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Willie Covan [biography]
Dates: 1897-1989
Birth Date: Mar 4, 1897
Death Date: May 7, 1989
Place of Birth: Savannah, GA
Place of Death: Los Angeles, CA
Willie Covan, the legendary tap dancer and choreographer who was teacher and coach for some of Hollywood's greatest dancing stars, was born in Savannah, his parents Henry and Cora Covan. He grew up in the south side of Chicago, learning to tap dance by mimicking street dancers and earning pennies by tapping to street rhythms. Collecting rags and bottles to trade to the junkman for money, at the age of five, he paid a young boy named Harry to teach him to dance. He had already learned the Irish jig, which had a "BOP-ADOO-BOP-ADOO" rhythm, while Time Step which he learned from Harry sounded sounded out as "DA-DA-DA-DOT-DOT-dah." Covan stood behind him copying the step. He asked Harry again about all the da's in the step. Harry sounded it out again with "DA-DA-DA-Doy-DA-DA-DaDa-Dot." The frustrated Harry then said "I ain't got all day to fool with you now," and gave Covan back the dime. At the age of 6 began a career as a pick tap dancer in minstrel shows. At the age of six, with his cousin Maxie McCree, Covan worked with Cozy Smith and her Pickaninnies on the George Webster circuit in the Dakotas. By the time he was twelve, he was entering amateur tap dance contests and performing on the pickaninny circuit (young African-American children performing on the vaudeville circuit, appearing as backup choruses for headliner acts). In the early part of the 1900s, large black touring shows such as Black Patti and Her Troubadours and Old Kentucky, travelled throughout the United States. Friday night dance competitions were featured attractions of these shows. In 1915 Covan won the highly coveted Old Kentucky Friday night contest by performing syncopated buck-and-wings instead of the standard time steps. As Marshall Stearns wrote, "The judges gave Covan the prize and the audience came backstage after the show and carried him out on its shoulders. From then on, everybody in Negro show business knew about Covan."
With the tap dancer Leonard Ruffin, he formed the team of Covan and Ruffin. Ruffin had the reputation of being a fine soft shoe dancer but Covan could do a soft-shoe and just about anything else, including a variety of acrobatic steps, with and without taps. Their act was subtitled "Every Move A Picture." They performed a soft shoe together, multiplying syncopated accents and giving the dance more flow and propulsion. They anticipated the class act teams to come and it earned them billing at the Palace Theatre in New York, where they were continually shifted to different places on the program because no one wanted to follow them. They were subsequently let go by the Palace, but promptly hired by the Hippodrome, then fired again for the same reason. Sammy Davis Jr. once observed: "I've seen two great dancing acts-- one was Bill Robinson and the other was Covan and Ruffin."
In the 1920s, Covan danced in the all-black Broadway musicals Shuffle Along (1920), Runnin' Wild (1922), Liza( 1922), and Dixie to Broadway (1924), in which he teamed with Ulysses "Slow Kid" Thompson to create a swinging blend of taps, acrobatics and Russian dancing. As a leading dancer in developing the eccentric style of tap dancing, he added knee-drops and kazotskys to an already-athletic style of tap dancing, as well as working out a double Around the World, with no hands-- the tap equivalent of two consecutive aerial barrel turns that were framed at the beginning and end with a flourish of in-tempo tapping. In 1921 Covan met the Everglades Club chorus dancer, Florence, who joined Willie and his partner, Dewey Weinglas, and his wife Corita Harbert, in forming the Four Covans. This winning team combined all styles in their act-- jazz dance, speed tapping, precision dancing, challenge dances and flash acrobatics. In 1927, after working with Lionel Hampton at the Sebastien Club in Los Angeles, the Four Covans jumped from the Orpheum to the Keith circuits, and then to New York's Palace Theater, the undisputed crown jewel of vaudeville, where they were a great success. Their act consisted of several parts. It opened with all four doing a jazz number without tap, which was slowed down to a tap dance waltz done to a Russian lullaby, followed by Willie doing a buck-and-wing with the group doing clap accompaniment. The music was then brought down, with the remainder of the act including acrobatic and precision dancing, with a finish of Russian kazotsky kicks in stop time. In the very end, there was a challenge dance in which Willie was the last to perform. "The secret to our success was that we never left the stage," Covan recalled. "All four of use never left the stage. We just kept pouring it on. The act opened with jazz dancing, no taps, but all four we'd do a very fast Nagasaki, and would suddenly slow down to a graceful tap waltz to a Russian lullaby. The contrast was highly effective." Then came Covan's solo and the others fell back and clap, building up to three and a half choruses of the buck-and-wing to a medium tempo. Toward the end of Covan's solo, the band cut to half tempo as he topped it all with some breathtaking acrobatics, the whirls and wings worked out with a couple of double twists. This was followed by the quartet performing a precision tap ensemble with floor drums and Cossack hats; followed by a tricky regimental drill to "The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers," in which they danced together as one man. Then came some rousing Russian Kozotsky kicks in stop time unison, and in the finale, a challenge dance in which each dancer soloed in turn, until Willie's second solo was ended with sensational acrobatics, which wrapped up the act. "The Four Covans were something for everybody," said Florence Covan. "We wiped up more stages than anybody in show business." After years of stage success the four Covans made their film debut in On with the Show (1929).
Remaining in Hollywood, on the recommendation of Eleanor Powell to mogul Louis B. Mayer, Covan was contracted as MGM's staff tap dance instructor from the mid1930s to 1940s, and in1936 opened the Covan Dance School in Los Angeles. Covan never lost his connection with black and white vaudeville when he worked as a dance director at the MGM film studios in Hollywood, with his own bungalow on the lot, where he taught and coached, among others, such stars as Eleanor Powell, Vera Ellen, Mickey Rooney, Shirley Temple, Mae West, Polly Bergen, Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas, Ann Miller and Debbie Reynolds. Yet he received no film credit. Covan was known nevertheless for his distinct taps and elegant soft-shoe work, and for his pioneering role as an acrobatic dancer and known for inventing the Double Around the World with no hands. Known for clean taps, elegant soft-shoe work, and for his pioneering role as an acrobatic dancer. In command of a wide range of styles, he used them all throughout his very long dance career that continued until 1975 through his teaching. In retirement during the 1970s and 1980s, Covan was revered as a source of tap history, an engaging raconteur who shared memories with tap dancers. In 1981 he was honored with the PDS Gypsy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Covan will be remembered for inventing the double Around the World with no hand-- the tap equivalent of two, consecutive, aerial barrel turns, and framed at its beginning and ending with perfect, in-tempo tapping, it was a nearly impossible feat that will stand as a monument of tap-dancing virtuosity.
[Sources: Joe Bleeden, "Legendary Dancer Willie Covan," International Tap Association Journal, (Fall 1989, vol. 2, no. 1, p. 26); Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance (1968); Rusty Frank, Tap; Larry Billman, Film Choreographers and Dance Directors; Unpublished transcript of an interview with Willie Covan in the papers of Sally Sommer, formerly in the Lincoln Center Theatre Collection but housed in the Vaudeville archive in Los Angeles]