Mama Lu

Most Lindy Hoppers who’ve been around awhile know the name Herbert “Whitey” White and know his basic story — he worked at the Savoy where he gathered together young Lindy Hoppers like Frankie Manning and Norma Miller, and made performance groups out of them, groups that under his leadership toured the world and performed in films like A Day at the Races and Hellzapoppin’. They might recall from Norma and Frankie’s books that Whitey both respected Lindy Hop greatly, and yet also exploited the young teenage talent, to various degrees based on who you asked.

Most modern dancers have probably also heard of a woman named Louise “Mama Lu” Parks, but what are they able to say about her? Do they know that whereas Whitey coached around a decade of Harlem Lindy Hop dancers, Mama Lu coached three? Do they know that while Whitey trained almost exclusively young teenagers and 20-somethings, that Mama Lu taught Lindy to many different ages? Do they know Mama Lu’s groups wowed crowds all over the world with their dancing just like Whitey’s?

Though we can’t begin to fully cover her story and the enormous number of lives she touched in one article, we hope we can respectfully give at least some idea of how important she is to this dance and this scene we love so much.

Louise

Louise Parks was born in 1929 in Raleigh, North Carolina, yet another Lindy Hop treasure brought to us by the South and the Great Migration. Her family, however, chose Boston, not Harlem, as their new home. Perhaps seeing her strong talent for leadership, hard work, and performing, they had hopes Louise would go into the ministry. But after Louise graduated from Emmerson College in Boston (famous as a school of oratory and performance art), she got off of a Boston-bound Bus “on a whim” in New York, and decided to stay.

According to historian Harri Heinila, Louise had spent some summers in New York with her god-father, Charles Buchanan, the co-owner and manager of the Savoy, where she would work as a hat check girl. There she learned to dance Harlem’s hometown artform, and very likely met many of the great Savoy Lindy Hoppers of the lates 40s and early 50s. Little did anyone realize the community was planting the seeds of the future of Lindy Hop in the young woman.

We know she was living in Harlem by 1955, hoping to do theater in New York. According to one Newsday article, she was in several shows, including “Hello Dolly!” But her true calling seemed to be the ballroom, not Broadway. By 1958, she was important enough to the Savoy to be mentioned as an “instructor,” and surrounded by that year’s Harvest Moon Ball Rock ‘n’ Roll winners (the Lindy Hop division of that time):

The New York Age, Oct. 11, 1958. (By the way, the 1958 champion “McDonald Alleyne” pictured above? He was a young talented tap dancer who soon decided to put together a musical act and change his name to Sonny Allen. Sonny is still with us today. So is Gloria Thompson. But you’ll learn more about her soon.)

Then, in 1962, the words “Mama Lou” first appear in print, as far as I have found:

From the Daily News, Aug. 9, 1962

As she was only 33 at this time, and would never have children, how did this young woman come to be known by almost everyone who would remember her as “Mama” Lou?

PS 68

In New York City, the schools are rarely named after neighborhoods or in memory of heroes. Most are simply called “PS,” for “public school,” and then a number. PS 68, for instance, is a public school dead in the middle of Harlem, right across the street from where the renown Sylvia’s soul food restaurant is today. During non-school hours, it served as a community center.

In 1955, a mid-20s Louise Parks won a grant to teach dance to young children in New York City schools, and was assigned to PS 68. Originally, she taught square dancing (not as crazy as it might seem, the Savoy ballroom occasionally had square dancing nights). But seeing the sea of fresh Black faces among her students, she soon decided otherwise. These kids were going to learn Harlem’s own Lindy Hop.

Mama Lou had a goal in mind for her teenage students: The yearly Daily News’ Harvest Moon Ball, whose Jitterbug Jive competition was the climax of the Madison Square Garden event, which the Harlem Lindy Hoppers had swept almost every year since 1935.

