Last Survivor in Tap Quartet - Maceo Anderson (1910-2001)
The last of the original Step Brothers died July 5 in Los Angeles, California. Maceo Anderson, one of the world's most celebrated and enduring tap acts, died at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 90 and lived in Los Angeles.
The Four Step Brothers, billed as ``eight feet of rhythm,'' played top nightclubs and theaters internationally from the 1930s into the '60s. They also appeared in films and on many television variety shows.
Mr. Anderson was one of the many young dancers who hung out at the Hoofers club, a famous tap gathering place under the Lafayette Theater in Harlem. He and the others would practice in the club, which was bare but for benches and an upright piano. They would also watch and study the veteran tap stars who visited and be their gofers. Mr. Anderson also sneaked into the Lafayette to see the shows, racing between the two places at times.
The group began as a trio of unrelated dancing teenagers, formed by Mr. Anderson and two dancers whom he had seen and admired in an amateur night at the Lafayette. Another dancer was added in the 1930s.
The act incorporated singing, acrobatics, comedy and vernacular dance, working into the mix the traditional tap challenge in which one dancer tries to top another's steps. An exciting escalation of complexity and speed, the challenge, born on the streets, became the act's trademark by the 1940s.
By then, Mr. Anderson had become the exuberant clown of the act, delighting the audience by heckling his colleagues. Anderson continued to perform after the act disbanded.
He was honored in 1994 in the annual celebration of National Tap Dance Day in Manhattan.
Mr. Anderson continued to teach at his own school in Las Vegas and at festivals and universities throughout the United States until 1999.
He was preceded in death by his daughter, Marzetta Grey, who died from a heart attach 12 hours before his death. He is survived by his wife, Mary Anderson, of Las Vegas, and by two grandsons, Robert L. Reed of St. Louis and Michael Allen of Colorado Springs.