Jazz Tap: Stumpy Cromer and Jared Grimes

From: Murray Street Productions
Series: JazzStories
Length: 13:21

“And then we used to play hockey in the street, roller skate hockey. So while I was up there playing roller skate hockey I was moving my feet around and I liked the sound.“ - Harold "Stumpy" Cromer Read the full description.

Piece Audio

Playing: Jazz Tap: Stumpy Cromer and Jared Grimes
From: Murray Street Productions

Jazz_tap_stumpy_cromer_and_jared_grimes_small Dancers Harold “Stumpy” Cromer and Jared Grimes are separated by 60 years in age, but between the two of them they have worked with Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Betty Grable, Ethel Merman, Gregory Hines, The Roots and Mariah Carey. They discuss (and dance) the history of tap through the generations with Dr. Lewis Porter.

Also in the JazzStories series

JazzStories: Mulgrew Miller (11:02)
From: Murray Street Productions

“I think of a lot of things when I’m playing the piano and one of the last things I think about is the piano…you try to somehow think and feel like a singer or horn player ...

JazzStories: Michael Cuscuna (17:26)
From: Murray Street Productions

"I guess it was about 3rd or 4th grade that I got hooked on R & B and early rock & roll. I just became a fanatical record collector even at that age. Not a massive ...

JazzStories: Reid Anderson (16:32)
From: Murray Street Productions

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," in particular sounds like a modal jazz tune. That's one of the funniest things to me. It says so much about people's attitudes in jazz towards rock ...

JazzStories: Mary Halvorson (18:32)
From: Murray Street Productions

"I want to have clarity of ideas and I want to be able to execute ideas. So if I'm going to play something really sloppy, I want it to be sloppy on purpose, not sloppy ...

JazzStories: Stefon Harris (07:39)
From: Murray Street Productions

"When I started to play jazz... I started in the middle. I wanted to play Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and all of that stuff first... When I started checking out Louis ...

JazzStories: Christian McBride (16:39)
From: Murray Street Productions

"I always thought of the acoustic bass as the quintessential jazz instrument... I knew that jazz meant cool, and hip, and on the cutting edge, and to me that was my great ...

JazzStories: Freddie Hubbard (11:41)
From: Murray Street Productions

"When people get two trumpet players it becomes very competitive...It was [Booker Little], Lee Morgan and myself at the time. We we're the young guys here. So it was very ...

JazzStories: The Three Cohens (14:45)
From: Murray Street Productions

"We have a mixture of many elements from the world. The classical music from Europe- the sense of melody and deep harmonic sense- and on the other side we have people coming ...

JazzStories: Dr. Lonnie Smith (10:19)
From: Murray Street Productions

"They name it -- they just come up with all kinds of names..."'Funk'... 'jazz' or... 'acid jazz.' Or they named it 'boogaloo.' We don't know anything about that. We just ...

Caption: Toshiko Akiyoshi, Credit: Amanda Brown

JazzStories: Toshiko Akiyoshi (12:08)
From: Murray Street Productions

"The fact is my parents lost all of their assets. If I didn't have something (I was) really into, in my case was piano and jazz, I think it would have been really difficult ...

Piece Description

Dancers Harold “Stumpy” Cromer and Jared Grimes are separated by 60 years in age, but between the two of them they have worked with Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Betty Grable, Ethel Merman, Gregory Hines, The Roots and Mariah Carey. They discuss (and dance) the history of tap through the generations with Dr. Lewis Porter.