More Items:

• Arthur Duncan

From:

• Performing Arts Encyclopedia
• Tap Dance America

Dates: 1933-
Birth Date: Sep 25, 1933

Place of Birth: Pasadena, California

Arthur Duncan, tap dancer and singer who gained fame as the first African-American performer on the popular television program, The Lawrence Welk Show, was born in Pasadena, California. He enrolled in Pasadena City College to study pharmacy but left school to pursue a career in show business.

After taking tap lessons from the well-known choreographer Nick Castle, he auditioned for The Lawrence Welk Show and was first employed as a part-time performer, later becoming a full-time, performing in some 575 programs from 1964 to 1975. On the weekly Welk show, he usually had one solo tap dancing performance, accompanied by the Lawrence Welk Orchestra. On many episodes he teamed up with fellow dancers Bobby Burgess and Jack Imel to perform popular dance numbers. Duncan had the unique and risky position of being the only African-American performer on the show. In an era in which blacks and whites did not even hold hands, let alone kiss each other on nationally broadcast television programs, Duncan was often seen standing in the background, trying very hard not to look like he was "with" any of the women on the program.

Duncan appeared in the Francis Ford Coppola directed film The Cotton Club (1984), starring Gregory Hines. He joined veteran tap dancers to perform in the Nick Castle, Jr. directed film,Tap (1989), starring Hines and Sammy Davis, Jr. In 2003, Duncan starred in Tap Heat, the musical short directed by Dean Hargrove, choreographed by Danny Daniels, and performed by the veteran Duncan and the next-generation tap virtuoso Jason Samuels Smith. The fourteen-minute film had all tap dancing and no dialogue, the story contrasting two very different styles of tap dance that are first displayed in a tap challenge on the streets and ends up melding together an eloquent tap dance number featuring the entire cast of young dancers who appear to be performing on a Broadway stage.

In 1988, Duncan was featured dancer An Evening of Tap at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall. Called by master of ceremonies Honi Coles as "a tap dancer's summit," the evening brought together the formidable powers of jazz tap dancing that included Steve Condos, Howard Sandman Sims, Savion Glover, Bunny Briggs, Jimmy Slyde, and Gregory Hines.

Duncan also often performed as a special guest artist with Linda Sohl Donnell's west coast company, Rhapsody in Taps. In 2003 Duncan was featured on the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon, representing the eldest of three generations of tap; the tap number choreographed by Jason Samuels Smith received an Emmy Award. In 2006, Duncan was honored at the fifteenth Annual St. Louis Tap Festival for his lifetime contribution to the art of tap dance.

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