Works in Progress Volume 18:1 Winter 2005 ISSN 1075-0029
Imagining Louise Madison: remembering African American women dancers - by Germaine Ingram

Some might judge it a rather unprepossessing celebration - a modest spread of bagels, cream cheese and coffee in the Folklore Project's cramped but welcoming office on a crisp weekend morning in November 2004. No festive attire - just well-worn Saturday-run-the-errands duds, caps covering unprimped hair. People coming and going in twos and threes, sharing hugs and news of relocations, retirements, travels and other personal tidbits. Friends peering into old photographs exhibited on the walls, stitching an impromptu patchwork of memories of Libby, Dee, Baby, Fambro, Hank, Mike, Dave, and Tommy - all of whom have transitioned since those heady months in the fall and winter of 1993-94 when our lives seemed to revolve around the mercurial course of "Stepping in Time," PFP's uncommonly democratic and elastic stage production that played to three SRO houses at the Arts Bank at Broad and South in February 1994.

"Stepping" was a revue reminiscent of the stage shows of the 1930s, 40s and 50s where African American performers - dancers, singers, comics, variety acts and instrumentalists - regaled audiences of all ages. Our "Stepping" production was a platform for a dozen or so senior Philadelphians, most of them in their 60s and 70s (supported by about an equal number of younger folks, ranging from teenagers to baby boomers), to relive the discipline, excitement and comradeship of producing a show like the ones back in the day. On that brisk Saturday morning in November 2004, survivors of the show came together to celebrate the public release - after a decade of wrangling with studios for the rights to screen some archival footage - of "Plenty of Good Women Dancers," a PFP documentary that recounts the journey that "Stepping" took from spontaneous conception in Isabelle Fambro's basement one Sunday afternoon to feathered and sequined splendor on an Avenue of the Arts stage. Laced through the story of the stage production is a tribute to four African American women hoofers whose contribution to Philadelphia's artistic and cultural legacy has been mostly overlooked.

The women who are featured in the documentary are as different from one another as chocolates in a Whitman's Sampler box. Edith "Baby Edwards" Hunt was a child star in Philadelphia's African American community from the time she was four years old, enthralling Depression-era audiences with her singing, tap dancing and acrobatics. (She was especially known for her Chinese splits). She matured into a popular professional entertainer, half of the boy-girl song and dance team of Spic and Span. At the time of "Stepping,"Baby - well into her 70s and recovering from a heart attack - brought the house down with a bold and vibrant performance, in marked contrast to her quiet and demure private persona.

Libby Spencer hailed from New York City, where as a youngster she picked up tap steps and routines from relatives and neighbors. In 1940, eager for work, she auditioned and was hired for the famous Apollo Theater chorus line. As one of the "tall girls" on the line, she learned three new routines for each show, which typically changed weekly, and performed several shows per day. One of the highlights of her career was being paired in performance on Broadway with Bill Bojangles Robinson. After marriage settled her in Philadelphia, Miss Libby became a respected and beloved jazz and tap dance teacher for children and adults throughout the city.

Even as a schoolgirl in her native city of St. Louis, Missouri, Hortense Allen Jordan forecasted the prolific dancer, choreographer, and producer she would become. She mined every opportunity to hone her talents in choreography and stagecraft, eventually assuming key creative roles in the companies of band leaders and producers such as Leonard Reed (creator of the "Shim Sham Shimmy," a/k/a "The Tap Dancers' National Anthem"), Louis Jordan, and Larry Steele. She confronted barriers with dogged resourcefulness, as when she resolved to design and fabricate costumes for dancers in her chorus lines rather than settle for the old tattered goods that costume rental houses offered black production companies. After settling down in Philadelphia, Hortense continued to produce shows at the Robin Hood Dell, Club Harlem in Atlantic City, and other local nightspots. (Jordan is the only one of Plenty's four subjects who survives.)

Philadelphia native Dolores McHarris married into hoofing. She trained intensively with her husband, tap dancer and all-around showman Dave McHarris, to prepare to share his life of entertainment and international travel. Later, she became a capable drummer, often joining her husband in a showstopping double-drum set routine. McHarris and Dolores toured their troupe for many years before settling into semi-retirement in the Philadelphia area.

Each of Plenty's subjects gives us a distinct window into the roles that African American women have played in shaping and promoting jazz tap dance, a dance form that is central to Philadelphia's cultural legacy and America's contribution to the world reservoir of dance traditions: Baby Edwards for her singular performance prowess; Libby Spencer for her historical and political clarity; Hortense Allen Jordan for her multiple talents and entrepreneurial spirit; and Dee McHarris for her longevity and versatility. The video portrayal is enhanced by archival footage of other women hoofers who defied the convention of tap as a men's club, among them the sensational Lois Miller of the Philadelphia-based tap trio The Miller Brothers and Lois, a class act that merged catchy rhythms, sophisticated movements and costuming, and exciting acrobatics. One woman who would certainly have been represented in Plenty, had there been material to draw from, was Louise Madison, a dancer little-known to today's tap fans, and, as far as we know, undocumented on film or video. She was nonetheless remembered and greatly admired by the veteran members of Stepping's cast. But even without the aid of her words or performance exemplars, Louise, as remembered and imagined, provided a palpable backdrop for the story that Plenty tells.