You might ask why a dance contest put on by a downtown newspaper, and whose finals were judged by non-Black judges who specialized in ballroom dance, was so important to Mama Lou and the thousand-and-more Harlem Lindy Hoppers who took part in it throughout its 40-year history. I can’t speak for all of them, but to many, the Harvest Moon Ball was the showcase of this Black American artform from Harlem to the rest of New York, and the rest of the world. 20,000 people in Madison Square Garden raised the roof for the competitors, pictures were in nationwide newspapers the next day, and winners performed on Ed Sullivan’s show and had a chance at a showbusiness career. It was the reminder to the world that Lindy Hop existed, and that Harlem ruled it.

It was also part of the eldership, the history, the legacy, of this dance — the Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers that fought for the title went on to teach the post-war generation that fought for it, who became the very dancers that Mama Lu enlisted to train the next generation.

The memories and stories the great dancers and Savoy regulars told Mama Lou about one Herbert “Whitey” White, who knew the same, might have helped guide her. (White had died in Oswego, upstate New York, in 1950, having spent most of the 1940s there. I have not heard if she had ever met him, but there certainly is some chance if she was Charles Buchanan’s goddaughter and visited NYC in the summers. Whether she did or not, his memory was probably strong in the Savoy Lindy Hoppers.)

On top of that, there was the personal struggle that the Harvest Moon Ball represented for each couple — the months and months of rehearsing air steps, floor routines, incredibly fast dancing, and all while juggling full-time jobs and families. Mama Lu knew this training had an added benefit for youth — it kept them out of the kind of trouble youth could easily find themselves in if they didn’t have a healthy hobby.

The plan worked. Under Mama Lou’s direction, Harlem swept the HMB every year during her tenure from the late 50s to the event’s official end in 1974. (And after, as we shall see.)

Mama Lou did this not just through sheer determination, but by keeping Lindy Hop a family. Spanning multiple generations of Harlem Lindy Hoppers, Mama Lou made sure 1930s, 40s, and 50s greats trained her new dancers with her. Those who especially came to cherish working with the new blood was George Sullivan, Lee Moates, Delma “Big Nick” Nicholson, and Ronnie Hayes. When not touring and performing, Sugar Sullivan and Barbara Billups would help train. Another name often mentioned among her helpers, David Duncanson, would become her loving and supportive husband.

Don’t know who some of those dancers are? Here are some of them from the 1950/1951 filming of The Spirit Moves.

Mama Lou and her crew of Savoy champions came up with plans and ideas for each couple based on their skill level, personality, and body types. (And I’ve seen this so beautifully demonstrated in the rare Harvest Moon Ball prelims of 1971 — not fully released to the public yet — where one can see Lee Moates helping organize the event like a focused father, Ronnie Hayes jump up and down like a little-league coach, and Charlotte “Mommy” Thacker live up to her nickname as she corrals the children performers into a bow.)

But training youth for the Harvest Moon Ball was just one part of Mama Lou’s Lindy Hop family.

A New Savoy

Three years after the beginning of her school program, in 1958, the Savoy Ballroom closed and was demolished for apartments. Savoy co-owner Moe Green had promised a new Savoy Ballroom would take its place, but Black New Yorkers would have to wait three years before another ballroom would don the name Savoy. Meanwhile, Mama Lou along with others would host the yearly Harvest Moon Ball prelims at other venues in Harlem, while Mama Lou ran training sessions at PS 68.

When the new Savoy Manor ballroom finally opened in 1961, using an old Vasa Temple space (a Swedish-American organization), some Harlemites were annoyed: it was North, across the bridge, in the Bronx. Regardless, the new ballroom immediately took over the Savoy’s Harvest Moon Ball prelims hosting duties.

During the 1950s and 60s, an entire new generation of great Lindy Hoppers arose from Mama Lou and her champion coaches. Dancers like Jesse “Gigi” Brown, Gary “Kit” Lewis, Debby Boyd (now Debby Youngblood), David Butts, Gloria Thompson (now Gloria Caldwell), Edward Johnson, Dickie Harris, Mickey Wall, Willie Raynor, and others. Many of these dancers would be a part of Mama Lou’s other great work…

The Parkettes

We know the Parkettes were around as early as 1958, because they appear in the Black American newspaper the New York Age.

