, and they lacked the intensity and rhythmic press of Green and Sims." (Balliett)
The performance marked the unprecedented addition of two women: Brenda Bufalino, Honi Coles' white female protege, and Deborah Mitchell, Leslie Gaine's black female protege. Critic John Wilson in the New York Times commented that the women "gave this program some of its freshest, most colorful moments" (John S. Wilson"Newport Jazz Festival Opens 27th Year Friday" New York Times 6/22/1980).
Performing Arts Encyclopedia
http://www.loc.gov/performingarts
Balliett, Whitney: Collected Works : A Journal of Jazz 1954-2000. St. MartinÕs Press (2000).
Tap Dance America
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/tda/tda-home.html
Copasetics (biography)
loc.music.tdabio.59
Deborah Mitchell (biography)
loc.music.tdabio.133
Brenda Bufalino (biography)
loc.music.tdabio.42
Charles "Honi" Coles (biography)
loc.music.tdabio.43
Howard "Sandman" Sims (biography)
loc.music.tdabio.168
Charles "Chuck" Green (biography)
loc.music.tdabio.102
tda
IHAS
151216
loc.music.tda.1159