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• Whitman Sisters

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• Performing Arts Encyclopedia
• Tap Dance America

The Whitman Sisters-- Mabel Whitman (1880-1942), Essie Whitman (1882-1903), Alberta Whitman (ca. 1887-1963) and "Baby" Alice Whitman (ca. 1900-1969), comprise the family of black female entertainers who owned and produced their own performing company, which traveled across the United States from 1900-1943 to play in all the major cities, becoming the longest running and highest-paid act on the T.O.B.A. circuit and a crucible of dance talent in black vaudeville. Daughters of Caddie Whitman and the Reverend Albery Allson Whitman, Bishop of the Methodist Church in Lawrence, Kansas and Dean of Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georga. When they were young, their father gave singing and dancing lessons to Mabel, Essie and Alberta. While living in Missouri, Kansas, and in Georgia he taught them, for exercise only he insisted, the Double Shuffle and religious songs with the intent that the girls would accompany him on evangelical tours and church benefits. The three girls sang, danced, and played guitar while he preached. The syncopated rhythms of some spirituals, with which congregations were familiar with through their own hand clapping, could easily have been translated to tap dance. The kick lines, shimmies, and movements that isolated the lower half of the body were less welcome in religious settings, and would not become part of the Whitman sisters' repertoire until later in their performance career. Essie sang jubilee songs while Mabel and Alberta played the piano at church socials.

In 1899, Mabel, Essie and Alberta formed the Whitman Sisters Comedy Company and played the Augusta Grand Opera House in Augusta, Georgia; the Burbridge Opera House in Jacksonville, Florida, and the Savannah Theatre in Savannah, Georgia and toured all of the leading southern houses, playing to black and white audiences. When the Reverend Whitman died (29 June 1901), The Whitman Sisters' Novelty Act Company opened midwinter of 1902 at the Grand Opera House in Augusta, Georgia. With the establishment of the Whitman Sisters' New Orleans Troubadours in 1904, Mabel became one of the first black woman to manage and continuously book her own company in leading Southern houses. In 1910, she organized Mabel Whitman and the Dixie Boys and toured the country and Europe.

In a reconstruction of a typical performance of the Whitman Sisters during the high point of the early years from 1909 to 1920, Nadine George Graves writes that The Whitman Sisters offered something for everyone: jubilee songs and coon shouts, cakewalks and breakdowns, comedians, midgets, cross-dressers, beautiful dancing girls, pickaninnies, a jazz band. Willie Robinson would probably be featured singing popular songs such as "Is Everybody Happy?" while nimbly danced breakdowns Then would come the dancers. They had the stage to themselves and did not have to sing or tell jokes as in the prior tent show tradition, but were able to dance as a sole specialty. They would probably prance onto stage with a cakewalk and then move into a Tiller dance, a popular, intricate combination of high kicking on alternating legs in a typical chorus line fashion. Catherine Basie (wife of Will, later Count Basie) described they would "kick to the left, kick to the right, kick straight up, and so one, to the tune of the jazzy ‘Stardust." Then three of he girls-- Alice Whitman, Jeni LeGon, and Catherine Basie-- would do a shake dance (something like he shimmy) to the jazz song, ‘Diga Diga Doo." Shfting the focus to the lower half of the body, the girls would then do a snakehips dance, the movement of their satin costumes from their indulations. Mabel would come on with the pickaninnies, singing old favorites then turning the show over to the boys, who would belt out songs, clap out a Charleston rhythm, tap like their was no tomorrow, turning lips, running up walls, and generally defying gravity." After that, a blues singer and possibly a comedy act. Then Mabel did her solo act, and Alberta began the finale with a strut and what was known as flash dancing or legomania, throwing her legs every which way. The entire company would end with a cakewalk and end in a spectacular group kick-line, feeding off the audience's applause. Refusing to follow the set pattern of segregating audience by having whites in the auditorium and black in the balcony, the Whitmans insisted upon blacks being allowed in the parquet and dress circle sections of the theater although spectators were probably still grouped together by race.

