Albert "Pops" Whitman, the outstanding swing and acrobatics tap dancer who formed the transition between tap and flash acts of the 1930s and 40s, was born to tap dancer "Baby" Alice Whitman of the famous Whitman Sisters, and class-act tap dancer Aaron Palmer. He made his debut in 1923 at the age of four in a miniature tuxedo, dancing with Whitman Sisters troupe on the T.O.B.A. black vaudeville circuit. By the 1940s, after a series of partners, Whitman formed the tap team of Pops and Louis with Louis Williams, a versatile eccentric dancer with a fine personality. They graduated from T.O.B.A. and went to work with the big swing bands of Jimmie Lunceford, Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington. Avid improvisers, they were known never to give the same show twice; with Louis coming up with whatever struck his fancy, and Pops topping it on the spur of he moment. "We were a little different from The Nicholas Brothers and the Berry Brothers, who were dancing at the same time," Louis Williams told Marshall Stearns. "We had a sort of ad lib song-and-dance act, singing duets together and doing whatever we felt like." They also played instruments. Tap dancer Leroy Myers remembers that for a while, they even worked as mascots for the NBC-TV Kiddie Hour, "singing and clowning around without hardly any dancing." They later toured Europe and appeared in the Hollywood film Change of Heart (1943).

As highly talented showmen who enjoyed every moment onstage, the high point of Pops and Louis' act was Pops' flash tap acrobatics; tap dancer Baby Laurence Jackson remembers that was a front-and-back spin that looked effortless but was almost impossible, and a Russian twist that was indescribable: "He [Pops] started spinning like a top and went down into a squat and up, over and over, and each time he came up, he was facing the audience with his ankles locked. In my book, he was the greatest of all the acrobatic tap dancers." Williams remembers that "Pops was a little king, he was born in a trunk, and he had all the savvy of show business at his fingertips. He was my inspiration. When I saw him, I saw all the dancing there was."

[Sources: Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: the Story of American Vernacular Dance (1968); photo of Louis Williams, New York Amsterdam News (June 3, 1939)]