ALFRED LEAGINS
THE PRINCE OF RHYTHM

by Terry Monaghan

Enlarged version of an obituary written for Alfred Leagins, that was published in THE DANCING TIMES Jan 2000 edition. Thanks to Bob Crease for the opportunity to quote from his profile of Alfred Leagins that was published in FOOTNOTES.

The "Prince of Rhythm," as Mura Dehn called Alfred Leagins, probably danced longer than anyone else at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom, from soon after its 1926 opening until its 1958 closure. In fact he didn't stop until a series of health problems slowed him down in the early 1990's. He was his own best example of the medicinal powers of "Dr Jazz" or rather "Dr Lindy Hop". He recalled that a Dr King, actually a relative of the Dr Martin Luther King, would send sick patients to him to be coaxed onto the dance floor where dancing invariably revived them. If that didn't cure you, Alfred argued, then you really were ill!

Dance was far more than therapy though for him. It was about identity and empowerment and a creed by which he lived his life. His early years in South Carolina were not easy. His parents died when he was young and he passed through the care of various family members before arriving in New York to stay with an uncle who was a minister. Despite strict non-dancing edicts the young Leagins navigated his way into the Savoy Ballroom but having finally plucked up the courage to ask for a dance was told "he should go home and learn how to dance before he came back."

The challenge was on and within a year he was being pursued by would be partners at the same establishment. His newly revealed ability led him to George "Shorty" Snowden, one of the leading young turks of the Savoy who created the Lindy Hop. That proved to be a mixed blessing as his Minister uncle who had by then become suspicious of the young Leagins returning home with even his shoes soaking with sweat, threw him out with the prediction that the Lindy Hop was the surest route to eternal damnation. Before that could happen "Shorty" Snowden provided alternative accommodation for the next two years until his Uncle relented.

Leagins evidently took his uncle's warnings to heart however and neither smoked, nor drank alcohol and insisted until the end that all he needed in life was the right music and a good partner to made life worthwhile. He clung to a definition of the Lindy, and other ballroom dances, and celebrated their grace and rhythmic harmony. When Snowden and his company started experimenting with acrobatics, that were later turned into the spectacular air-step routines by the following "Whitey's Lindy Hoppers", Leagins stayed firmly on the floor. In his view that was all about selling the dance to audiences who didn't perceive the real beauty of the Lindy Hop.

Herbert White, the owner of "Whitey's Lindy Hoppers", directed his petty-gangster associates to beat up Alfred for refusing to join his new performing company. The threat of further beatings kept him away from his beloved dance floor for a while, and from the stream of major artists who came to him for dance instruction and much else besides. Eventually Whitey found other dancers for his purposes and Alfred was able to return to the Savoy and pick up where he had left off. Pearl Primus thanked him for his "kindness and understanding". Florence Lissing wrote he "should have been a dance critic". Arthur Fiedler thanked him for his "valuable hints." He struck similar chords with Tullulah Bankhead, Billie Holiday, Ethel Waters, Judy Canova, Ethel Merman, the Nicholas Brothers, Louis Armstrong and many more. Leagins fruitful interaction with so many stars of stage and screen illustrated the complex interactions of the social and stage versions of original jazz dance styles.

Teaching Roger Pryor Dodge, the modern dancer and dance critic, led to an introduction to Mura Dehn, the chronicler of the Savoy Lindy Hoppers. Dehn was intrigued by this "Nijinsky of the Lindy" who sold newspapers and shone shoes in the daytime, but who could merge "the quick shiny movements" of the latter activity with ballet techniques to give new character to his dancing. Conrad Gale, brother of Moe Gale who led the ownership consortium of the Savoy Ballroom remembered Alfred cleaning his shoes for 10cents in midtown and refusing to accept a quarter instead. Alfred did not accept handouts, and lived for just those moments that Conrad himself had observed so many times when the bands opened up from the Savoy bandstands and Alfred could come into his own, as one of the best. Wherever he started from he finished in a higher position.

In May 1942 he entered the armed forces and emerged as a sergeant at the end of the war. Like many black GIs the war changed him and soon after he found his way to lectures by Prof. Charles C. Seifert, a distinguished academics of the Harlem Renaissance, who had assembled one of the largest private book collections in Harlem on African history and culture. Following Prof. Siefert's death in 1949 he assisted his widow Tiy in preserving the collection, whilst also persuading her to become his new dance partner. In turn Alfred became the curator of the collection when she too passed away, but unlike Malcolm X, for whom the Lindy had also awakened ancient cultural memories, he never discarded the dance. He danced at the Savoy until the doors were finally locked in 1958. "Sugar" Sullivan recalls him as a personification of the ballroom's inclusive ethos in his continuous practice of offering to dance with any women who apparently was not being invited onto the floor. Like the Savoy itself though he had his own agenda and utilized such opportunities to experiment with steps and movements that the more experienced dancers would not have been as responsive to.

Alfred never missed a dancing opportunity and became a regular at the New York Swing Dance Society's Sunday Night dance at the old "Cat Club" during the 1980's. Bob Crease observed him one night approach a young female "Punk" who had apparently got her nights mixed up.

"She was wearing a dog collar, spike bracelets, black nail polish, and a toothpick through her nose. Her jeans were decorated with strange hieroglyphics, her sneakers were equipped with spurs, and her hair was dyed red.
"Seeing her alone by the table, Leagins went over to her and invited her to dance. He brought her out on the floor, led her through some simple steps until she caught on, and soon the two were bobbing and swaying to the music, her in his arms, looking for all the world - almost -like grandfather and granddaughter at a prom. "You're real good,' he said when the music finally stopped and he guided her back to her seat."

To the end he remained passionately concerned about dance and carried on explaining and discussing it, as if his life depended on it, which in a way it did. As Mura Dehn explained "He danced triumphantly erect, always ready, in case the English King should visit the Track (the local nickname for the Savoy), and suddenly he would break into a slide-sweep - the body down to his knees and up in a cascade of rhythms and African arm movements like ribbons in the air."