Tales From Tap City : TAP! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and Their Stories, 1900-1955 <i> By Rusty E. Frank (William Morrow: $39.95; 331 pp., illustrated) </i>

Louis Armstrong said he was inspired by the tap dancer Bill (Bojangles) Robinson because Robinson embodied “comedy and danger in my race.” A keen observer of the human condition like Armstrong could understand how tap could embrace two such seemingly opposite impulses.

The depth of expression that fits under the umbrella of tap often is beyond the comprehension of most Americans, although they are won over by its entertainment qualities. A good tap dancer can “tell a story” with sound, rhythm and movement, much as a jazz musician crafts a solo with a beginning, middle and an end. The rhythmic sophistication found in tap is unique and unsurpassed in human terpsichore. Yet within the rarefied strata of “formal” dance is a boneheaded ignorance, personified by a “modern” dancer who denigrated tap to me because “It doesn’t use the whole body.”

San Francisco dancer and tap activist Rusty R. Frank has pieced together a history of tap dance through her interviews with 30 different black and white tappers of different ages, styles, regions and performing traditions. Frank precedes each performer’s oral testimony with her own analysis of the particular circumstances that each dancer’s art was forged in.

Some are world-famous celebrities, stars of motion pictures like Ruby Keeler, Shirley Temple, Ann Miller, Donald O’Connor and Hermes Pan. Some worked in “B” movies or had limited film exposure: Steve Condos, Vilma Ebsen, Jane Withers, Fred Kelly (Gene’s brother), Gene Nelson, George Murphy and Peggy Ryan. Some represent the royalty of black show business: the Nicholas Brothers, Peg Leg Bates, Warren Berry of the Berry Brothers, the Step Brothers and Cholly Atkins. Some are celebrated only by tap dancers: Bunny Briggs, Paul Draper, Ralph Brown, Jimmy Slyde, Willie Covan, Leonard Reed, Eddie Brown and Brenda Buffalino. Some are near-anonymous dancers with regional careers who survived rather than flourished: Jeni LeGon, LaVaughn Robinson and Frances Neely.

Frank’s impetus for writing this book was the death of her mentor, dancer/choreographer Louis DaPron. DaPron’s passing in 1987 meant a lifetime of knowledge and stories lost to the ether. Frank was determined to document what she could of the remaining tap masters.

Time was critical, as three of Frank’s subjects (Condos, Covan and Pan) have passed away since their interviews. A more accurate subtitle for this book would have been “a cross section of remaining tap masters.” Tap’s greatest stars would have included Robinson, John Bubbles, Fred Astaire, Baby Lawrence and Teddy Hale, all of whom are gone.

The late scholar Marshall Stearns and his wife Jean wrote the groundbreaking study of black American vernacular dance, “Jazz Dance” (Schirmer), in 1964. Frank’s book is the first to effectively build upon that work. To her credit, she gives near-equal emphasis to white tap, which, of course, drew on black innovations as well as European traditions. The two forms were often quite different in origin and intent: Paul Draper tapping to a Handel minuet is a long distance from LaVaughn Robinson trying to vanquish his competition in a street-corner challenge.

White dancers usually took formal lessons in studios. Blacks, seldom able to afford lessons, watched and duplicated steps or invented their own. There were exceptions, like chorine-turned-feature tapper Nealy, who had the benefit of a dance school. Philadelphian Condos, part of the Condos Brothers, exchanged with and was respected by black dancers. He used jazz as his sextant, and musicians as his muse.

Frank selected a varied group of different kinds of dancers to fill out her panorama. Keeler was essentially a hoofer, while the one-legged Bates had to develop a style based on his handicap. Berry was an acrobat whose act did very little tapping, unlike song-and-dance man-turned-politician Murphy. Briggs is a wondrous, carefree improviser, while Technicolor queen Ann Miller danced to set pieces. Eddie Brown is a close-to-the-ground rhythm tapper, and flash genius Nicholas often flew through the air.

Throughout these pages--profusely illustrated with vintage photos--secondary portraits of some of the great dancers emerge. The two dominant figures are Bill Robinson and Fred Astaire. Both were universally admired and academies of style unto themselves. Each had a mania for perfection. Robinson’s attention to sound (he danced in wooden-soled shoes) and radiant presence made simple maneuvers luminous. Astaire’s precision and invention encompassed many disciplines, but he was based in tap. Shirley Temple gives a detailed account of her apprenticeship with her “Uncle Billy,” who treated her as a professional and an equal. Choreographer Pan relates the origins of some of Astaire’s most imaginative film sequences.

It’s unfortunate that the book doesn’t give equal emphasis to such latter-day masters as John Bubbles, Baby Lawrence and Teddy Hale. Bubbles (Einstein to Robinson’s Isaac Newton) took tap off its toes and incorporated the heel to give the dance a new dimension. Lawrence and Hale based their fluent improvisations on bebop. Also absent are accounts of tap legends who never appeared on film, such as Groundhog, Foster Johnson or Leon Collins. Frank’s subjects surely could have shed light on these dancers.

Frank begins with Willie Govan, who worked as a child at the turn of the century in minstrel shows. She ends with Buffalino, a young woman who struggled to adapt tap to the rhythms and time signatures of modern jazz in the early ‘50s. Buffalino’s chapter is a fitting conclusion. She’s an influential teacher and a major force in the tap revival of the last 20 years.

Frank includes three useful and mostly accurate appendices. Along with a glossary of tap steps, she compiles a directory of important tap dancers and acts.

This is an often wonderful book that belongs on the shelf of anyone who cares about American culture.