| INGRAM: |
Well, at a point, you branched out beyond Philadelphia; you started dancing in other places. How did that come about? |
| ROBINSON: |
Well, we got tired of just dancing in Philadelphia, and then we started--well, actually, they sent us up into the Catskill Mountains. We started doing the Catskills, and we started doing a lot of the hotels up in the Catskill Mountains. After we got through doing some of them big hotels up there, well, then we started to get it in our heads that we wanted to travel a little bit. That's when we started to travel. We did DeLisa's in Chicago, and all through Canada. Oh, listen, we stayed traveling. But I was--look, every time I'd leave town, I was glad to get back home. You see, that was one of the reasons why Hank and I never got together to stay, because Hank never wanted to leave Philadelphia. And I found out that you got to leave home to make money. In this business, you ain't going to make no money in Philadelphia if you're from Philadelphia. If you go out of town and come back, you might make a buck, you know. But that's the way Philadelphia is. And you had some of the great dancers in Philadelphia, so what you did wasn't nothing. |
| INGRAM: |
Talk about some of your other partners. You talked about Hank a bit and his influence; you talked about Howard Blow. You had some other partners along the way. Tell me about some of them. |
| ROBINSON: |
Well, Eddie Sledge was one of the partners that I worked with. |
| INGRAM: |
That's the father of Sister Sledge? |
| ROBINSON: |
That's the father of the girls that sing, Sister Sledge. Eddie Sledge--I worked with him for about--oh, maybe three or four years. We traveled all through Chicago together and different places. Then I had another partner, Tony Lopez. But then we did-- what we was doing, was a trio. And there was three of us. Because it was a guy in New York named Eddie Smith. Eddie Smith didn't handle nothing but trios and quartets--dancers. He had Tip, Tap and Toe; he had The Four Step Brothers. If it was more than two of you, he would, you know, work you because his commission was bigger. He kept us working for awhile. Another top agent was Frank Belmont. Frank Belmont had the Clark Brothers, and when he saw us, his hands was going like this [Rubs Hands Together]. But we never got with him because he died before we got to work with him. But these are the things that happened. That was the price of the game, you know. I had a wonderful time. |
| INGRAM: |
So, what were you looking for? You know, when you put a trio together, what style, what flavor were you looking for when you put routines together? |
| ROBINSON: |
Well, it's all according to what's happening. When we put our trio together, we tried to do a lot of rhythm. You know, because we had seen like the Condos Brothers. The Condos Brothers, to me, was fantastic tap dancers. They come from 11th and South in Philadelphia. They were great tap dancers. And we didn't want to be like them, but we wanted to do a lot of rhythm. |
| INGRAM: |
Talk about what you mean by a lot of rhythm. |
| ROBINSON: |
Close rhythm. |
| INGRAM: |
And that's where the paddling comes in--giving you that close rhythm. |
| ROBINSON: |
Right. We tried to stay away from them splits and flips and tumbling and stuff like that. |
| INGRAM: |
But you did a bit of that didn't you? |
| ROBINSON: |
I did that when I first come up. That's how I messed my legs up. |
| INGRAM: |
What encouraged you to try to do splits and flips and those types of acrobatic things? |
| ROBINSON: |
Well, the agents would always say--these are the agents that's making money-- They would always say, "Are they anything like the Nicholas Brothers?" Because, at that time, the Nicholas Brothers was hot. And it was nobody like the Nicholas Brothers. They're the ones that made a lot of dancers break their legs, because you wasn't the Nicholas Brothers. They wanted you to do splits and wanted you to do flips and run up a wall and stuff like that. Because they saw the Nicholas Brothers doing that. But it wasn't but one Nicholas Brothers, I mean. We tried a lot of that stuff, you know, but then we started to saying, "The hell with the Nicholas Brothers. Let's be ourselves." That's how we started making a buck. |
| INGRAM: |
You know, your dance career has spanned almost 70 years, right? |
| ROBINSON: |
Just about. |
| INGRAM: |
Just about 70 years. |
| ROBINSON: |
Just about 70 years. Now, how you like that? |
| INGRAM: |
I think that's pretty remarkable. |
| ROBINSON: |
Seventy years. In another few days, I'll be 75 years old. |
| INGRAM: |
And you're still dancing like you-- |
| ROBINSON: |
And I'm still dancing like I'm-- |
| INGRAM: |
Mad. |
| ROBINSON: |
I'm still dancing like I'm crazy. Which I am crazy. To keep dancing all this long, I got to be crazy. |
| INGRAM: |
During that stretch of time, musical styles had changed. I mean, when you were coming up, there were--there was Swing. Then there was Train and Parker and Monk, and they were replaced by others. How did the changes in musical styles affect the way you danced or the way you created? |
| ROBINSON: |
Well, I don't know whether that changed the way that we danced because we kept dancing the same style we was dancing. The music might have changed. And then the music made a lot of the dancers go a cappella; to hell with the music. Because, to us, dancing was music. |
