Mama Lu's Harvest Moon Legacy

MAMA LU'S HARVEST MOON LEGACY

Harvest Moon Ball Poster

Forty further years of Harvest Moon Ball Lindy championship contests after the Savoy closed played a major role in sustaining the Ballroom's legacy despite the rapid changes that swept through the popular music and dance scene in the decades that followed. The name of the competition changed from time to time but the dance didn't or rather developed in the way that dance forms evolve, that is at its own pace irrespective of what ever it was called.

So far this list only includes first place winners. The intention is to add on as more information becomes available. The couple's numbers, where known, are in brackets after their names. In the cases where Charlotte "Mommy" Thacker entered the winning couples her name has been acknowledged, otherwise all the winning couples were entered by Louise "Mama Lu" Parks. She kept her promise to Charles Buchanan, manager of the Savoy Ballroom, to organize the Lindy Hop preliminary competition, and staged it each year at the Savoy Manor hall in the Bronx. From there the winners went to the final contest that was still held at Madison Square Gardens until 1974.

Strenuous efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the results included below, however it will be some time before we can confidently say that they are absolutely right! Some of the results are based on memory alone. Our grateful thanks goes to Judy Petardi as it would have been infinitely more difficult to have assembled this list of results with her help.

Please send in corrections, preferably with some kind of corroborating evidence if they suggest a different version, and we will immediately update the web site. Moreover if you know more detailed results, i.e. who came 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc., we would love to include them as well along with any photos of the contestants.

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The DAILY NEWS withdrew it's sponsorship after the 40th Anniversary HMB, and the HMB survived until 1983 in the Madison Square Complex, but was re-located to the much smaller Felt Forum hall.
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LINDY
1976
Margaret Thacker & Joey Harley (19) [entered by Charlotte "Mommy" Thacker]

1977
Tiny Wilson & George Wilson (20)
(The same winners as 1971 but dancing under altered names.)

In 1979 the Harvest Moon Ball organization, apparently seduced by the latest dance craze - "the Hustle" - dropped the Lindy Hop as a competition category and it remained out until 1982. The remorseless Louise "Mama Lu" Parks refused to let the Lindy Hop be forgotten however and turned the Lindy Hop preliminary she ran every year at the Savoy Manor in the Bronx, after the Savoy Ballroom closed, into the main HMB Lindy Hop competition. She moved her competition to a mid-town location so that it could represent New York as a whole and linked it to the World Rock 'n' Roll Championships held in Europe each year. The "Mama Lu" Harvest Moon Ball was staged annually until 1989.

In 1982 and 1983 the original HMB organization, that continued to hold competitions for the other categories, included the Lindy Hop again but just for these two years and then decided to fiinally part company with the Lindy Hop just as it took on a new lease of life in 1984!

LINDY HOP
(The results from the "Mama Lu" Harvest Moon Ball events. No clear records have been kept for the following events, so most of these results are from memory. Further help with the placings are more necessary than ever. Some events had both amateur and professional categories others had just one un-differentiated competition.)

1980
Sheraton Center, 7th Ave at 52nd Street.
Professional: David Butts & Debra Youngblood
Amateur: Steven "War" & Shonda

1981
Holiday Inn, Embassy Ballroom, 57th Street
Prof: Edward Johnson & Rhonda Hodge
Amateur: Clyde Wilder & Amaniyea Pane

1982
Holiday Inn, Embassy Ballroom, 57th Street
Amateur: Stanley Hathaway & Yvette Fraiser

1983
Holiday Inn, Embassy Ballroom, 57th Street
Amateur: Tyrone Cooper & Viola Hamilton

1984
Amateur: Roy & Tecora Shine - Small's Paradise, 7th Avenue
(The son and daughter of Ann Shine who won the HMB in 1974)

1985
Amateur: Darlene Gist & George Williams
The Milford Plaza, Grand Ballroom, 45th Street

1986
Sharon Abrams & Maurice McBean
The Milford Plaza, Grand Ballroom, 45th Street

1987
Prof: Rhonda Hodge & Edward Johnson
Omni Central Plaza Hotel, Grand Ballroom, 56th Street

1989
Omni Central Plaza Hotel, Grand Ballroom, 56th Street.
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Competitions weren't staged at the '88 and '89 events as the Mama Lu Dancers touring commitments gave no time to stage the selection heats that were necessary to produce a viable rostra of competitors. The events nevertheless took place and were crowded out with many happy past and present Lindy Hoppers who as usual swapped memories and talked about the Savoy Ballroom. Louise Parks, fell ill whilst directing her dancers on a Cruise Ship off Florida in August 1990. She died a short while later back in the Bronx. The regular production team decided not to stage the annual event without her. Some of them felt that it would not have worked anyway. Once stopped, it has never been re-staged. However by then her mission had been accomplished. The Lindy Hop had attracted new enthusiasts and by then was alive and well again in New York City, its hometown. More-over the Lindy Hop had not just survived the closure of the Savoy Ballroom but could boast an unbroken continuity in all of its three forms - social, competition and performance dance modes.