Peg Leg Bates Inducted International Tap Dance Hall of Fame Social Event 2005-06-28 Remark by Constance Valis Hill on the Induction of Peg Leg Bates into the International Tap Dance Hall of Fame City June 28, 2005. Event produced by the American Tap Dance Foundation. "Do you folks mind if I introduce my self to you? (he'd ask us) I am the fastest dancing man in town. Just give me half a chance and I'll prove that this is true When I swing this pegged-leg all around. Folks my name is Clayton, Peg Leg Bates to you, I'm always syncopating And doing something new. When I start to sing it Music fills the air; But when I start to swing it, You think that I am Fred Astaire." With Clayton "Peg Leg" Bates, We learn that that sorrow and self-pity are Are needless intrusions to living a life-- "Don't look at me in sympathy" he'd say after his accident at age twelve, in which he lost his leg in a cotton gin mill-- "I'm glad that I'm this way, I feel good and I'm knocking on wood… I'm not sorry I lost this leg So please don't sympathize with me, For I enjoy my peg." From him, we learn that with the right attitude, Something comes from nothing-- That so-called bad luck holds unseen opportunities-- To reinvent life on one's own terms; to reinvent rhythm tap To make folks listen better -- To open their ears--to the deeper sonics of the beat With Clayton Peg Leg Bates, Born in Fountain Inn, South Carolina in 1907 The son of a sharecropper Driven to dance We have one of our great American tap dancers and gurus-- With the twinkle in his eyes he loved to tell the story of the boy whose fist got stuck in the jaw of a tiger; advising that if that happened to you, you wouldn't pull your fist out and lose fingers, but instead, wait until the tiger's jaw relaxed, so you could gently remove yoru fist-- A homily on passive resistance. In our tap history, in which others have claimed that So-and-so is the most beloved tap dancer in the century That so-and-so was the greatest tap dancer in the world-- Peg Leg Bates dispels these elite distinctions First by claiming all these titles (by example) And then by turning them around to endow them on us all-- He also challenged the "fact" that tap was dead in the 50s: Oh how it was alive and well in the Catskills Where hundreds of rhythm tap dancers frolicked and kept the beat alive. So in naming Clayton Peg Leg Bates to the Tap City Hall of Fame we are celebrating a great dancer, who in his words "mixed black fantastics With hot gymnastics"; and a great man who lived the words he preached: "Don't give up the ship Although you seem to lose the fight; Life means doing the best with all you've got Give it all your might." And a great father to Melodye Bates, Peg Leg's daughter, who will accept this award this evening. Performing Arts Encyclopedia http://www.loc.gov/performingarts American Tap Dance Foundation: American Tap Dance Foundation. http://www.atdf.org/; http://www.atdf.org/history.html (). Tap Dance America http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/tda/tda-home.html tda IHAS 151216 loc.music.tda.880