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• Edwards Sisters (Ruth and Louise)

From:

• Performing Arts Encyclopedia
• Tap Dance America

Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois

Ruth and Louise Edwards, known primarily as the Edwards Sisters from Chicago, Illinois, are one of the rare and consistently praised sister tap dance teams, in a field dominated by men and brother-teams, who performed throughout the United States from the mid-1930s through the 1940s. Because most who remember the sisters point out that they traveled with their mother, who escorted them to and from the theater., the sisters may have been quite young, perhaps teenaged, during this period.

From 1941 to 1947 they appeared on several of the Apollo Theater's advertisements in the New York Amsterdam News for shows in which they appeared with such musical groups as Lucky Millinder and his Band. They also appeared at the Club Moderne in San Francisco (October 1935); Howard Theater, Washington, D.C. (1945); Regal Theater, Chicago, with the King Cole Trio (April 1947); and at the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas (October 1948).

Reviews acknowledge this female tap dance team as "one of the fastest dance teams in the business." The Pittsburgh Courier (October 2, 1948) described them as "a study in still motion" in their delightful rhythmic tap routines. Cheryl Willis, in her documentation of African-American female tap dancers in Philadelphia, writes: "Among the numerous song-and-dance acts of the 1940s, Ruth and Louis Edwards never attained the special status in their profession. For most of their career they were on the road, touring as added attraction with various big bands and stage revues."

In their early years, the Sisters were based on the East coast, playing such spots as New York's Loew's State Theatre with the Fletcher Henderson band (September-October 1937), Harlem's Apollo Theater with the Duke Ellington Orchestra (September 1939), and Boston's RKO Theater with the Gene Krupa Band (July 1944). In 1946 they returned to Chicago, when one of the sisters married. There, they appeared in revues at the Club DeLisa with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, and at the Rhumboogie in heavyweight champion Joe Louis' revue. When contracted for the Ellington short film, Symphony in Swing, (1949), they were residing in Los Angeles, touring in such revue packages as Eddie "Rochester" Anderson's during the summer of 1949. In the film, they appear after the opening credits, dancing to the Ellington composition, "Suddenly It Jumped." Taps dancer Jewel Pepper Welch remembers that the Sisters specialized in close-to-the-floor work, as did the male rhythm tap dancers of the period, with the addition of flash steps. James Buster Brown remembers their performing flips in their routines. A photograph of the Edwards Sisters in Cheryl Willis' Tap Dance: Memories and Issues shows them standing back to back, elegantly posed, in flowing pant-skirts. Klaus Stratemann's Duke Ellington: Day by Day, Film by Film shows a fine publicity shot of the Edwards Sisters.

[Sources: Cheryl Willis, Tap Dance: Memories and Issues of African-American Women Who Performed between 1930-1950, PhD. Dissertation, Temple University, 1991; (Jack Schiffman, Uptown: The Story of Harlem's Apollo Theater Klaus Stratemann, Duke Ellington, Day by Day, Film by Film (1992)]