The NY Times has just published an obituary of Earl Snakehips Tucker, who died in 1937, aged 31, part of its “overlooked no more” series
He is a better poster from beyond the grave than the rest of us living mediocrities.
He was someone outside of here? Hmm. I thought this thread was about the SDMB poster, and feel misled. But that could be all on me for not knowing there was another.
I need to take a couple Ibuprofen just watching that.
So why didn’t they have to show that guy from the waist up?
Oh wait, 1930, so it’s pre-code.
Nice to see Vernon Dent before the Stooges.
Well, his nickname was certainly well earned. Hokey smokes.
You can tell it’s the sort of thing that most professional dancers could do quite easily nowadays but that probably blew people away back then. Like a modern guitarist listening to a Chuck Berry or something.
And supposedly he is one of the dancers in Duke Ellington’s Sympohony in Black (1935). Personally, I’m not convinced it’s Tucker, but better scholars than I say so.
He also appears in a doc called That’s Black Entertainment (1990).. This has some rare vintage of various Black entertainers from the 1930s thru the 1950s. A 300-pound tap dancer (whose name I don’t recall), Crip Hearn, a one-legged dancer, Frank ‘Sugar Chile’ Robinson, a young piano prodigy, and George ‘Rubberneck’ Holmes. When you see Holmes’s dance, you’ll see why they call him ‘Rubberneck.’