A Jazz Dance Life: An Interview with Chazz Young
- board875
- May 26
- 3 min read
In honor of Frankie Manning’s 111th birthday on May 26th, the Frankie Manning Foundation is delighted to share this previously unpublished interview!
Charles “Chazz” Young (born November 8th, 1932) is a renowned dancer and choreographer, who has performed and taught jazz dance, tap, and Lindy Hop around the world.
Chazz has often praised his father, Frankie Manning (1914–2009), as his role model who inspired him to pursue a career in dance. Frankie was one of the original Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, a legendary dance troupe based at the Savoy Ballroom during the 1930s and early 1940s.
In this interview, Chazz describes the first time he saw his father perform, and the lasting impact it left on him.This was in July 1943, when Chazz was eleven years old, and his mother took him to see Frankie performing at the Roxy Theatre, with Stormy Weather on the bill.
In the 1950’s, Chazz joined Norma Miller’s dance company. Like Frankie, Norma Miller (1919–2019) had been one of the original Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers and formed her own acclaimed dance companies after Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers disbanded. Chazz shares some of his memories of touring around the world with Norma and her dancers. For example, they spent nine months in London performing a show named Harlem Heat Wave at Club Pigalle.
Chazz recounts how he was invited to perform alongside many revered tap dancers on Francis Ford Coppola’s movie The Cotton Club (1984). In 1992, Chazz appeared on Spike Lee’s movie Malcolm X as a Lindy Hop dancer. He was a member of The Copasetics, the celebrated tap dance fraternity that had originally been formed in memory of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (1878–1949) and named after his famous expression: “Everything is copasetic.” In the interview, Chazz also talks about his admiration for many of his fellow tap dancers such as Charles “Honi” Coles (1911–1992) and Charles “Cholly” Atkins (1913–2003), who formed the class act Coles & Atkins and were original members of The Copasetics. Invited by Norma Miller, Cholly Atkins choreographed a tap routine to Count Basie’s “Cute” for Chazz to perform. This became one of Chazz’ signature numbers.
Chazz shares a heart-warming story of the first time he ever performed a tap dance act with the cane. It became a learning experience he later told many of his dance students: it is one thing to practice in the studio and another to get on the stage and perform in front an audience. Chazz’s story reveals how his hardworking, warm, and humble character helped him to become the extraordinary dancer he is.
In the 1980’s, Norma Miller had formed a new dance company named Norma Miller Jazz Dancers. It was while they were both members of this spectacular group that Chazz befriended fellow performer Clyde Wilder, an expert in African American and West-African dance traditions. Chazz and Clyde became life-long friends, and this interview was recorded at Clyde’s home in Harlem, New York, on July 14th, 2013. It was conducted by Malin Grahn-Wilder and Clyde Wilder.
You can listen to the interview here:
By: Malin Grahn-Wilder
Sources & Recommended Readings:
Frankie Manning & Cynthia R. Millman: Frankie Manning: Ambassador of Lindy Hop, Temple University Press, 2007.
Norma Miller: Swingin' at the Savoy – The Memoir of a Jazz Dancer, Temple University Press, 2001.
Rusty Frank: TAP! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and Their Stories 1900-1955, Hachette Books, 1995.
Jacqui Malone: Steppin' on the Blues – The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance, University of Illinois Press, 1996.
Cholly Atkins & Jacqui Malone: Class Act – The Jazz Life of Choreographer Cholly Atkins, Columbia University Press, 2001.
Lindsay Guarino, Carlos R. A. Jones, & Wendy Oliver (eds.): Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty-First Century, University Press of Florida, 2022. [Includes a chapter by LaTasha Barnes: “Must Be the Music”]
Marshall W. Stearns & Jean Stearns: Jazz Dance – The Story of American Vernacular Dance, Da Capo Press, 1994.
International Tap Dance Hall of Fame, American Tap Dance Foundation: https://www.atdf.org/hall-of-fame-bios
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