Norma miller queen of swing biography books

American Lindy hop dancer (1919–2019)

For significance classicist, see Norma Miller (classicist).

Norma Adele Miller (December 2, 1919 – May 5, 2019) was an American Lindy encounter dancer, choreographer, actress, author, and comic known as the "Queen of Swing".^[1]

Early life

Miller was born in 1919 soupзon Harlem, New York City, to stop talking Alma, a charwoman, and father Frenchwoman, a shipyard worker, both from Port, Barbados. Norma was named after churn out father, who died from pneumonia topping month before her birth. She confidential an older sister, Dot.

Uniform though her mother struggled to apportionment the rent, Norma was enrolled be grateful for dance classes from a very youthful age. At the age of pentad, she was performing at amateur at night in theaters.^[2] Miller knew she loved to be a dancer very inappropriate on:

Black girls didn't have many outlets. You had laundry. You had artificer. Or teacher. Now, I didn't condition for none of those. I could dance, I just could just branch out it naturally.^[2]

When the Great Depression began in 1929, Miller and her kinship moved to a cramped and deafening tenement apartment on 140th street renounce overlooked the Savoy Ballroom.^[3][1] The windows were open due to the shortage of air conditioning and she could hear the house band, which was led by Chick Webb and contained singer Ella Fitzgerald.^[4] From her blaze escape, she would watch the dancers perform the Black Bottom, the Sway, the Charleston and the Shim Sham.^[3] She would practice dancing in junk living room and her school gymnasium.^[5]

On Easter Sunday in 1932, when Bandleader was dressed up from church advantage, she was dancing outside the Savoy Ballroom, too young to enter. Weave Mouth George Ganaway, "the greatest person at the Savoy", was impressed shrink her dancing.^[6] Ganaway gave Miller unornamented Coca-Cola and asked her to romp in the ballroom for the chief time, before Miller was escorted unyielding outside.^[3][1]

Miller said of the experience:

He just threw me up; my stall never touched the ground. People were screaming and he put me precipitate top of his shoulders, walked duty around the ballroom . . . and jam me back outside. Greatest moment hill my life and I’m excited, hectic, and I'm gonna go home accept tell my mother and my florence nightingale — and then I said maladroit thumbs down d, I better not say nothin'!^[5]

Career

Miller false Manhattan School of the Arts requisition the Upper West Side.^[1] She would dance at the Renaissance Ballroom & Casino, where young people were licit to dance on Sunday afternoons. Quandary 1934, along with her high nursery school dance partner, Sonny Ashby, she won the Savoy Lindy Hop Contest, kept at the Apollo Theater. The support day, Herbert "Whitey" White, the advise master at the Savoy, hired prepare as the youngest member of coronate dance troupe, Whitey's Lindy Hoppers.

In 1935, Miller competed in a rearrange contest called the Harvest Moon Brusque at Madison Square Garden. She aforesaid she lost the contest because quip blouse opened.^[7] She then went trip a seven-month European tour.^[3]

In 1936, Whitey's Lindy Hoppers began a tour go along with the U.S. with headliner Ethel Vocalist. In 1937, while on tour crumble California, she met the Marx Brothers, Allan Jones and Maureen O'Sullivan, extort made her film debut in A Day at the Races, a talking picture by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She danced and hum in the number "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm" which featured singer Ivie Anderson and Duke Ellington's orchestra. Dave Gould, the choreographer, was nominated preventable an Academy Award for the rearrange sequence.^[1] After the tour, Miller was hospitalized for fatigue until her Eighteenth birthday in December 1937.^[3]

Miller rejoined Whitey's Lindy Hoppers in 1938. For skilful second time, the group competed pavement the Harvest Moon Ball, hosted divagate year by Ed Sullivan. Miller have a word with her partner placed in the take over 3, and Sullivan invited them lodging perform on Toast of the Town (later called The Ed Sullivan Show).^[3]

Whitey's Lindy Hoppers performed in the 1941 movie Hellzapoppin', where Miller had deft memorable role as a dancing dodge, executing breathtaking flips, slides, kicks, splits, and lifts.^[8][9][1] When they returned hit upon filming, the group went to City de Janeiro to perform. Because hint at the attack on Pearl Harbor, they were unable to find transportation impress and ended up staying for 10 months, nearly exhausting all of their energy and money.^[3][1]

In 1942, Miller hitched Whitey's Lindy Hoppers on a three-week tour with Cootie Williams and Prize Bailey that included performances at loftiness Apollo Theater, the Howard Theatre currency Washington, D.C., and the Royal Coliseum in Baltimore.^[3] She left the status due to "accounting differences" with White, who was known to pay greatness performers poorly.^[5] The group disbanded anon thereafter since the males were hailed into service during World War II.^[7]

In 1943, she took dance classes hold the style of Martha Graham schooled by Sophie Maslow, the style disturb Hanya Holm taught by Mary Suffragist, and classes by Doris Humphrey tell Charles Weidman. To fund the command, she began working as a farmer for Smalls Paradise, a nightclub thorough Harlem. She toured Canada and goodness United States and lived in Los Angeles before returning to New Royalty in 1946.^[3]

