Skip to main content

Black History Month Day 21: Gregory Hines


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gregory Oliver Hines (February 14, 1946 – August 9, 2003) was an American actorsingerdancer and choreographer.
Hines performed as the lead singer and musician in a rock band called Severance in the year of 1975-1976 based in Venice, California. Severance was one of the house bands at an original music club called Honky Hoagies Handy Hangout, otherwise known as the 4H Club. Severance released their debut album on Largo Records (a subsidiary of GNP Crescendo) in 1976. In 1986, he sang a duet with Luther Vandross, entitled "There's Nothing Better Than Love", which reached the No. 1 position on the Billboard R&B charts.
Hines made his movie debut in Mel Brooks's History of the World, Part 1. Critics took note of Hines's comedic charm, and he later appeared in such movies as The Cotton ClubWhite Nightsalongside Mikhail BaryshnikovRunning ScaredTap and Waiting to Exhale. On television, he starred in his own series in 1997 called The Gregory Hines Show on CBS, as well as in the recurring role of Ben Doucette on Will & Grace. In 1999, Hines made his return to television with Nick Jr.'s Little Bill, as the voice of Big Bill in which he won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer In An Animated Program.
Hines made his Broadway debut with his brother in The Girl in Pink Tights in 1954. He earned Tony Award nominations for Eubie! (1979), Comin' Uptown (1980) and Sophisticated Ladies (1981), and won the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Jelly's Last Jam (1992) and the Theatre World Award for Eubie!. In 1989, Gregory Hines created "Gregory Hines' Tap Dance in America," which he also hosted. The PBS special featured seasoned tap dancers such as Savion Glover and Bunny Briggs. He also co-hosted the Tony Awards ceremony in 1995 and 2002.
In 1990, Hines visited with his idol, Sammy Davis, Jr., as he was dying of throat cancer, unable to speak. After Davis died, an emotional Hines spoke at Davis's funeral of how Sammy had made a gesture to him, "as if passing a basketball … and I caught it." Hines spoke of the honor that Sammy thought that Hines could carry on from where he left off.
Hines was an avid improviser. He did a lot of improvisation of tap steps, tap sounds, and tap rhythms alike. His improvisation was like that of a drummer, doing a solo and coming up with all sorts of rhythms. He also improvised the phrasing of a number of tap steps that he would come up with, mainly based on sound produced. A laid back dancer, he usually wore nice pants and a loose-fitting shirt. Although he inherited the roots and tradition of the black rhythmic tap, he also influenced the new black rhythmic tap, as a proponent. "'He purposely obliterated the tempos,' wrote tap historian Sally Sommer, 'throwing down a cascade of taps like pebbles tossed across the floor. In that moment, he aligned tap with the latest free-form experiments in jazz and new music and postmodern dance.'"
Throughout his career, Hines wanted to and continued to be an advocate for tap in America. In 1988, he successfully petitioned the creation of National Tap Dance Day, which is now celebrated in 40 cities in the United States. It is also celebrated in eight other nations. Gregory Hines was on the Board of Directors of Manhattan Tap, he was a member of the Jazz Tap Ensemble, and a member of the American Tap Foundation (formerly the American Tap Dance Orchestra). He was a good teacher, influencing tap dance artists Savion Glover, Dianne Walker, Ted Levy, and Jane Goldberg.
In an interview with The New York Times in 1988, Hines said that everything he did was influenced by his dancing--"my singing, my acting, my lovemaking, my being a parent.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Perry Blackwell

I love the 1959 movie "Pillow Talk" which starred Doris Day and Rock Hudson.  One of the reasons why it's in my top movie selection is because of the Singer/Actress Perry Blackwell. She only had one scene in the movie and she sang for most of that scene, but what she did with her expressions and mannerisms spoke much much more. She was also in the 1960 movie "Dead Ringer" with Bette Davis and Karl Malden. There is not much info on her available, but I did discover via a message written by her daughter, that she is a classically trained Pianist and self taught organist. She played Hammond Organ for years. Also she played with  Sonny Stitt, Wes Montgomery Bros. , Roy Milton and  Louis Jordan. She worked many gigs around such people as Nancy Wilson, Aretha Franklin, Quincy Jones, Joe Williams, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie Wilson and Red Foxx. She worked on the New York jazz scence for a few years, Best known for her 7 year stint at The Parisian Room in Los A...

Janeen Gordon Interview BLUFFCITYLIFE WMC5

LINK BELOW https://www.wmcactionnews5.com/video/2019/03/01/bluff-city-life-mar-pt-8/

LaWanda Page

LaWanda Page (October 19, 1920 – September 14, 2002), born Alberta Peal , was an American actress and comedienne best known for her portrayal of Aunt Esther in the 1970s TV sitcom Sanford and Son . Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Page was raised in St. Louis, Missouri. She began her career in show business working small nightclubs, billed as "The Bronze Goddess of Fire," an act which included her eating fire and lighting cigarettes with her fingertips. She performed the cigarette feat on an episode of Sanford and Son , in which Fred held a circus in his front yard. LaWanda Page and Redd Foxx were very close friends from the time they were pre-teen age. They attended school and grew up together in St. Louis. Later on, they both entered the field of comedy separately and performed stageacts. Page later recorded several live comedy albums for the Laff Records label in the late 1960s and early 1970s under the LaWanda stage name. One release, a gold-selling albu...