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Clarence "Buddy" Bradley [biography]
Dates: 1905-1972
Birth Date: Jul 24, 1905
Death Date: Jul 17, 1972
Place of Birth: Harrisburg, PA
Place of Death: New York, NY
African American choreographer and jazz tap dancer was born Clarence Bradley in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, his parents' names and occupations are unknown. His father died when he was quite young and his religious mother brought him up strictly. After seeing the tap dancers Jack Wiggins and Clarence "Dancing" Dotson at a local theatre, Bradley learned to do the time step on one foot by the time he was eight. He taught himself the Charleston, strut, drag, shuffle, and a vast assortment of African-American vernacular dances from the deep South. After his mother died when he was fourteen, Bradley went to live with a brother-in-law in Utica, New York, and worked as a hotel busboy. A few months later he ran away to New York City and lived at a Harlem boardinghouse inhabited by many show people, especially dancers. With a group of other youngsters that included Derby Wilson, who would become a well-known tap dancer, Bradley learned tap dance in a blind alley next to Connie‘s Inn in Harlem and picked up flash and acrobatic steps as a chorus boy at both the downtown Kentucky Club and Connie's Inn. In 1926 he made his stage debut as a dancer in a Florence Mills Revue at the Lincoln Square Theater.
Around 1922, at the Billy Pierce Dance Studios off Broadway, Bradley found himself tailoring routines for specific dancers-- from gangsters' molls to Broadway stars-- for $250 a routine; at the time this was the only black school, meaning that there were African-American teachers His dance formula was radically new: he simplified rhythms in the feet while sculpting the body into shapes from African-American social dance, blending easy tap dance and jazz dance into routines that rose to climax and finished gracefully. Well paid but known only in show-business circles, Bradley created dozens of dance routines for white stars of Broadway musicals such as Adele Astaire, Ruby Keeler, and Eleanor Powell, although his name never appeared on any program. It was the custom that as long as the "dance director," who grouped scenes and coached the stars, got his pay there was no need for program credit. Bradley coached Tom Patricola, Ann Pennington, and Francis Williams in the Black Bottom musical numbers in George White's Scandals (1926). In 1928 he re-choreographed the entire production of Greenwich Village Follies of 1928, even though Busby Berkeley's name remained as choreographer on the program. Bradley created routines and sometimes staged complete scenes for Mae West, Gilda Gray, Irene Delroy, Jack Donahue, and Paul Draper in shows such as Ziegfeld Follies (1929) and Errol Carol's Vanities (1924). The "High Yaller" routine from the "Moanin' Low" number in The Little Show (1929), which established Clifton Webb as one of the hottest dancers since Earl "Snake Hips" Tucker, was choreographed by Bradley.
A 1928 article in Dance Magazine, "The Black Black Bottom of the Swanee Rhythm," includes sketches of Bradley's jazz dancing and describes his style of dancing: From the "million old jive steps" and "endless variations on the Shuffle" of Bradley's youth came such new "Low-Down Dances" as "His Sugar Foot Strut, which combined eccentric dancing and swiveling hip motions with strutting; and his version of the St. Louis Hop, which moved the feet, the Louisiana Mess-Around which circled the hips, the Heebie Jeebies which patted the arms, and Washington Johnny which rocked the head in perfect rhythm to the music."
Inspired by the music of the day, Bradley ignored the melody and translated the accents of improvising musician soloists into dance patterns that were new to Broadway. Bradley received full choreographic credit in his career in 1930 in London with Evergreen, a new Rodgers and Hart musical at the Adelphi Theatre. His choreography for C.B. Cochran's 1931 revue catapaulted him into English musical theater. In the 1930s alone, Bradley choreographed over thirty musical productions in London, including Revels in Rhythm (1931), Words and Music (1932), Mother of Pearl (1933), Tulip Time (1935), Cochran's 1936 revue Follow the Sun, and Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1936. Evergreen, which was made into a film in 1934, launched him into the emerging English film industry. In simplifying dance steps, Bradley used the whole body to express rather than accompany the music; and although he simplified rhythms, he never sacrificed the distinctive accents of rhythm tap. Bradley collaborated with Frederick Ashton in creating the first English jazz ballet, High Yellow (1932), which featured Alicia Markova. He also created a cabaret act for ballet dancers Vera Zorina and Anton Dolin, and collaborated with Agnes DeMille on Words and Music (1934), with Anthony Tudor on Lights Up! (1940) and with George Balanchine on Cochran's 1930 Revue.
Bradley lived in London for thirty-eight years, working in Europe as a teacher, choreographer, and producer of musical revues, films, and television. By 1950, the Buddy Bradley Dance School in London had over 500 students. It remained in operation until 1968 when he returned to New York, where he died. He was survived by his wife Dorothy Morrow.
Bradley was a prime figure in the transplantation of African-American jazz and tap dance onto the American and English musical theater stage. "His dance ideas were well ahead of his time, and knowing performers of musical comedy stage flocked to him," Bradley's obituary in Variety (26 July 1972) stated. "He was personally popular in the profession, together with respect given to his creative choreography."
[Sources: Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance (1968); Constance Valis Hill, "Buddy Bradley: The Invisible Man of Broadway Brings Jazz Tap to London," Proceedings of the Society of Dance History Scholars (14-15 Feb. 1992); "Buddy Bradley: Nimble Ex-Harlemite Runs Most Successful School in England," Ebony, July 1950, pp. 61-64; Jane Golderg, "Jimmy Payne: A Profile," Foot Print (Fall 1984 vol. 1, 2/3, p. 8.)]