LaVaughn Robinson Transcript
- Listen to this again.
- [Bassist] You wanna do the same rhythm?
- Yeah, in the same rhythm, but it ain't gotta be the same thing. You understand? Yeah, you follow me now?
- Yeah.
- You can hear it from back there, but it's not crisp. So we're gonna have to really work with the miking to-
- Yeah, he wanted the same tempo though.
- Yeah, okay.
- You have to learn how to count to dance and dance and count, know what you're doing. And this is one of the things that I teach in school. Two bars, in other words, I'm, we are doing two bar trade-off. And it's just like music. You know, if you playing a piano, you know, if you play eight bars on that piano, I want to hear you dance them eight bars. And know that you're doing, you know, you're doing what that, that piano just said do, you know? Not just do it and don't know what you're doing. I came up at a time when tap was very prevalent in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia was a mecca for tap. And I was fortunate enough to come up in the time when there was a lot of dancers here. It was a blessing to me to look at another dancer and say damn, I can do that too. I've seen a lot of dancers dance and they'll starve to death when they came to Philadelphia. You know, they say if you can make it in Philadelphia, you can make it anywhere. But that was a lie, man, because a lot of dancers came to Philadelphia and didn't do nothing.
- He's probably the best representation of what I would call Philadelphia style, which is close to the floor, you know, clarity, you know, crisp rhythms. And I think this, you know, this sort of narrative, this storytelling, you know, approach to it. You know, he talks, he's always talked about being, you know, sort of disdainful of people who repeat, you know, oh, they're doing a lot of repeating a lot of- and you know, for some people, you know, that's part of their choreography. I mean it's, you know, it's a way they find symmetry. It's, you know, it's an aesthetic approach. But I think that his aesthetic grounding in this art form had to do with it being sort of a continuing journey. You don't go back.
- You giving me a chair because you know I need it?
- Have a little sit down there.
- You know, I need to sit.
- Well, I'm gonna tell you, like you tell me, don't leave all your dancing in the rehearsal hall.
- Well, I'm gonna tell you- I felt like I left it somewhere.
- It's easy to admire the rhythmic precision of a master tap dancer. And LaVaughn Robinson, our next awardee, is a master. Please welcome the great Philadelphia tap dancer, LaVaughn Robinson.
- I guess you think I'm outta wind. I'm not outta wind, the wind is out of me. Yeah. I'd like to do another little number for you, if you don't mind? My mother taught me my first time step. Then my mother sang, my mother was a beautiful singer and she used to sing and dance. She used to hike her skirt up, undo it. But see they didn't call it tap then they called it bug dancing, you know. And she could bug dance, you know. And she taught me to dance for a reason to keep me out of the kitchen, 'cause I used to, you know, my mother used to make all them different cobblers, you know, peach cobbler, apple cobbler. And, and I used to be there like getting to that pan, you know? And I stayed in the kitchen when I was young, you know. But then my mother used to teach me how to do a time step. And she said, "Look, you gotta learn how to do something," 'cause I wasn't doing nothing, you know? But I was glad too, man, because that's when I met a lot of the street dancers. You know, during that time it was like three or four street dancers, street players they call 'em at that time that were dancing all up and down South Street. And I got involved with them and that's when they asked me to do this thing with them at the Monkey Show to win the $5. And we all got together and did the Bugle Blues. You know how that that goes. That's when you're dancing and all of a sudden it goes like this, and you swung with the music. You understand what I mean? And that was the way we would always come on stage, you know, with the Bugle blues they call it.
And it was like four of us, you know, we was nothing but kids. And during that time we had a, we had got together with the tramp band. We made up a tramp band. We had the washboard with the symbols on our fingers and we had the tub with the hole in it and put the cat guts in there and pluck it like a base. And we used to go all up and down Chestnut Street. And at that time we used to have the streets, the people would, you know, 'cause we was dancing on the street and playing that music. We were street players, and Rizzo used to come and they used to call Rizzo, the Cisco Kid. I never will forget it 'cause he used to run us off of Chestnut Street. And of course all of us had hook school 'cause it was better 'cause we was making a buck, you know. And this was during the Depression era. In fact, that was the beginning of me starting to tap on the street. It was during the Depression era. And we made more money than a lot of working people was making. They had a theater at Leviathon Market that used to bring in big bands every week called the Earl Theater. And every week they'd bring in a different band and they always had tap dancers. And I used to watch all the tap dancers and steal what I could from them. And that's how I learned.
