![]() She also worked in Idlewild, Michigan as both a showgirl and as one the chorus dancers for The Whitehall Dancers, a revue that included the exotic dancer Tequila and eccentric dancers Miss Wiggles and Lottie the Body. By the 1950s, her tap choreography landed her in the center of variety shows and nightclubs where she was toured with the Cab Calloway band and later appeared with Flip Wilson, Betty Carter, Dinah Washington, Della Reese, and T-Bone Walker. Some time after her son was born, Browne began performing as a soloist and also as an ensemble chorus dancer, appearing in such clubs in around Chicago as the Savannah Club, Town Hill and Town & Country clubs. ![]() After meeting the young musician Paul Gonsalves, who was the featured saxophonist with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Browne got pregnant: "I had a baby, and that sort of put a stop to my career for a minute." She gave birth to a boy, Renell Gonsalves who raised in his early year by Browne's mother and sister, grew up to become a musician and music teacher. Sixteen years old but "I was all made up to look like I was twenty-five," she recalls, she finally got a job dancing in the chorus, though not for long. "I didn't want to be a bad kid but I just wanted to dance," she recalls. And nobody likes a noisy tap dancer." Early on, Browne was a low-heeled rhythm dancer in the style of a John Bubbles "I can do more with my feet in a flat shoe." For Browne rhythm tap dancing, as opposed to chorus dancing which was visual, had to be an audible statement.Īround the age of fifteen, while dancing nightly in clubs around Chicago, such as the Club DeLisa and Robert's Show Club, Browne dropped out of the eleventh grade of Englewood high school, determined to get a job dancing in one of the chorus lines. And I shot out there in my patent leather shoes, started doing my number." Though she was speedy, she says that the steps had to be "clean and clear and sharp as a piece of bacon, I always say…If it wasn't clean and clear than you just rattling around and making a lot of noise. They were talking a bout this little girl that's going to do a little tap dance. The piano player had to catch me on the bridge, because I was gone. Even before the MC could finish his introduction of her, she was already onstage, halfway through her number: "I couldn't wait. Their routine consisted of traditional steps from the Shim Sham (steps her father knew and taught her: "I remember doing them long before I ever saw Leonard Reed, she says.") danced to "Nagasacki." From her earliest performances, Browne was an alert and speedy dancer. In her early teens, and after performing in several spots in Chicago's NRA Theatre, she developed a song and dance act with her sister they called the Jordan Sisters: Marquita sang (her big number was "sitting on Top of the World") and both tap danced. There, Harriet learned jazz dance and rhythm time steps. The Jordans sent their preteen daughters to take formal dance lessons from the Bruce Sisters (Mary, Sadie and Evelyn) in Chicago. By the time she was ten, Browne says she was "wired for sound," and could dance. Chicago was a jazz town and at DuSable High School, Browne remembers the slew of jazz musicians (saxophonist Johnny Griffith, bassist Eugene Wright, Gene Ammons, Chico Freeman) who studied under the direction of Captain Walter Dyette, musical director of the high school band. She also listened to jazz music, was familiar with "every musician, every solo," and a serious collector of the recordings of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Earl Hines, Jimmy Lunceford, Fats Waller, and Nat "King" Cole. It always has," she said, and she took every opportunity to watch the numerous tap dance acts that played the Regal Theatre, a black vaudeville house in Chicago. Browne credits her father as the first to give her tap dance lessons: "He could tap, and the rhythm fascinated me. The entire family was musical: her mother played piano, her grandfather standup bass, her maternal uncles played the saxophone and older sister, Marquita, had a voice "that could quiet any room." Through the Depression years, the family entertained each other by singing, dancing, making music at home. Harriet "Quicksand" Browne was born in the south side of Chicago, Illinois, to mother, Ruby Jordan, a hotel worker and amateur musician, and father, Reuben Jordan a pharmacist and shoe salesman who was a self-taught dancer (expert at dancing Snake Hips).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |