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When the Nicholas Brothers danced, uptown at the Cotton Club, downtown at the Roxy, in segregated movie theatres in the South, and dance halls across the country, audiences cheered, clapped, stomped their feet, and shouted out uncontrollably. Their exuberant style of American theatrical dance--a melding of jazz, tap, acrobatics, black vernacular dance, and witty repartee--was dazzling. Though daredevil flips, slides, and hair-raising splits made them show-stoppers, the Nicholas Brothers were also highly sophisticated dancers who refined a centuries-old tradition of percussive dance into the rhythmic brilliance of jazz tap. In Brotherhood in Rhythm, author Constance Valis Hill interweaves an intimate portrait of these great performers with a richly detailed history of jazz music and jazz dance, both bringing their act to life and explaining their significance through a colourful analysis of their eloquent footwork, their full-bodied expressiveness, and their changing style. Hill vividly captures their soaring careers, from the Cotton Club appearances with Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Jimmy Lunceford, to film-stealing big-screen performances with Chick Webb, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller. Drawing on a deep well of research and endless hours of interviews with the Nicholas brothers themselves, she also documents their struggles against the nets of racism and segregation that constantly enmeshed their careers and denied them the recognition they deserved. More than a biography of two immensely talented but underappreciated performers, Brotherhood in Rhythm offers a profound understanding of this distinctively American art and its intricate links to the history of jazz.

Born in 1893 into the only African American family in White Sulphur Springs, Montana, Emmanuel Taylor Gordon (1893–1971) became an internationally famous singer in the 1920s at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. With his musical partner, J. Rosamond Johnson, Gordon was a crucially important figure in popularizing African American spirituals as an art form, giving many listeners their first experience of black spirituals.Despite his fame, Taylor Gordon has been all but forgotten, until now. Michael K. Johnson illuminates Gordon's personal history and his cultural importance to the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, arguing that during the height of his celebrity, Gordon was one of the most significant African American male vocalists of his era. Gordon's story—working in the White Sulphur Springs brothels as an errand boy, traveling the country in John Ringling's private railway car, performing on vaudeville stages from New York to Vancouver to Los Angeles, performing for royalty in England, becoming a celebrated author with a best-selling 1929 autobiography, and his long bout of mental illness—adds depth to the history of the Harlem Renaissance and makes him one of the most fascinating figures of the twentieth century. Through detailed documentation of Gordon's career—newspaper articles, reviews, letters, and other archival material—the author demonstrates the scope of Gordon's cultural impact. The result is a detailed account of Taylor's musical education, his career as a vaudeville performer, the remarkable performance history of Johnson and Gordon, his status as an in-demand celebrity singer and author, his time as a radio star, and, finally, his descent into madness. Can't Stand Still brings Taylor Gordon back to the center of the stage.