Black and Tan Ellington, Duke performer Washington, Fredi performer The Five Blazers performer The Five Hot Shots performer Cotton Club Chorus girls performer Film 1929-12-08 RKO Productions Short subject, two-reel sound film written and directed by Dudley Murphy (under the supervision of Dick Currier.) with art direction by Ernest Fegté featuring Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra, the Hall Johnson Choir, Fredi Washington. Contents include Black and tan fantasy -- The Duke Steps Out -- Black Beauty -- Cotton Club Stomp -- Hot Feet, and Same Train. Originally produced at the Gramercy Studio of RCA Photophone, Inc., this was Ellington's film debut. Fredi Washington plays the ill and courageous musician's wife who agrees to dance in his show in order to assure its success, knowing the risks involved due to her heart condition. Features the music of Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra; also features Washington, in love with Ellington, on her deathbed while hearing Ellington's "Black and Tan Fantasy. As Washington watches Ellington from the wings, her faintness causing her to see double images, we are made to see the act through her eyes. The number is repeated precisely but our visual bearings are confused by the splitting of musicians and already duplicated dancers into a revolving myriad mosaic. The dance is performed by an all-male quintet billed as the "Five Hot Shots" a group known for its concerted stepping in the "Springboards" Cotton Club revue of mid-1929, where it was billed as the "Five Dancing Blazers." In early 1932 the group shared the bill at Philadelphia's Earl Theatre with Fletcher Henderson's orchestra. "The Five Blazers, with Henry "Phace" Roberts as the fourth dancer in the lineup (the group has mistakenly been identified as the Five Hots Shots) perform a stunning tap dance in black patent leather shoes on a stage reminiscent of the Cotton Club; the black glass floor reflects their quintuple-imaged class act tap; the act was primarily based on a tight formation doing a precision tap and shuffle dance to "The Duke Steps Out" and "Black Beauty" each played twice; the choreography with its meticulous stepping and syncopated breaks, is a quintessential example of class act jazz tap dance in the 1920s. Fredi Washington performed an eccentric dance in "Cotton Club Stomp" that is so taxing it gives her a heart attack and she collapses on the ground; she is followed by The Cotton Club Chorus girls (Amy Spencer, Hyacinth Curtis, Evelyn Shepard, Dora White, Minnie McDowell and a sixth unidentified dancer.) Performing Arts Encyclopedia http://www.loc.gov/performingarts Frank, Rusty E.: Tap! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and their Stories 1900-1955. New York, William Morrow. (1990). Tap Dance America http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/tda/tda-home.html Cotton Club Chorus girls (biography) loc.music.tdabio.61 Five Blazers (biography) loc.music.tdabio.90 tda IHAS 151216 loc.music.tda.20