New York Age, Nov. 2, 1958

Let’s all take a moment to let the timeline sink in. Sometime, probably around 1952, Louise Parks graduates from college in Boston. By 1955 she has a grant to teach dance to youth in Harlem, which will keep the flame of Lindy Hop alive for generations. By 1958, she is noted as an instructor to Harvest Moon Ball Champions and has formed a dance troupe that will be in existence for at least the next three decades. Before she was 30 years old, Mama Lu made it clear that she got shit done, and it stayed done.

Whereas James Brown was the “hardest working man in Show Business,” Parkette Gloria Thompson (now Gloria Caldwell) said, “Mama Lou Parks was the hardest working woman in showbusiness.” Along with managing the group and their performances, she was by their side, training them. With the exception of air steps, everything they would do, she would do. She knew all the steps of the routines.

Some in the modern scene may have the urge to compare the Lindy Hop of Mama Lou Parks’ dancers to Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, or to the Savoy generations of Lindy Hoppers in general. But we argue that, because of the times and circumstances, they are apples and oranges.

First off, social partnership dancing was not often how the youth of Harlem were experiencing dance in the 1960s and 70s. Unlike the 30s-50s Savoy dancers, the new generation didn’t have night after night of incredible big band music and Lindy Hopping as their generation’s main dance craze. By the early 1970s, the social dancing at the Savoy Manor was mostly non-partnered dancing to the popular funk and soul of the time, even on the night of the Harvest Moon Ball prelims. But this was still part of the continual Black American journey of social dancing; it was the Lindy Hop of their day.

So, though you might think of the Parkettes as a Lindy Hop group, they were really a Black American Dance group, period. High-flying Lindy Hop was their ode to their Black Harlem history and their show-stopping climax. But much of their performance was a showcase of Black American dance of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Just as Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers were called whatever was the hot dance term for the time, “Big Apple Dancers,” “Congaroos” — The Parkettes were often labeled as “Twist dancers,” and “Go-Go dancers.” Debby Boyd (now Debby Youngblood), the daredevil of the group, even did fire-eating.

For a taste of what the Parkettes could do, and just how damn well they (and Mama Lu) could dance, check out this performance offered for film preservation in 1971. Several of these dancers, like Gloria (Thompson) Caldwell, Debby (Boyd) Youngblood, Yvelle Richardson, and David (Cairnes) Butts, are still with us today, appearing at workshops (hire them!). But they were all still also Lindy Hoppers — many of these dancers were even Harvest Moon Ball Champions.

In the worlds of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Soul, Funk and Disco, groups that only did “Go Go Dancing” were a dime a dozen. But offer a group that can show off all the hot new Black American club dances, complete with a strong group comradery and well-honed entertainment skills, and THEN on top of that they throw down a jaw-dropping Lindy Hop routine by Harvest Moon Ball champions and medalists, the crowds start talking and the phone starts ringing.

Like the Whitey’s before, the Parkettes would travel around the world. They did extensive tours in Europe and Africa as cultural ambassadors, and performed for the Olympics in Mexico City in 1968. They performed with James Brown, and for Jerry Lewis and President Nixon (who even sent his private plane to pick them up). They toured with Pepsi Bethel as part of his Authentic Jazz Dance company. While in Africa, according to Terry Monaghan, the Parkettes experienced “everything from dodging bullets in the Nigerian civil war to being personally presented with gold medals by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.”

Throughout the years, new generations of talented dancers would train under Mama Lu and her legendary coaches, dominate the Harvest Moon Balls, and perform for her. These included Joya Jaimes, Crystal Johnson, “Cowboy” George Williams, Maxine Simmons, and Darlene Gist. (All of these except or George are still around today, hire them!)