My first dancing partner was a gentleman by the name of Howard Blow. Him and I grew up together, started together dancing on the street. Oh, Howard and I did some fantastic things together. I mean, as far as dancing was concerned, but I always knew that I wasn't gonna be dancing with him too long because we didn't see eye to eye, but he could dance. And that was what the main thing I was interested in, and Howard Blow and I worked all the top echelon clubs, like the Click and stuff like that. And then we did the local things together, like the Two Bit Club, or Sims Paradise and Butler's Paradise and North Philadelphia. We did all them clubs when they was paying us, like $7 a night. When we made the money., when we, but see, we had a chance to double outta them clubs and into the big clubs, you know. But we stayed away from 13th and Lucas because Palumbo had a hand in all of that. And if he knew that we was doing that, he wouldn't give us that money up there. We was, we did the Click, and we Click with Frank Palumbo at 16th and Market at that time. And then we did Ciro's, which was at 15th and Walnut underneath Memorials. Very swank nightclub that was owned by Frank Palumbo. Frank Palumbo had all the clubs that was worth working, you know, in Philadelphia. And we used to work down 8th and Catherine. We used to live down 8th and Catherine, you know, and then we used to work the club in back of Palumbo's, which was the CR Club, which was a private club. And we stayed working. We didn't, and when, and at that time, dancers were starving. You know, dancers were starving. And the, the only dance acts that was doing anything was the Nicholas Brothers and the Stepbrothers. And they're the only ones that was doing anything. And the Clark brothers, the Clark brothers stayed working a lot. But we was working right along with 'em. When you worked Palumbo's, you had to have a clean record as far as never missing a show, always on time. And these were some of the basic things that we did ordinarily anyhow, not being big stars, we were classified as always being on time. So you don't have to worry about them. They will always give you a good performance so you don't have to worry about them. But the main thing, we would always be on time. That was, that was all that we lived by that anyhow. Hank was the first one to pull me off the street dancing. And Hank was dancing with a fella named Tony Lopez. And they was doing an act called the Manhattan Steppers. And Hank wanted to stick me in the middle, but he saw me dancing on the street. He didn't know what I was doing, so he just took a chance on me. And that's how, that's when I really learned how to dance.
- LaVaughn always, you know, continues to talk about how he treasures the time that he and Hank spent together. You know, Hank was a drummer. I mean, Hank loved Drum and Bugle Corps and marching bands. And you could hear that. I mean, you could hear that love in Hank's rhythms.
- And I've seen a lot of them in my time. But I haven't seen any dancer like Henry Meadows. Cause he, not only was he a flash dancer, he was a very rhythmic dancer. I couldn't class no other dancer because all of 'em were different. All of 'em were different. But I had a great admiration for his dancing because I learned a lot from him, you know. And not only did I learn a lot from him, but I stole a lot from him. And that's what dancers did in them days, you know. But he, and then he didn't care, 'cause he, he would always tell me, he said, "If you wanna know how that go, I'll show you." But he would never do it the same way twice. Hank was a great dancer at home. I think he left Philadelphia with me twice, 'cause we went to Chicago and played Club DeLisa's in Chicago. It was like six weeks. And then we'd come back and do the Apollo Theater and back to Philadelphia. But I couldn't get Hank outta Philadelphia, you know? Jerry Taps was one of the great dancers of my time because the things that he did with his feet was just like an instrument. But then Jerry knew music better than anybody that I ever worked with. And Jerry Taps and I didn't perform together. We did one or two jobs and that was it. Because Jerry got sick and he was way older than I was. But it was a lot that I learned from him.
- Like, the first time that I saw LeVaughn actually in performance was at the Old Painted Bride when it was on South Street, when it was just a little storefront. And they were doing this performance on this sort of postage stamp size piece of floor. And the place was packed. And you know how the storefronts are on South Street, you know, it was that sort of, that long entryway. And there were people all lined up outside trying to peek in the, peek into the space. I remember he and Jerry did this little routine that they put together, and I think they called it Telephone and, you know, it was, it was meant to simulate a sort of telephone conversation between the two of them. But, but in tap. So Jerry was about 10 years older than LaVaughn. And, although they, you know, they each certainly brought something distinctive to the relationship. I think LaVaughn kind of looked to Jerry as a mentor. He will tell you that Jerry is the person who told him that you need to learn to do solo work. You can't always rely on a partner. So, you know, partnerships are fine, but you have to become comfortable with doing solo work because that's what you might have to rely on. That was a really special relationship for LaVaughn. And he, you know, he still talks often about how much he misses Jerry. Even though, I guess Jerry's been gone maybe 10 years or more.
- That was crazy brother.
