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LEONARD REED, 97; TAP DANCE PIONEER, PRODUCER
"When I was with Willie, everything was white. But after that, I never did work white again. That was 1933" Leonard Reed
Tap dance pioneer Leonard Reed, a versatile, influential performer, producer and teacher, died of congestive heart failure Monday at a hospital in Covina. He was 97.
Reed is best known as the co-originator with partner Willie Bryant of the Shim Sham Shimmy, a now-classic tap format that began as a flashy finale to their dance act in the late 1920s.
In the book "Jazz Dance," Marshall and Jean Stearns define the Shim Sham Shimmy as "a one-chorus routine to a 32-bar tune with eight bars each of the Double Shuffle, the Crossover, the Tack Annie (an up-and-back shuffle) and Falling Off a Log." That sounds impossibly complex but "can easily be faked," the Stearns wrote.
"The Movements are easy enough to where a beginning dancer can learn them, and anyone who has danced a lot can pick them up in minutes," explained Gracey Tune, artistic director of the Fort Worth organization Arts on Tap. "Now it's been passed all around the world . . . . It's become the national anthem of tap."
He was born in Lightning Creek, Okla., near Nowata, on Jan. 7, 1907, a mix of black, white and Choctaw. "My mother died of pneumonia when I was 2," he told the Fort Worth Star Telegram a year ago. "I knew who my father was, but I never knew him. He raped my mother."
He was raised by relatives and various guardians, growing up in Kansas City, where he won Charleston contests and worked summers dancing the Charleston at carnivals. He attended Cornell University but, after winning another Charleston contest on a bet, left school to start his dancing career.
Picking up tap skills, he teamed with Bryant in a successful vaudeville act promising "Brains as Well as Feet," an act in which he and Bryant passed for white.
"When I was with Willie, everything was white," he said in an interview for Rusty E. Frank's book "Tap" in 1988. "But, after that, I never did work white again. That was 1933."
The following year, Reed became a producer, working in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York with some of the era's best-known black performers. He staged shows at the famed Cotton Club and later managed the Apollo Theater, where he also served as master of ceremonies for 20 years. He also developed his talents as a songwriter, arranger, bandleader and comedian.
"Dancing has been my only love," he said in the Fort Worth Star Telegram interview. "But I didn't let dancing stop me from doing other things. I had the ability to be multitalented."
The 1960s found him working for record companies, producing acts, chreographing dance numbers, and helping launch the career of singer Dinah Washington. He also wrote songs and taught dance in his Southland dance studio and in master classes coast to coast.
He received a lifetime achievement award from the American Music Awards in 2000, and two years later received an honorary doctor of performing arts degree from Oklahoma City University.
At that time, he told the Sunday Oklahoman that his long, active life could be credited to "women, golf and show business . . . but not necessarily in that order."
His survivors include his wife, Barbara Reed; a daughter; a granddaughter; and two great-grandchildren.
A celebration of his life will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. April 24 at the City of Angels Church of Religious Science, 5550 Grosvenor Blvd., Los Angeles.
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