"Baby" Alice was born in Atlanta, Georgia. By the time she joined the company at the age of ten, the Whitman Sisters had become a family-run business that played most of the major vaudeville circuits in the South, East and Northeast. Mabel handled all the bookings, Essie designed and executed costumes, Alberta composed music, and Alice, having won cakewalk contests from a child, was billed at the star dancer. Their fast-paced shows, based on a variety format of songs, dances and comedy skits, included a chorus line and jazz band. Alberta cut her hair short, dressed as a man, and excelled as a male impersonator. A singer and flash dancer, "Bert" topped her Strut with high-kicking legomania. Alice was the star of the show and billed as the "Queen of Taps," enhancing such popular dances as Ballin' the Jack, Walkin' the Dog, and the Shim-Sham-Shimmy with clear and clean tapping. She was considered the best female tap dancer in the 1920s.

A description of Alice Whitman's dance style comes from a reconstruction of Whitman Sisters' act 1909-1920 by Nadine Graves George: "Alice would then begin to sing her number and the stage would clear as she broke into a clear, clean tap routine full of wings, pullbacks, and time steps that put most tappers to shame. Still in her baby doll costume, Alice exuded dainty charm…with her oversized bows, head tilted in innocence, and childlike expression, she is the epitome of purity." Marshall and Jean Stearns describe "the star of the show Alice," as consisting of performing Ballin' the Jack, Walkin' the Dog, the Sand, and the Shimmy. When interviewed by the Stearnses, Alice said, "I'd make my exit with the Shim-Sham-Shimmy, mostly from the waist down-- along with more squeals-- wearing a shawl and a little flimsy thing around my middle with a fringe and a bow on he back. If I ever lost that bow, they used to say, I'd sure catch a cold. I could swing a mean [Alice winked her eye] around."

"Of the tap dancers (Alice) was the best there was," Jeni Gon stated. "She was tops. She was better than Ann Miller and Eleanor Powell and me and anybody else you wanted to put her to…. She could do all the ballet-style stuff like Eleanor. And then she could hoof [heavy, grounded tapping]! But she never went out on her own, you know, she stayed with the sisters." Alice's son, "Pops" Whitman (1919-1950) became one of the finest acrobatic tap dancers, one of the first to execute cartwheels, spins, flips and spins to swinging rhythms. The Whitman Sisters would become one of the longest running, highest-paid, and most popular companies on the black vaudeville circuit, "Performers like the Whitmans had to carefully control the images they portrayed in order to stay in the ‘big time,'" biographer Nadine George Graves wrote. "From the time they performed in front of their first audiences, singing and dancing on their father's evangelical tour, through their years as an independent troupe playing the top vaudeville houses and heir time as headliners on the Toby circuit to the end of their 40-year careers, Mabel, Alberta, Essie and Alice made sure that they were never taken advantage of, and maintained spotless reputations. Ever loyal to the African-American community, the Whitmans entertained whites and blacks, men and women, upper-,middle-, and lower-class Americans."

The sisters knew talent then they saw it, and gave hundreds of dancers their first big break. Bill Robinson, Ananias and Jimmy Berry, Bunny Briggs, Willie Bryant, Billie Kersands, Jeni LeGon, Aaron Palmer, Eddie Rector, Clarence Taylor (Groundhog), and Jack Wiggins all served apprenticeship with them. They not only employed comedy dancers, they featured dancers as dancers, and sold their show on the strength of its dancing talent—and without doubt, the incredible long life of the Whitman Sisters was based on the premise that good dancing always pleased the public.

[Sources: Nadine George Graves, The Royalty of Vaudeville: The Whitman Sisters (2000); Cheryl Willis, Tap Dance: Memories and Issues (1991); Jack Schiffman, Uptown: The Story of Harlem's Apollo Theater (1971); Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance (1968); Rusty Frank, Tap! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and Their Stories, 1900-1955 (1990)]