Few in these generations were learning Lindy Hop in its social dance form, for reasons discussed earlier. It also surprises many today that some of them didn’t Swing out. But though the Swing out is a well-loved movement, even 1930s Lindy Hop was not defined by it — it was, after all, a dance that had among its ingredients Charleston kicking figures, a large collection of six-count turns, solo jazz dance breakaways, and acrobatics. Lindy Hop is cooked in a pot, not on a grill.

Even the terminology had changed over time — in the generations of the 60s and 70s, “Lindy Hop” came to mean air-step-heavy performative swing dancing of the Harlem tradition. If it didn’t have air steps, it wasn’t Lindy Hop. Many called the non-air-step dancing “Swing.”

(All this said, some of them DID do social Lindy. For instance, see one example, “Cowboy” George Williams, social dancing Lindy at 9:15 on this video here. George was often the dancer Mama Lou fell onto for one of their show climaxes, as seen in a video below.)

Navigating their changing world, Mama Lou and these dancers were always torchbearers of the great lifeblood energy of Lindy Hop, that beautiful combination of Black American social dance and performative excellence. And they did it by always connecting its past, present, and future.

Lu

Though the papers will often print “Mama Lou” throughout her life, by the 1970s it was often spelled “Mama Lu,” and appeared that way in glittering letters in this filmed performance footage:

Throughout the decades of Parkette performances, Mama Lu continued to use the Harvest Moon Ball to help keep Lindy Hop a family — Sugar and George Sullivan’s children, Sheryl and Gerald, trained at the Manor and competed on the same stages with Margaret and Valerie Thacker, daughters of Charlotte Thacker, and Crystal Johnson, whose father was Whitey’s Lindy Hopper and 1940 HMB champ Thomas “Tops” Lee. Three Wade siblings would win the contest, as well as all four Moultrie brothers, like Richard Moultrie, seen below.

Here’s a collection of some of those dancers, competing in the 1971 Harvest Moon Ball prelims, hosted by Mama Lou at the Savoy Manor:

In 1974, the Daily News held their final Harvest Moon Ball at Madison Square Garden, it’s fortieth year. Throughout the next decades, some ballroom organizations would continue to hold a Harvest Moon Ball dance contest in a smaller venue in Madison Square Garden. Mama Lu helped them with their Lindy Hop prelims. After they folded, though, Mama Lu, who had been holding one of Black New York’s greatest parties every year with her Harvest Moon Ball prelims, took claim over the entire Harvest Moon Ball Jitterbug-Jive competition (in spirit, if not officially).

Doing so meant that now the finals were judged by Lindy Hop experts, not the non-Black ballroom judges that had decided the winners of the Daily News‘ Harvest Moon Ball. After forty plus years, New York’s great Lindy competition had finally come to its rightful home.

Revivals

“Lindy Hop wasn’t dead, so it didn’t need to be revived.”

— common saying among 1960s/70/80s Harlem Lindy Hoppers

We hope we have shown so far how Mama Lu helped carry on of the tradition of Lindy Hop in New York from the 1950s to the 1980s. But she wasn’t done influencing yet.

Before Swedish dancers invited Al Minns to teach Lindy Hop in 1984, Mama Lu Parks’ dancers were noticed by plenty of social and competitive dancers in their European tours. In 1981, they were invited to Munich, Germany to compete in a European Rock ‘n’ Roll Dance contest. And it was while Mama Lu and her dancers were teaching in London that a young martial artist named Ryan Francois tried out some classes, changing his life forever. Mama Lu was even brought to Sweden to teach, personally passing the torch to the modern global swing dance scene just as Al Minns, Norma Miller, and Frankie Manning were beginning to do.

All the while, throughout the 80s, her own Harvest Moon Ball contests continued driving youth to learn the art of performance Lindy Hop. At these events, she often awarded original dancers like Frankie Manning and Norma Miller, and gave Al Minns showcases in her shows.

