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Crackerjacks [biography]
The Crackerjacks, one of the first famous flash acts of the teens and twenties, was the brainchild of early acrobat fame Lulu Coates, who in 1914 was part of the Watermelon Trust Acrobats which consisted of Lulu Coates, her husband Sherman Coates, a dancer called Grundy, and his wife. When the Coates' and Grundy's act split up in 1914, Lulu formed the Crackerjacks with three young male dancers-- Wilfred Banks, Harry Irons, and Archie Ware. When Coates retired in 1922, two of those young men joined up with two others and continued to call themselves the Crackerjacks: Raymond Thomas, Clifford Carter (who specialized in tumbling, acrobatics, and tap), Harry Irons (tumbling, acrobatics, tap), and Archie Ware. The size and makeup of the group varied but the troupe continued under the same name until 1952.
Ware, the leader of the group, had skills in tumbling, tap, and acrobatics, and an extensive performance background, having worked in vaudeville and circus, for three seasons with Coz and her Pickaninnies on George Webster's vaudeville circuit in the Dakotas. In 1913 Ware left the Cozy Smith group and worked with Mayme Remington and a comedienne named Tribble. Ware worked with Lulu Coates for eight years until she retired and gave the act over to Ware, who hired Morris Greenwald as manager.
The Crackerjacks not only were acrobatic specialists but also sang, danced, tumbled, did tap and comedy dancing. Their act often consisted of five parts and lasted ten minutes. It began with a tap routine, followed by a solo, and their trademark "The Old Man," performed in Civil War costumes, long grey beards and walking canes. They hobbled on stage looking and moving like infirm elders, then burst into acrobatic specialties. Then another specialty solo dance, finishing with an acrobatic finale in which all the moves were done in rhythmic precision to the music.
Other members of the Crackerjacks over the years included Bobby Goins (contortion, acrobatics, tap), Deighton Boyce (gymnastics, acrobatics, tap), Walter Humphrey (tumbling, acrobatics, tap), Wilfred Blanks (tumbling, acrobatics, tap), Joe Chisholm, and Tosh Hammond. Combining flash tap with acrobatics and comedy dance, the Crackerjacks set the standard for many flash acts that followed such as Three Little Words, Berry Brothers, and Step Brothers.
[Sources: Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance The Story of American Vernacular Dance (1968); Mark Knowles, Tap Roots: The Early History of Tap Dancing (2002)]