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• Jimmy Slyde

From:

• Performing Arts Encyclopedia
• Tap Dance America

Dates: 1927-2008
Birth Date: Oct 27, 1927
Death Date: May 16, 2008

Place of Birth: Atlanta, Georgia
Place of Death: Boston, Massachusetts

Jimmy Slyde, the supreme jazz hoofer known for his musicality, impeccable timing, and ability to glide effortlessly across the stage, was born James Titus Godbolt in Atlanta, Georgia. Around the age of three his family moved to Boston, where he received his early musical training at the Boston Conservatory. The training gave him a good conception of music, but standing in one place for a couple of hours and bowing was tedious, and the young Godbolt needed to move. After seeing many tap dancers perform in Boston theatres and burlesque houses, and encouraged by his mother who wanted him to do something other than baseball, basketball, hockey, and football to contain all that physical energy, he decided on dance. He was enrolled at age twelve in Stanley Brown's dance studio in Boston, where he watched Bill Robinson, Charles Honi Coles, and Derby Wilson practice their moves; and where from instructor Eddie "Schoolboy" Ford he learned to slide. "It's pure magic, and I don't know how he does it," dance critic Sally Sommer wrote about the move that became Slyde's signature inscription over a bebop line: "He's upstage left and sliding downstage right as fast and smooth as a skier, arms held out to the side, head tilted. He stops the cascade by banking backward, slips into a fast flurry of taps, working quick and low to the floor and ends the phrase by pulling up high and flashing off a triple turn." Also at Stanley Brown's studio, he met Jimmy Mitchell, who went by the name "Sir Slyde." The two developed an act called the Slyde Brothers-- Godbolt taking the name of Slyde-- and began appearing on the club and burlesque circuit in New England. As their reputation grew, they received invitations to perform in the shows that the big bands were developing and taking on the road. The Slyde Brothers worked with Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and other great bandleaders of the era. As Slyde recalled: "When I was dancing with the bands, people loved it. During a song, I would tap about three choruses. And then the band would come back in, and I'd do another two and a half, three choruses. Then I'd close it up and whip it out. I tried not to get too mired in routines. I'm not a routine man. ‘Cause dancing is a translating thing, especially if you're tapping. You're making sounds yourself . . . different dancers have different sounds. Some dance heavy, some dance light. I'm strictly sound-oriented. Tap dancing fits with the music-- it's like a summation there."

As Slyde came into his own, opportunities for hoofers in America were drying up. In 1966, at the Berlin Jazz Festival, Slyde, Baby Laurence, James Buster Brown, and Chuck Green were hailed as "Harlem's All-Star Dancers" with a band that comprised Roy Eldridge (trumpet), Illinois Jacquet (tenor sax), Jimmy Woody (bass), Milt Buckner (piano), and Papa Jo Jones (drums). Europe seemed the only remaining host for opportunities in jazz, so in the late 1960s, Slyde returned to Europe. In the 1970s he expatriated to France and settled in Paris where, with the help of tap dancer Sarah Petronio, he helped introduce rhythm tap. When he returned to the states after performing in the Paris production of Black and Blue (1985), he was immediately absorbed into the burgeoning tap revival. A much-in-demand guest artist on the national and international tap festival circuit, he was active on his hometown local scene; and with the mastress of tap dance Dianne Walker, he was a strong presence in the Boston and regional tap scene, presenting tap salons and performing at Jacob's Pillow in Becket, Massachusetts. He also served as a mentor to young artists by hosting weekly sessions at the club LaCave in New York City, where he attracted an international array of dancers, including Herbin Van Cayseele (Tamango), Max Pollak, Karen Calloway, Roxane Semadini-- who he nicknamed "Butterfly"-- and Savion Glover, who called his teacher "the Godfather of tap" and "one of the true masters of the art form."

The decade of the eighties was glorious for Slyde, who had dancing roles in such films as The Cotton Club (1984), Motown Returns to the Apollo (1985), ‘Round Midnight (1986), and Tap (1989), starring Gregory Hines. He was one of the starring hoofers in the multiple-Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Black and Blue (1989) where, in his featured solo to "Stompin' at the Savoy," he improvised with rhythms, coming down the backside of the off-beat, playing the "edges," scraping his shoes against the floor, and sounding out the brushes of the snare drums. "His timing was impeccable," said Jane Goldberg about Slyde's ability to make the audience hear every sound in a phrase, adding "He was a real purist." Slyde's numerous honors include a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1999), a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship (2003), and the Dance Magazine Award (2005). Even as his health waned in his later years and he was increasingly absent from the tap festival circuit, Slyde managed to mentor a new generation of dancers, among them "Rocky" Mendez (b. 1980), who received a Massachusetts Folk Heritage Award to apprentice with the master. The eighty-year-old Slyde urged the twenty-eight-year-old dancer not only to go back to the basics--the time steps, shuffles, riffs, and brushes-- but to become immersed in rich depths of the jazz tradition. When Jimmy Slyde died on May 16, 2008, in his home in Hanson, Massachusetts, dancers around the world mourned him as the last great tap dancer of the big-band and bebop eras who experimented with rhythm and tonality, and regarded tap improvisation and the ability to swing as a spiritually-enlightened conversation.

Author's note: The last time I spent real time with Jimmy Slyde was in February 2007 when Brenda Bufalino, Tony Waag, Jimmy, and I flew from Boston and New York City to Las Vegas, Nevada to present Bunny Briggs with an award that represented his induction into the American Tap Foundation's International Hall of Fame, which had been bestowed without his presence that previous July at the New York City Tap Festival. It was like a great big family party. I spent afternoons sitting by the pool conducting intense interviews with Brenda, while Tony spent time at the casino tables. And Slyde was in his element, loving the casinos and just hanging out, staying cool. He had partially recovered from a collapsed lung that had left him extremely thin and short of breath. In Las Vegas, he was breathing deeply and practicing his golf swing every chance he got. The best fun was squeezing into Bunny's room at the nursing home and hearing Bunny, Brenda, and Jimmy carrying on. It was beautiful, so beautiful to see them all so animated and energized in each other's company, laughing and reminiscing. I was a fly on the wall, tucked into a corner of the room with a small notepad and pencil in hand. Brenda blushed deeply when Bunny complimented her by calling her "The First Lady of Tap" who was keeping tap dancing alive. But it was ever-humble and low-keyed Jimmy who recalled how he had seen the bands of Count Basie, Artie Shaw, and Duke Ellington, and the great tap dance acts of Stump & Stumpy, Patterson & Jackson, Coles and Atkins, the Berry Brothers, and Nicholas Brothers-- but it was the style of Bunny Briggs, dancing to "Skyline" with the Charlie Barnett Orchestra, that became his very favorite. When the conversation turned to where Slyde fit in, he most self-effacing said, "I was the X-factor. I was an outsider. I was not a New York dancer," when placing himself within the context of the swing-to-bop revolution in tap dance. But Bunny would not let Godbolt get away that. He stood up from his couch (stretching taut the catheter to which he was attached) and said to Slyde: "Yes, you came in on the tail end-- but then you kept it going."

[Sources: Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America, A Cultural History (2010)]