Pie, Pie, Blackbird Nicholas Brothers performer Nicholas, Fayard performer Nicholas, Harold performer Blake, Eubie performer Film 1932 Vitaphone Vitaphone short subject film featuring Eubie Blake and his jazz orchestra captures the tap dancing of Fayard (age 18) and Harold (age 11) Nicholas when they first arrived in New York in the early thirties. We first see the brothers peering over the shoulders of a bakerwoman (played by the singer Nina Mae McKinney) and asking her what she is baking. She assures them it is a blackbird pie. The camera cuts to a close up of the pie as it begins to peel open, slice by slice and out of the pie rises Blake and the thirteen members of his orchestra playing "Memories of You" "Everything I've got Belongs to You" (sung my McKinney), "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You" and "China Boy" a medium tempo soft-shoe played in bouncing 4/4 time and danced by the Nicholas Brothers. The brothers dance with close-to-the-floor paddle-and-rolls, side-brushing wings, forward-stroking trenches, one-legged wings, and their signature down-and-up splits in a speed that is apparently so "hot" that they start to burn up the floor. The blackbird pie containing the musicians and dancers becomes enveloped in smoke and then bursts into flame. 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 Nicholas Brothers (biography) loc.music.tdabio.144 tda IHAS 151216 loc.music.tda.54