It was around 1980 when I first heard of Louise Madison from my mentor and dance partner, LaVaughn Robinson (now 78), who related his memorable introduction to her. As LaVaughn tells it, he was about 17 years old when he and some buddies were buskin' (dancing on the street for money) around Philadelphia's South Street. They were approached by a local tap dancer known as "Cy" (of an act called Popcorn, Peanuts and Cracker Jacks), who invited them to ride to New Jersey to see an exceptional hoofer, without disclosing that the dancer was a woman. The boys jumped into Cy's run-down auto and made the short trip to the Cotton Club, a nightspot located in the historic African American community of Lawnside, New Jersey. LaVaughn and friends took seats in a remote corner of the nightclub and guzzled cherryg arnished glasses of ginger-ale that Cy brought for them. Soon Louise hit the stage, dancing solo, decked out in white trousers, white tails, and low-heeled shoes ("just like a man would wear, "LaVaughn added). "She was doing so much dancing, it was unbelievable. "Her command of the stage and the quality of her rhythms captured LaVaughn's attention and embedded themselves in his memory, such that, more than a half century later, you can still hear the excitement in his description of this first encounter: "She was doing as much dancing as any tap lover would ever want to see!" About a decade later, in 1955, LaVaughn, by then a professional hoofer, encountered Louise when they both were on a show at New York's Apollo Theater. Once again, he was awed by her style and technique and she was generous with her encouragement to LaVaughn and his dance partners.

Despite Louise's popularity with audiences and the respect she commanded from her peers, little is known about her career or private life. What glimpses there are tend to be fragmented and disconnected. We know that she lived in North Philadelphia: LaVaughn once visited her along with master tap dancer Jerry Taps Sealy, who greatly admired Madison's dancing. (LaVaughn relates that a pot of beans and hog jowl was simmering on the stove when they arrived, and Louise invited them to join her for dinner.) There were suspicions, or assumptions, that she was gay. She enjoyed a good card game, especially in the downtime spent in dressing rooms between shows. Some of the Philadelphia tap veterans were convinced that she was responsible for steering Baby Laurence to abandon singing for tap dancing - a career move that resulted in Laurence becoming a jazz tap icon. Marshall and Jean Stearns, in their classic volume Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance, credit Louise with "cut[ting] a five-tap Wing like a man." [1] It's not clear when or why she retired from performing.

Entertainers who were Louise's peers wondered and speculated why, given her stage presence and technical skill, she did not have a longer and more successful career. (As LaVaughn put it, "why she never did make it like she should have"). Without a doubt, opportunities were limited for black performers in general, and especially for women who dared to pursue such a male-dominated domain as tap dancing. But beyond these considerable hurdles, was she hampered, as Dave McHarris pronounced, by her looks? The tyranny of attitudes toward skin tone, hair texture, and facial features - imposed by blacks as well as white - and its impact on who got what breaks, is a frequent theme in the testimonies of the women featured in Plenty and other women entertainers of that era. Or might she have been limited by her choice to perform solo? While there were other women who had solo acts, (the Stearns assert that if women dancers were good, they usually performed alone, as soloists), [2] it seems that the convention of the time for both men and women hoofers was to perform in teams of two, three, or four dancers - although outside of chorus lines, it was relatively uncommon for women to perform in an all-female ensemble. LaVaughn cites a business motive for the prevalence of duos, trios, etc., in that agents could demand bigger fees, and realize larger commissions, for a team than for a single tap dancer. Other explanations include Isabelle Fambro's perspective that her and her partner's act, Billy and Eleanor Byrd, was designed to capitalize on the popularity of Marge and Gower Champion, who were the prototypical white elegant stage couple. For Baby Edwards, working with a male partner gave her protection and a sense of security on the road.

Was Louise's use of male attire onstage off-putting to agents and presenters? Other female forerunners and contemporaries of Louise donned suits, ties and lowheeled suits. Mildred Candi Thorpe and Jewel Pepper Welch, of the Philadelphia-based team of Candi and Pepper wore zoot suits and Windsor-knotted ties. When interviewed in the early 1990s, Candi noted that "people wanted to see flesh but we never exposed our bodies." Indeed, one of the most successful and durable acts in vaudeville, the Whitman Sisters troupe, featured one of the sisters as a male impersonator. But I wouldn't underestimate the ambivalence there might have been in Louise's time toward women who dared to challenge convention by not only practicing a male art form, but also presenting themselves dressed like men.

A personal experience that offered me a glimpse of attitudes that Louse Madison and her peers might have encountered occurred in 1989 when LaVaughn and I were in New York City taping the PBS special, Gregory Hines' Tap Dance in America. LaVaughn and I, both dressed in tuxedos, had just finished our up-tempo, wing-filled rendition of "How High the Moon. "The wife of tap legend Bunny Briggs came backstage and congratulated me on my dancing, then added, "Dear, you need to get yourself a little skirt. At first I thought you were a young boy up there." As intriguing as it is to theorize, to speculate on what social factors and personal choices might have driven or hindered Louise's dance career, we will have to content ourselves with what little we know of her.It has been many years since she could speak to us in her own voice, and it is unlikely that her surviving contemporaries can illuminate the details of her life and talent more than they have already. But even if a trove of data lay right around the corner, I think I would prefer the Louise in my imagination - the Louise conjured from a few scraps of potent storytelling,the Louise whose powers of self-invention and whose willingness to challenge custom and convention are unsullied by inconvenient facts. I prefer the Louise whose technical and stylistic muscle is immune to comparisons with grainy film footage and offhand, possibly uninformed, critiques. I choose the Louise in my imagination, the one that was, in LaVaughn's words, unbelievable.

1. NY: Macmillan, 1968, p.195 2
2. ibid, p. 195

Long-time PFP board member Germaine Ingram initiated the PFP Tap Initiative which included interviews with veteran Philadelphia hoofers, and which resulted in the production Stepping in Time, and the documentary and exhibition Plenty of Good Women Dancers. Germaine is currently a consultant on educational and child welfare policy and programs.To purchase the newly released DVD Plenty of Good Women Dancers, visit our website. Plenty will be broadcast in the Philadelphia area on March 28, 2005 at 10 PM on WHYY-TV 12.