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Maceo Anderson [biography]
Dates: 1910-2001
Birth Date: Sep 3, 1910
Death Date: Jul 4, 2001
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Place of Death: Los Angeles, CA
Maceo Anderson, a founding member of one of the most exciting and long-lived acrobatic-tap dance acts in show business, The Four Step Brothers, began dancing as a child in black rural theaters in the South. He arrived in New York City around age six, traveling with his sister and mother on a cotton boat from Charleston, South Carolina. The basement of the building where they lived in Harlem, on West 122nd Street, became an informal tap meeting place filled with young dancers, including Bill Bailey and his sister Pearl. At age seven, he auditioned for Ida Mae Chadwick's song and dance show and was accepted because he could do some Russian dance steps; because the touring group was integrated, they could not work below the Mason Dixon line.
Working as a newsboy at age fifteen, Anderson spent every spare moment in the back room of the Hoofers Club, the famous gathering place for tap dancers located under the Lafayette Theater in Harlem. There was a restaurant and pool hall in the front and a dance floor for tap dancers and a piano in the back. There Anderson would observe and dance with such famous hoofers as Eddie Rector, Ralph Cooper, Earl "Snake Hips" Tucker, Chuck Wiggins, Steve Condos, and Buck and Bubbles. It was John Bubbles who inspired Anderson with new rhythm patterns. "Bubbles started dropping heels and did a rhythm turn around," Anderson recalled. "He also did trick turns and then turned back to the other way." In 1925, Anderson, with Al Williams, and Red Walker, dancers who he had seen and admired in an amateur night at the Lafayette, formed a trio and adapted the name Step Brothers. After performing in a show called Moon Over Alabama, they set their eyes on performing at the famous Cotton Club. Avoiding the doorman, the former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, they entered through the kitchen. During the breaks, Duke Ellington would walk past the kitchen to the water fountain. The trio showed Ellington some of their steps and were finally granted an audition, in which they performed a military tap routine. They were hired as the only regular tap act at the Cotton Club for the next four years, often dancing to "The Mystery Song," a tune written especially for them by Ellington. In 1927 the trio added Sherman Robinson as a fourth member of the group that eventually billed itself as The Four Step Brothers, "Eight Feet of Rhythm." Their act combined fast rhythm taps with acrobatic flash steps in a boogie-woogie jitterbug-style of tappibg all put across through the daring mode of the tap challenge which encouraged the ceaseless one-upsmanship of tap steps. Encouraging each other and setting the time by clapping hands and stomping feet, the act was famous for its trademark "Bottle Dance" and a furious finale of jumping over each other doing flips and splits. At one time or another, comedy, rhythm tap, slides, cane tricks, Snake Hips, five-tap Wings, Afro-Cuban movement and the entire repertory of acrobatics formed a part of their act, with Anderson acting as the exuberant clown of the act, delighting the audience by heckling his colleagues, sometimes faking the acrobatics when he wasn't in the mood to do them, and at other times, getting so carried away as to dance off the stage into the audience. Over the years, the act retained the formula of the tap challenge, while it featured dancers with different specialties.
The Four Step Brothers played in Europe for kings and queens and in every nightclub and theatre of importance in the United States. They worked longer than many acts, unemployed for only a year or so after a manager blackballed them for failing to appear after he denied them a raise. They toured on the Keith-Orpheum circuit, often the first black performers to appear in theaters, and also toured on black circuits. They were the first black group to play Radio City Music Hall in New York (where they performed for ten years), Copa City in Miami Beach, and the Chex Paree in Chicago. Anderson credits Jerry Lewis for opening doors fro them. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis would not sign a contract to perform at Copa City in Miami Beach unless the Step Brothers were signed. No black artist had ever performed there before, thus opening the door for many others such as Sammy Davis, Jr. and Lena Horne. In the 1950s and 60s, they danced for the opening night of Dave Garroway's live TV show from Chicago and for Milton Berle on the Texaco Star Theatre. After Prince Spencer and Rufus "Flash" McDonald joined the group, they became the first black act to play the Café de Paree in London and the Lido in Paris. Booked in Paris for six months, they stayed for two years. They toured twelve European countries and received standing ovations from kings and queens. In the United States, Presidents Truman and Eisenhaur received them. In 1960 the Four Step Brothers were honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dance Masters of America. In 1988, they were awarded a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.
Anderson continued to perform after the act disbanded in 1959. In 1994 he was honored with a Flo-Bert Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Committee to Celebrate National Tap Dance Day. He continued to teach at his own school in Las Vegas and at festivals and universities throughout the United States until 1999. In his latter years, he ministered to the homeless in Las Vegas. He then moved to California to live with his daughter, Marzetta, where he celebrated his 90th birthday. Survived by his wife, Mary Anderson, of Las Vegas, and by two grandsons, Robert L. Reed of St. Louis and Michael Allen of Colorado Springs, Anderson's spirit and rhythm-tapping style live in the feet of such dancers as Robert L. Reed, Van Porter, and Michael Allen, who are all carrying on his legacy.
[Sources: Rusty E. Frank, Tap! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and Their Stories, 1900-1955 (1990); Constance Valis Hill, "Four Step Brothers," Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History (MacMillan, 1996); Melba Huber, "Maceo Anderson: An Original Step Brother," International Tap Association Newsletter, vol. 7, no. 2 July-August 1996, 3-5); Jennifer Dunning, "Maceo Anderson, 90, Tap Dancer, Is Dead," New York Times (July 14, 2001)]