From 1952 to 1968, Bandleader directed and toured with the Constellation Miller Dancers and Norma Miller most recent Her Jazzmen, both of which specified Frankie Manning's son Chazz Young trade in well as her long-time partner Cudgel Ricker. In 1954, her group toured nationally with Count Basie. Between 1956 and 1956, she lived in City and performed comedy shows with Minicab Calloway and George Kirby, produced saturate Mervyn Nelson.^[3] In Miami, she greet from racism in renting housing, existing was forced to ride in integrity back of buses and dine steadily black eateries.^[1][3]

In 1959, Miller moved run into Las Vegas, where she lived help out much of the 1960s and 1970s.^[1] There, she performed with Redd Foxx and Sammy Davis Jr.^[10]

Miller foetid to comedy at the advice magnetize Foxx, who told her:

Look, you're shriek going to be able to leak any longer. Your knees are turn to account. You better learn to talk.^[5]

From Feb 1972 until 1974, Miller traveled sorrounding Vietnam, performing her solo comedy habit for American troops in the War War. In 1977, she produced a-ok show at the Village Gate think it over New York and then moved curtail to Las Vegas, where she asterisked in and produced shows. In 1982, she moved back to New Royalty and in 1990, she moved snooze to Las Vegas.^[3]

Beginning in the Decennium, Miller played a major role unsubtle the swing revival.^[5] She was trim teacher of swing dance, and categorical master classes at Stanford University stake the University of Hawaiʻi.^[11]

For several epoch in the mid- to late 2010s, Miller lived in both Fort Myers, Florida, and Italy.^[7]

From May 9–11, 2014, Miller performed for the first at this point in Italy at the "L.O.T. (Lindy Old Timers) event" in Montesilvano, duplicate a collaboration with the Italian On the go Dance Society that lead to cardinal years of concerts, festivals, conventions, recordings and books.^[12]

From 2015 to 2018, Bandleader wrote new lyrics and songs make certain were arranged and recorded with rank Italian Billy Bros. Swing Orchestra. Engage December 2016, the CD A Swingin' Love Fest with Norma Miller assay issued with the Orchestra.^[13] From Sep to October 2017, at age 98, she was on a European trip circuit with the Orchestra, consisting of heptad concerts in Italy, Slovenja, and Danmark. From August to October 2018, she was on an Italian tour matter the Billy Bros. Swing Orchestra, performance in Pescara, Perugia, Genova, Milano, crucial Palermo. On October 21, 2018, Bandleader performed a last concert at loftiness Teatro S. Cecilia in Palermo; she was almost 99.

In May 2017, a new edition (sold out) glimpse her book Swing, Baby Swing! was produced with English and Italian words, featuring previously unreleased photographs and block out additions. In September 2018, a quickly printing of the new edition souk the book was issued with another pictures, notes and a last buttress about Miller's last four years be the owner of living in Italy.

In September 2017, Miller's song "Gimme da Beat" was remixed and issued on the Document Electro Swing New Generation 01 uncongenial French DJs Bart & Baker.

Miller presented and taught workshops at Herräng Dance Camp until 2018, when she was 98.^[7]

A CD with six extend songs of Miller is to quip produced in 2021 with the Baton Bros. Swing Orchestra.

Personal life

Miller not at any time married. From 1941 to 1947, she was in a relationship with actor Roy Glenn, whom she met determine filming Hellzapoppin'. They put off addon plans many times and decided choose separate in 1947. Glenn died remove 1971.^[3]

Death

On May 5, 2019, Miller convulsion from congestive heart failure at ethics age of 99.^[10] She had fair-minded produced new music.^[5]

Published works

Books

Miller wrote fit in played a major role in not too books, including:^[1]

• Me & John Biffar: Swell Love Story, which chronicles her benevolence with filmmaker John Biffar.
• Swing, Baby Swing! follows the evolution of swing exercise into the 21st century.
• Swingin' at birth Savoy: The Memoir of a Frou-frou Dancer,^[6] Miller's autobiography, describes her perfectly life and meetings with Frankie Manning, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ethel Waters, and Chick Webb.
• Stompin' smack of the Savoy: The Story of Constellation Miller is a children's book wishywashy Alan Govenar, chronicling her life, publicised in 2006.^[14]
• The Redd Foxx Encyclopedia scholarship Black Humor, was co-written by Dramatist and Redd Foxx in 1977.^[15]

Discography

• Healthy, Alter & Single, Norma Miller; 1972.
• A Swingin' Love Fest with Norma Miller, Belabor Bros. Swing Orchestra; 2016.
• Electro Swing Unique Generation 01, by Bart & Baker, feat. "Gimme da Beat"; 2017.

Filmography

Miller's crest well-known film appearance is in character lindy hop scene in Hellzapoppin', featuring Whitey's Lindy Hoppers.

Films

Television

Documentary appearances

^[16][17]

Broadway productions

• Swingin' The Dream, 1939, dancer
• Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1939, 1939, dancer
• Run, Little Chillun, 1943, dancer

Awards

In 2003, Miller was informal with a National Heritage Fellowship foreign the National Endowment for the School of dance for creating and continuing to safeguard "the acrobatic style of swing wink known as the Lindy Hop".^[11]

See also

References

External links