Dates: 1914-1991
Birth Date: Feb 11, 1914
Death Date: Aug 8, 1991

Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois
Place of Death: New York City, NY

Charles "Cookie" Cook , whose favorite line was, "If you can walk, you can dance," began his stage career not long after he learned to walk. Born in Chicago and raised in Detroit, his mother ran a theatrical boarding house next to the Copeaum Theater for African-American entertainers who at the time were denied accommodations in the white-owned establishments. "I was star-struck at an early age," Cook said, recalling the times he carried hot peach cobbler to Ethel Waters in her dressing room and watched from backstage such comedy acts as Butterbeans and Susie and all-black touring shows Runnin' Wild, Brown Skin Models, Lucky Sambo, and Sissle and Blake's Shuffle Along. At the age of fifteen he met the thirteen-year old Ernest Brown, who would become his longtime dancing partner. Around 1929, they performed with the act Garbage and His Two Cans (both playing the garbage cans) and toured on the black vaudeville circuit as pickannies with Sarah Venable's Mammy and Her Picks. In 1930, the two formed the dance team Cook & Brown and played the College Inn in Chicago with the Ben Bernie Orchestra. Theirs was a knockabout comedy act that combined acrobatic stunts and grassroots humor with eccentric dancing. The short-tempered, six-foot tall Cook, known for his Russian floor dancing, played foil to the diminutive five-foot tall Brown who, when knocked down, slid the full length of the stage and bounced up in a reverse split, thumbing his nose and ready for more abuse. In 1934 they opened at the uptown Cotton Club and quickly became highly popular comedic performers, despite the Great Depression. Comedy dancing was at its peak in the early thirties with so-called two-man teams blending tumbling and acrobatics with superb dancing. Cook and Brown were among the finest of these teams which were forced to continue the tradition of "blacking up" with burnt cork long after that makeup ceased to a requirement for black performers. Cook and Brown were asked to black up for their performance at such theaters as the Fox Theatre in Washington, D.C., but they generally avoided the practice that had its roots in minstrelsy when white performers blacked up in imitations of black American entertainers. For over forty years, Cook and Brown headlined in vaudeville, playing New York's Palace, Palladium, Apollo, Roxy Theatre, Radio City Music Hall, and the downtown Cotton Club,and at London's Palladium and the Latin Casino in Paris. They also appeared in the Dorothy Dandridge 1942 "soundie" Cow Cow Boogie.

On December 5, 1949, Cook and Brown became a founding members of the Copasetics, a fraternity of tap dancers and musical artists dedicated to preserving the memory of the great Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, who died on November 25, 1949. The club's motto was "Everything's Copasetic"-- the Bojangles expression for fine, okay, grand. The Copasetics remained a vital social force in the Harlem community, with boat cruises, annual balls, and charitable performances, in a period of time in which the world had turned its back on tap dancing and turned its attention to ballet and modern dance on the Broadway stage. Brown, however, continued to perform. On Broadway, Cook and Brown performed as specialty dancers in the 1952 revival of Kiss Me Kate, choreographed by Hanya Holm. Performing in the musical for seven years, they stopped the show with their routine to "Too Darn Hot." In 1963, Cook was one of the dancers (along with Cholly Atkins, ernest Brown, Honi Coles, Chuck Green, and Pete Nugent) performing at the Newport Jazz Festival's Old Time Hoofers (6 July 1963); that historic performance, narrated by Marshall Stearns, was credited with sparking the revival of tap dance after a fifteen-year decline. Cook also appeared in the film documentary Great Feats of Feet (1977), performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's dance festival, Steps in Time (1979), and taught at the historic By Word of Foot tap festival at the Village Gate (1980).

In the 1980s, at the height of the tap dance renaissance, Cook appeared in the film The Cotton Club (1984), starring Gregory and Maurice Hines; and performed at the1984 Summer Olympic Games, and at the 92nd Street Y in Fifty Years of Tap Dancing. He also performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Tappin' Uptown: A New Tap Musical; at City College's Aaron Davis Hall in An Evening with Charles Cook and Friends (1984); at Chicago's Goodman Theatre in Jane Goldberg's Shoot Me While I'm Happy (1985), at the Boston Opera House in The Great Tap Dance Reunion (1988), and

In the 1970s after Brown retired, Cookie continued as a solo performer. The tap renaissance that began early in the decade revitalized his career. He taught master classes in New York City, performed at major dance festivals, and lectured about the golden age of tap dance. He also formed a longtime partnership with Jane Goldberg and her Changing Times Tap Dance Company, and in 1978 presented the lecture-demonstration It's About Time. He later danced with a number of his students, including Susan Goldbetter, with whom he collaborated for seven years. He created Fancy Feet for the Smithsonian and was the subject of Cookie's Harlem, an exhibit on his life and milieu curated by Susan Goldbetter, and the video documentary Cookie's Scrapbook. He continued performing as a guest artist, and as a solo dancer, passing on his rhythms to his students, gracefully assuming the role of mentor and unofficial "rememberer" of one of tap's most difficult and enjoyable genres, comedy tap. The most accessible of tap masters, his many students included Pat Cannon, Gail Conrad, Heather Cornell, Jamie Cunneen, Mickey Davidson, Jane Goldberg, Susan Goldbetter, Megan Haungs, Constance Valis Hill, Katherine Kramer, Andrea Levine, Michael Mailloux, Sarah Safford, Jackie Shue, Hank Smith, Peggy Spina, and Tony Waag. All remembered Cook as being unselfish in passing on the routines he so wanted to preserve. As Sarah Safford wrote: "Cookie was one of the most generous and gifted teacher I've known, sharing his steps, his style, his sense of humor and joy for dancing without reserve, willingly repeating combinations over and over until he was satisfied we had them under our belts… I've had other teachers who were equally loving and gracious-- Marion Coles, Buster Brown, Leon Collins, Josephine McNamara-- but no other teacher got under my skin the way Cookie did. I hold on to the lessons he taught me, the foundation of and my understanding of tap dance-- shift your weight boldly, cover space, use your hips, get into the groove, enjoy the subtly of every step, and make them laugh. Though I never thanked him enough, he never seemed to be looking for any big payback. His reward was in seeing us soaking up his style and in the love that was cooked up every week in that funky studio on Eighth Avenue."

[Sources: Jane Goldberg, "Charles Cookie Cook," The Village Voice, August 27, 1991; Susan Goldbetter, "In Memorium," International Tap Association Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 4 (November-December 1991); Marshall Stearns, "Frontiers of Humor: American Vernacular Dance," Southern Folklore Quarterly (vol. 30, no. 3, September 1966: 227-235); Sarah Safford, unpublished letter, April 8, 1991]