But Pop continued to travel throughout the country as his father and Uncle Will trained Pop on tap dancing, singing, and how to engage the audience with a confident patter and a wide smile. My father told me the same story he once told talk-show host Richard Bey, “In those days in show business, speaking medically, the job was not to be a specialist, but a general practitioner—you had to do a little bit of everything, know how to say a line, sing a song, tap a dance, do a joke. It was part and parcel to our business.”
Gradually my father became the trio’s star, leading the act to larger and larger clubs. Uncle Will decided their pay would be split three ways. Years later, after Pop became a solo artist, he still split his pay three ways, paying Uncle Will and his father until the day they died. Pop was kindhearted, lavish, and generous to a fault. When my father was invited to private dinner parties he wouldn’t just show up with three dozen roses, he would arrive with a gift from Tiffany’s—that was Sammy Davis, Jr. style.
“I created my own rules, Trace Face. I danced, sung, joked, or impersonated my way through the color barrier. Like the time my father and Uncle Will told me I couldn’t do an impression of James Cagney or any white artists. I couldn’t see any sense to it and did it anyway. I did a Cagney walk to center stage, spread my legs apart in a classic Cagney stance and said, ‘All right . . . you dirty rats!’ There was a startled pause and then a roaring applause. Backstage, my own father apologized for being wrong, laughed, and hugged me. See, Trace, in those days we had TOBA—that was an abbreviation for ‘Tough On Black Artists,’ and the ‘A’ . . . didn’t always stand for ‘Artist.’”
“I get it,” I said.
“I don’t know who made up the rules for ‘colored’ performers. But if you were colored you would never address the audience when you walked onstage. There was this invisible wall colored entertainers were not allowed to cross. When we worked downtown at the Paramount, the Roxy, Loew’s State, the Capitol Theatre, the Strand, the ‘colored acts’ would come on the stage talking to each other like, ‘Why ya yesterday say ta me . . .’ This really got on my nerves. So, I went to the opposite extreme. I would walk onstage sounding like Laurence Olivier—‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen . . .’ It was a personal challenge, too. I wanted to see how well I could speak with no formal education.”
“But Grandpa and Uncle Will taught you everything else about the stage, how to tap, sing, capture an audience?” I asked.
“Pretty much, Trace Face—until the night I got to watch the best in the business. It was in the early 1940s at the Plymouth Theatre in Boston. We did our opening act, stood in the wings. The great Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson took the stage. His dancing was different than I had ever seen. He didn’t do the routine flat-footed buck and wing. He skated on the balls of his feet. He had this shuffle-tap style that flew him backward faster than most could tap forward. My jaw just dropped open,” he explained.
“Is that why singing ‘Mr. Bojangles’ was always the signature segment of your shows, Pop?”
Dad performed “Mr. Bojangles” with more feeling than he did any of his other songs.
“Oh, it was deeper than that, Trace! After the show, we went back to Bill Robinson’s dressing room. He had a valet helping him put on this silky monogrammed robe. Beautiful! I counted twenty-five pairs of the finest shoes laid out on the floor. Right then and there, I knew when I became a star, I would not just have one pair of Sunday best shoes. I would have a collection of designer shoes. Jerry Lewis and I used to talk about how when we became stars we would buy not one, but five pairs of shoes at the same time. We would do the same with suits, hats, bow ties. Tailors were sweet candy to us.”
“You do have quite the wardrobe, Dad.”
“Anyway, after I counted twenty-five pairs of Mr. Bojangles’ finest shoes, he says to me: ‘Lemme see you dance, kid.’ My knees buckled, but I gained my composure and did a little tap number. That was the beginning of my tutorials with the best in the business, I was a young star in training.” Pop smiled.
“Inspired by the best,” I added.
“Bill Robinson was the cream of the crop—old school. Do you remember my sixtieth anniversary tribute, the one you couldn’t attend a couple of months ago because you got in that horrible car crash?”
“Yeah, almost lost the baby, Pop,” I said.
“If you had lost my grandchild, you would have lost me.”
“I know, Pop . . . we’re okay. The crash was my first childbirth lesson: I learned to breathe, count, and swear all at the same time! So tell me about the tribute.”