News: A Life Spent Keeping It Real: Tyrone Cooper of the Mama Lou Lindy Hoppers

	Tyrone Cooper, who played a leading role in continuing the “Mama Lou” Lindy rehearsals each Thursday after the sudden death of Dickie Harris in August 2003, tragically died in a car crash last Tuesday.
Mid-Summer Swing 1996 - from left to right - Dickie Harris (MLP),  Jreena Green (JLH), Warren Heyes (JLH), Beverly Moore (MLP),  Russell Sargeant (JLH), Joya Bailey, Tyrone Cooper (MLP) and  Carolene Hinds (JLH)

The company is still in shock at this latest in a dreadful series of personal catastrophes that have hit the company in its forty something years of dedication to the Lindy Hop. His loss is especially painful because of Tyrone’s exceptional character. Being one of a succession of Harlem youth recruited from the streets by Mama Lou in her determination to keep the Lindy Hop alive as a competition and performance dance form, he alone persevered sufficiently to play a leading role. 

Not to be confused with Margaret Batiuchok and George Lloyd’s deserved victory in the Harvest Moon Ball Association’s event of 1983, Tyrone won his spurs that same year when he came first in the rival Mama Lou organized “Harvest Moon” competition with his first and outstanding partner Viola Hamilton. Three years earlier Mama Lou turned the “Savoy Preliminary” (for the main “Harvest Moon Ball”), which she had stage every year since the Ballroom closed in 1958, into a stand alone event after the HMBA dropped the Lindy as a competition category. Mama Lou continued with her event despite the HMBA temporarily including it again in 1982 and 1983. How right she was, became evident when the HMBA finally abandoned it in 1984 just as the new interest in the dance was emerging! Judges for the 1983 competition that Tyrone and Viola won included stellar Lindy maestros such as Frankie Manning and George Sullivan.

Tyrone and Viola on winning form in 1983 - photo by Rudy Baez

Even though a comparative newcomer to the company a few notable examples illustrates the intensity of his performance record. Tyrone can be seen dancing in the BAM Lindy performance captured in the documentary “Black America Dance” and training a new generation of enthusiasts in the Swedish TV documentary “Call of the Jitterbug.” Geoff Berne the producer remembers his dignity both on-stage and off and gallantry in his dancing that showed through even at the most slapstick parts of the show. Tyrone danced on virtually all his productions as part of the Mama Lou dancers from the early to the late 1980s, with The Harlem Blues & Jazz Band, and a few with Cab Calloway, including shows all over New York State, St. Paul, Richmond Virginia, the huge Chattanooga Riverbend Festival, and the five-month run of "Jitterbug Jazz" with The Harlem Blues & Jazz Band at the Village Gate in Winter 1985-86.

1998 - Tyrone at the White House with a fan. Beverly is in the background.

Tyrone was one of the uninvited line of dancers Mama Lou personally marched into the 1988 fourth anniversary celebration of the founding of the NYSDS at the old Cat Club to dance with their beloved Count Basie Orchestra, and he attended the “Can’t Top The Lindy Hop” celebrations in 1994 although again the Mama Lou company wasn’t invited to participate. In 1995 he came third with Carolene Hinds (of the Jiving Lindy Hoppers) in the American Swing Dance Championships, and he performed for President Clinton at the White House in 1998 with his second partner Beverly Moore (alongside Steve Mitchell and Erin Stevens). In 2000 he danced in and helped lead a special cabaret performance at Mid-Summer Swing at the Lincoln Centre that featured 18 Lindy Hoppers to remember Mama Lou on the Tenth Anniversary of her death, and he was a key figure in contributing to the impact of that memorable, but recent performance at the Yehoodi Count Basie – Shorty Snowden Commemoration at Columbia University in October 2004.

Having overcome a couple of major recent personal setbacks, including the loss of his mother, he was working at the time of his passing with his usual passion and dedication, along with an array of original company members, for a major performance in May 2006. I last saw him at a rehearsal in October and teased him about the possibility of wearing again the orange cat suit complete with sequins, in which he won the 1983 competition, for the forthcoming event. In return I got the usually wry smile along with an ironic response about whether he could still fit into it, and even then if he could find it!

Ty, as everyone called him, was always around, and always looking dapper as if he were a junior version of Buster Brown with whom he invariably exchanged jocular remarks whenever they met. Tyrone called Buster “Bones” for some reason probably only known to the pair of them. He headed up a couple of well received guest teaching spots at the NYSDS’s Sunday nights in Irving Plaza. Infectious smiles rapidly alternated with serious concentration as he made each person he talked to feel special whilst making his stylish way through life. His Lindy Hopping had a muscular, almost staccato look that reflected the feel of the early Hip Hop years he began dancing in. Photos of air-stepping Lindy Hoppers, old and new, always caught his eye. He would keenly examine them and discuss the minutiae of the combined dynamics, the hand-holds, the use of the legs, the positioning of the torso and everything else that related to the quick and clean execution that he was such a master of.

Mid-Summer Swing 2000 - Tyrone with one of the then few surviving illustrious 1950s Savoy Lindy Hoppers "Little Nick" Mosley at the 10th anniversary of Mama Lou's passing.

He had an absolute loyalty to the company, and was the devoted assistant of Dickie Harris who only he called “Fats,” but without a trace of disrespect. Dickie’s death had hit him hard, just as his is hitting everyone now who was fortunate enough to know or meet him. Debra Youngblood speaking on behalf of the company members has expressed their utter devastation at loosing such a vital and popular member. No matter how tough circumstances might become she insisted, they will persevere as they always have, just as Tyrone and Mama Lou would have wished for.

Terry Monaghan