Venmo: @bobbyswungover
This is part of the Harvest Moon Ball essay series. To see all the Harvest Moon Ball essays, please visit Swungover’s HMB page.
Community & Dancing
The article above sheds light on something very important about Harlem, and Black American communities in general. Not only does the community greatly support performing arts, they support them from the amateur to the professional. Harlem history is a clear example of this. Contests like the famous Apollo amateur talent nights allowed Ella Fitzgerald to show what she was capable of, leading her to become Chick Webb’s singer while still a teenager. It was common for youth like Norma Miller and Al Minns to dance on street corners to get spending money. Sonny Allen put together doo-wop groups in high school. Churches fostered the musicians in their congregations, rent parties allowed friends and neighbors to perform their talents, and the many Harlem nightclubs specializing in Black entertainment were constantly looking for new neighborhood talent to fill their stage time.
But this cultural support was not that of a loving, my-child-can-do-no-wrong mother. On the contrary, based on all the stories, it sounds like Harlem was the better-have-thick-skin-cause-I’m-gonna-tell-you-exactly-how-it-is-cause-if-you-don’t-hear-it-from-me-you-won’t-be-prepared-when-life-tells-you-later kind of mother. The Apollo amateur contest was a notoriously hard crowd, the audience at the Savoy was very picky, and, to give you a sense of how Whitey supported his young talent, he’d fine them if they didn’t land an air step right on count. (This was before James Brown was known for doing the same thing to his musicians for playing wrong notes during performances.)
You may think Whitey, known for being thuggish, was simply an anomaly in this regard. Norma Miller and George Sullivan, two very important Lindy hop coaches in history, were also known for their high standards and brutal honesty, often involving four letter words. Even Mama Lou Parks, a high-society, well-educated, deeply-spiritual woman, threw chairs. Regardless of how we feel about those methods today, it is a sign of how important it was to those coaches that the dance was done well.
Dance educator and associate professor Chisomo Selemani says this social pressure to excel at whatever Black folks do comes from a particular place. “In my experience, that place is the genuine desire to see those who are coming up, thrive. It’s the desire for folks to be undeniably recognized in the things that they do. And I think this desire is rooted in needing to be a living counter narrative. It says, ‘look at us and take pride in our work and in who we are.’ It could potentially also be saying, ‘despite what you think, look at what we can do,’ or, ‘even if you want to silence us, we will not go quietly. We are here and we are amazing.’ ”
With such a communal emphasis on performance, and working hard at that craft, it’s no wonder that often teenager Lindy hoppers so greatly stole the show — and the awards — in the Harvest Moon Ball Jitterbug divisions. Sure, many of the Harlem dancers were technically “professionals,” doing gigs performing their jaw-dropping Lindy Hop in clubs across the region. But even the ones who weren’t professional grew up in a world where “amateur” and “professional” were usually held to the same standards.
Prelims
The picture above is a little humorous considering the context — it appeared in an article on the Harvest Moon Ball that made no reference whatsoever to Sugar or George, and had no specific mention of Jitterbug Jive other than it was a division in the contest. So, the pictures of the Sullivans, though lovely, seemed very random. (Other editions of this story did show, “register for the ball”, below their names, so someone must have either fixed the error in those, or caused it in the this one.)
George & Sugar had their pictures taken more than any other Lindy Hop couple we know of in the Daily News HMB reporting. Perhaps it was their renown skill on the dance floor, or their charisma. Like most of their fellow Savoy dancers, they were spending a lot of time at the Savoy rehearsing. They’d bring their children, and let them play with all the other children. The ballroom left their large windows open, allowing for breeze in the un-airconditioned, 2nd story ballroom. The kids would suck on ice from the ice machine, and the adults would have to constantly pull them down from the window sills.
But this was how many generations of dancers were able to both train and raise children — when you spent all evening with your dancing family, practice and babysitting were combined.
Savoy prelims were held Aug 29. This year, they explained the way the Prelims worked. I’m not sure if the Savoy was the exact same way, but from our 1938 footage it looks like it might have been pretty similar:
Finalists were…
Ruth “Sugar” & George Sullivan, Josephine & Theodore Davis, Viki Diaz & Lee Moates, Ruth Hampton & Jerry Lawrence, Montoya Borden & Thomas King “King & King”, Beatrice “Mildred” Pierce & John H. Smith (“Smitty & Bea”).