As Frankie Manning and Norma Miller toured the world and felt the admiration of the modern Lindy Hop scene in it’s first few decades, Mama Lu Parks dancers were not sought after much, and for reasons I don’t feel qualified to speak upon at this moment, felt alienated by the Lindy Hop scene. But that never stopped them from doing their thing, as they always did, dancing at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, performing with the Basie Band, and being honored by the Bronx Arts Council, on top of all their tours, where they left a trail of wide-eyed Lindy and Black American dance lovers in their wake.

In the late 1980s, Mama Lu was blinded by diabetes. In 1990, a week after coming off of a cruise ship gig with the Parkettes, she passed away at the age of 61. She was too young.

The Daily News, Sept. 25, 1990.

After her death, the Parkettes continued performing, until the bulk of her dancers had moved on to the next chapters in their lives.

In 2004, many members of Mama Lu’s groups over the years reunited at the Basie Centennial Ball held in New York City. They performed to one of their favorite breakneck speed songs, Red Prysock’s “Hand Clappin’,” and did the the routine they often called “Hand Clappin’,” or “Mama Stew,” followed by the traditional “First Stops” routine, a routine handed down from the 1930s that every dancer learned under Mama Lu. (When you take modern classes from these dancers, often you will learn these routines.) It’s David Butts & Debby Boyd (Youngblood) who do the air steps at the end of the routine:

As the modern scene has found itself embracing Mama Lu Park’s dancer’s values — balls-to-the-wall contests with fast music and air, other Black-dance-style influence, more emphasis on jams and performing — we are very happy that many of the Mama Lu Parks dancers still around now seem to be getting some well deserved love, admiration, and gigs.

Dancers like Frankie Manning and Norma Miller were brought in to the scene with open arms and open ears in thanks to what they had done, the traditions they carried, and the lives they lived through these dances.

Now is Mama Lu’s dancers’ time.

Let’s treat them well.

NOTES & SOURCES

This post is a start to an apology for how much I have unintentionally neglected Mama Lu and the dancers she helped nourish on this blog in the past. The reasons for which are great and too big to discuss here, but will be mentioned in future materials.

Research hub

Here you will find a selection of research on Mama Lou Parks and her dancers to peruse.

Note on Mama Lu’s teaching of Square Dancing: Almost always I’ve heard the story that Mama Lou was going to teach square dancing but then decided not to. But Debby Youngblood in her interview for Jazzattack stated that Mama Lou was already teaching square dancing when they met. So I went with that.

HUGE thanks to Crystal Johnson, David Butts, Gloria (Thompson) Caldwell, Debby (Boyd) Youngblood, Sugar Sullivan, Joya Jaimes, and JazzAttack and ILHC for their interviews with said dancers, available on YouTube. These, along with our own interviews, newspaper research, and archive research, provided the bulk of the material for this article.

HUGE thanks as well to historian Harri Heinila who published a very thorough article on Mama Lou Parks and her Parkettes, The Beginning of Louise ‘Mama Lou’ Parks’ Parkettes. Though we don’t always completely agree with Harri’s interpretations, he is objectively an incredible and thorough researcher. (Note: we wrote the bulk of our article before reading his, but want to acknolwedge his provided further clarity and facts, as noted, and served as a fact-comparing source.)

Heinila also published an article by Terry Monaghan that has been one of the few easy-to-find resources on the web on Mama Lou until Harri’s own article.

Thanks to Ryan Francois who was kind enough to discuss some of his history with Mama Lu with me personally.

Thanks to Cynthia Millman who viewed portions of this article and offered insight.

Note on the film footage embedded in this post that is not made available on YT: Members of Mama Lou Parks dancers have been averse to having footage of them put onto YouTube, but we still feel itis important for the world to see this footage, hence us putting it directly into the article. Also, for the record, Swungover YT is NOT monetized, as we do not feel we should earn money showcasing dancing art that does not belong to us.