- When I first started teaching Germaine, we used to get together 7 o'clock in the morning. That's how I found out that she really wanted to dance because I had her meet me 7 o'clock in the morning. I think it was 6:30 in the morning. And at 6:30 she was there on time. And I said, yeah, okay. But I didn't want to dance that early in the morning, you know, but I mean, this was like something that I had to do to find out whether she really wanted to dance.
- It may have been maybe 3, 4, 6 months before I met LaVaughn that I decided that, well, I'm gonna try this tap dance thing. And I sort of wandered around Philadelphia taking a class here or lesson there, trying to figure out where I was hearing something that struck me as a style of tap that I wanted to learn and embrace. And it was difficult finding that style.
- I gave a workshop and I charged, I think I was charging $5 a head to come, you know, and I got all the cloggers 'cause they, all them was interested in tap, you know, and I was new in town. They didn't know me, you know, and I had, oh, a packed house, you know, and I did a workshop for them, and Germaine was one of them. And Germaine asked me to teach her to dance. And I told her, I said, at that time, Germaine was a lawyer. She was working outta some law office. And I told her, I said, you don't wanna learn how to dance. I said, what do you do for a living? You know, she said, I'm a lawyer. I said, oh, you don't wanna learn how to dance, girl.
- I went out there, I said, this is what I wanna learn. This is, I'm hearing what I wanna learn to do. And so I just harassed him until I got him to teach me. And I started out meeting him on Saturday mornings about, I don't know, 7 o'clock, 7:30, learning the plain time step. And it went from there.
- She proved to me that I was wrong because she wanted to learn tap and put her mind into it. And it was, tap came easy to Germaine because Germaine can sing. She knew music.
- [Germaine] I hear rhythm differently from LaVaughn, even though I'm, you know, sort of steeped in his choreography and rhythms, left to my own devices, I make rhythms that are very different from his and I think that's generational. I think it's because he grew up hearing swing. And I grew up, you know, when I came up in my household as a kid, I was listening to, I was listening to swing, but I was listening to Bebop.
- [LaVaughn] Germaine got a style of her own. When you see us together, and you have to look real close to see that we are two different dancers, but we are doing the same thing and making the same sounds. But you can see her approach to it is different from mine.
- [Germaine] When we're, you know, doing things together, sometimes, there's a clash and we have these disputes about, and you know, he says, well that's not, you know, that's not two bars. I said, it certainly is, so- Well do it again.
- [LaVaughn] Germaine is like, Germaine is like I was when I was her age, fast. And, but I have settled down. It's like a rodeo with her, you know, bucking horse. I'm trapped in there. Cause I've been there. No rush. Just about every student that goes to the university that's in the dance department and some in the theater department takes tap. And they're, I teach 'em all. I enjoy teaching. And the, the best thing about it is I'm doing something that I like doing. You follow me? So that makes it, it ceases to become a job. And not saying, not bragging, but I'm good at it. I am good at it, I have to say that, man, because I am. And I've been doing it for like, since 1980, man. I've taught in Israel, I've taught in Tel Aviv. I taught in five countries in Africa and performed. I've taught in Kiev and Moscow and just about everywhere in the United States, Good enough, good enough. Lot of the dancers, they come up at a certain time they wouldn't teach, and they didn't give away that material. But then you got to have some material in the back that they haven't seen.
- That's cheating.
- Why you do that to us?
- It's not coming out.
- But to take class with him is basically to take class with is a legend. You know what I mean? It's a tap legend and it's an honor.
- Not giving that to us?
- And the fact that LaVaughn is still alive to pass down what he know down to us, we're still keeping the legacy going. So we're the next generation, you know?
- Well, I don't do that much dancing, teaching anymore, because I let the students dance. You know, I give 'em a combination and try to get them to figure it out and let them go ahead on and do it.
- Yes, he's old school, so if you get the step, you gotta listen to the rhythm, it's all about listening.
- Emphasized, he emphasized a good ear.
- Yeah, he's not about, okay, this is 1, 2, 3, heel toe. He's like and that's all you going to get.
- And hopefully you have a quick eye.
- Yeah.- If you don't have it, you're fresh outta luck.
- One more bow, give it up. You knocked me out, man, I made you dance, didn't I? You had to dance, didn't you?
- Oh man.
- Thank you.
- You fighting. Oh, tomorrow.
- Oh, it was great, man. See you tomorrow night.
- Okay, Sure I, when I get to be 90, I don't think I'm gonna dance no more. But just let me make 90, you know.
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday dear LaVaughn ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ And many more ♪
