That low-down quality was in contrast to the upright tapping of the show’s star, Bill Robinson. The addition of sleigh bells to the bouncy music underlined the idea. In the film “Crazy House,” Tucker does his shaking while rubbing his hands together, as if he were shivering in the cold while skating on ice. Tucker’s trembling was most likely related to dances of spiritual possession, which became part of Pentecostal, Sanctified and Holiness traditions. Tucker was, in fact, discovered in Maryland, dancing in the streets of Baltimore, and Ellington’s claim is probably accurate in other ways: What Ellington called “pagan rituals,” scholars would identify as African spiritual practices that informed African-American culture. (This gender distinction still held when Elvis came on the scene, prompting hostile journalists to liken him disparagingly to burlesque ladies doing the hoochie coochie.)ĭuke Ellington, who hired Tucker to dance with his band at the Cotton Club and elsewhere, once speculated that Tucker had come from “tidewater Maryland, one of those primitive lost colonies where they practice pagan rituals and their dancing style evolved from religious seizures.” He could also tap dance and do the Charleston, but it was the hip rotations and the shaking that distinguished him from black male dancers of his day, in part because the moves were associated with the sexually charged ones of female dancers “shake” dancers were known to shimmy and grind. Some hip-hop dancers who came across video footage of Tucker were said to have experienced a shock of recognition: This guy was doing some of their steps decades before they were.Įven if these dancers didn’t imitate Tucker directly, they drew on a style that he had heightened and popularized. Later, Tucker’s loose kicks and unwinding spins found an echo in the signature moves of Michael Jackson. Elvis the Pelvis also took on the moniker “Ol’ Snakehips.” Elvis Presley, who was born two years before Tucker died, probably never saw him dance, yet he scandalized 1950s America with a more timid version of Tucker’s below-the-waist action, making girls in the audience scream. Tucker’s influence didn’t end with his death. Back then, obscurity wasn’t unusual for black entertainers, but the articles praised him as one of the most imitated artists of the day. The cause, as described in his obituary in The Baltimore Afro-American, was a “mysterious illness.” Neither that obituary nor those in other African-American newspapers - the mainstream press did not report the death - included many biographical facts about Tucker. He died on May 14, 1937, when he was just 31. Presley ignores the warnings in the film but in real life it appears he sometimes thought it best to stick to the rules.By the time he appeared in the film, Snakehips Tucker was already a name attraction in Harlem nightclubs like the Cotton Club and Connie’s Inn, and he had appeared to acclaim on Broadway and in Paris. Community leaders take a stand against Elvis, threatening he’ll be arrested if he continues. His gyrating dance moves are also spotlighted in the film biopic. This is because Gooding had summoned Mr Presley to his offices and told him there would be no “hip-swivelling” and no “suggestive body movements”, as Florida Theatre president Numa Saisselin told News4Jax. His six shows at the Florida Theatre in August 1956 went ahead but he had to stand on stage and sing without his classic moves. They were even filming the show for proof.” The police were there to watch for any little wiggle, and vowed to arrest him if he made one wrong move. June wrote in her book: “Warrants were made out in advance for Elvis’s arrest.
Conrad revealed: “Judge Gooding, a Juvenile Court judge, said he felt Elvis’s bumps and grinds were objectionable for the teenage audience, and he ordered Elvis to tone down his act.” Presley’s friend Buddy Conrad found out a Jacksonville newspaper had published a piece on Elvis’s dancing and told the couple.
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