History
Bill Robinson’s famous stair tap routine in Harlem Is Heaven in 1932, for black audiences, a financial failure that turned him away from independent production.
He was another one of the Harlem great “publicity men” that included the creation of his famous “stair dance” which he claimed to have invented on the spur of the moment when he was receiving an honor from the King of England, who was standing at the top of a flight of stairs; Bojangles’ feet just danced up to be honored. His sound and beat are the most recognizable in addition to his work with Shirley Temple. Gregory Hines did exactly the same routine at the end of the TV movie Bojangles (2001)
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