Though she did not make it to the finals, a young Lindy Hopper named Gloria Thompson did get her picture in the paper:
Gloria’s father wanted her to hear the best live music in New York, so he took her to the Savoy. As she was a teenager, her father chaperoned her the entire time, making sure she was on good behavior and unmolested by men. Gloria did start to get a lot of attention from the Savoy men, but it was an attention of a different kind: They all wanted her to learn air steps and train for the Harvest Moon Ball. We’ll learn more about her and her journey in future essays.
Sugar Sullivan took pride in sewing, and like many of the Harlem couples, made her own costumes. However, Sugar’s were incredibly durable, and wouldn’t rip or come undone during all the air steps and fast dancing — common occurrences in the HMB Jitterbug Jive contest that, according to numerous contestants, would lead to not insignificant point deductions.
In fact, Sugar had a pretty slick flex: When she was at the Harvest Moon Ball finals, other dancers would inevitably ask her if she had any safety pins. She’d politely say that, sorry, she didn’t. Because she knew her costumes were so strong and well-made there was no world in which she would need to have a safety pin on her just in case.
The other Harlem dancers started to pick up on this, and by this time Sugar Sullivan was making many of the other couple’s costumes, like “Smitty” and “Bea’s” polka dot ones shown above.
Finals
Here is our run down of footage from this year’s HMB:
NON-HARLEM HEATS
Just wanted to post this saying, that to me, at least, it’s interesting that these kind of movements are already being done in 1953, three years before the advent of rock’n’roll, when this kind of dancing would be pretty standard “rock’n’roll movement,” especially among White youth.
HARLEM HEATS
Above, Sugar & George Sullivan throw a mutiny of air steps while in the background, Beatrice Pierce & John Smith (“Smitty & Bea”) throw their own combo.
Here, three, tight couples are on a roll, all very in sync with their partnerships. It’s a shame there is so little of their dancing in the newsreels.
We also see Viki Diaz & Lee Moates kill a stops routine. Vicki Diaz seems to have been a girl whose parents were from Puerto Rico that the 1940 census describes as “white,” though we today recognize Latin-x as People of Color due to the racial discrimination they have encountered from the European-Americans throughout the country’s history. This makes them the first confirmed interracial couple I know of in the HMB, though I don’t know if the contest itself realized this or would have seen it that way.
Jazz dance historian Harri Heinilä recalled in a Facebook post that Viki Diaz mentioned she was one of the few people who touched the Savoy ceiling in an air step (with her foot).
Winners
Winners were Beatrice Pierce & John Smith in 1st, Ruth Hampton & Jerry Lawrence in 2nd, and Ruth “Sugar” & George Sullivan in 3rd.
Once again, Sugar & George sough the prize and were disappointed. 1954 would be another year to try. But, many of their peers were also itching for the prize — it was never a given, you always had to fight for it.
Good thing Sugar and George were fighters.
Venmo: @bobbyswungover
Sources & Thanks
- HUGE THANKS to Sugar Sullivan and Gloria Thompson, 1950s Savoy dancers who later worked extensively with Mama Lu Parks. We have been interviewing (and paying them) for their knowledge and feedback on this footage and the dancers involved in them.
- Also huge thanks to Sonny Allen, Savoy Lindy Hopper and Harvest Moon Ball winner we have also been interviewing. Most of the donations for this project go *directly* to them and other original dancers I’m interviewing.
- Huge thanks to Crystal Johnson, 1972 HMB winner and Mama Lu Parks dancer for the program listings.
- Huge thanks to Forrest Outman who provided some of the Harvest Moon Ball footage from this time period.
- Huge thanks to Chisomo Selemani for reviewing parts of this essay.
- Except where otherwise stated, all newspaper articles, pictures, and information on the details of the 1949 Harvest Moon Ball were taken from editions of the New York Daily News.
- Thanks so much to Robert Crease, Cynthia Millman, and The Frankie Manning Foundation for republishing the fantastic Robert Crease bios which are a great wealth to these articles specifically and the history of the dance in particular that have helped shape these essays.
- Whenever we refer to either “Norma’s Book” or “Frankie’s Book,” we are speaking of their memoirs: Swinging at the Savoy: The Memoir of a Jazz Dancer by Norma Miller and Evette Jensen, and Frankie Manning: Ambassador of Lindy Hop by Frankie Manning and Cynthia Millman.
- All spelling and grammar problems are mine alone; one man army!
Swungover* 