MJ was a music/dance legend on his own, but the true legends came years before MJ was born!


I had the once-in-a-lifetime honor of serving the Nicholas Brothers vodka tonics one night while I was working as a cocktail waitress in a jazz club in Emeryville (Kimball's East).

The two mini studs were there in the Bay Area at the time (the late 90s) for a special live show called "Tap Summit". The highlight of that show was the awesome moment when a clip of their now-famous tap routine from "Stormy Weather" played on a large screen on the stage...and the Brothers themselves entered, performing the same routine live and in person right in front of the clip...even though at the time they were in their 70s! Take that, MJ! (Sorry!)

Another highlight of my night serving cocktails was getting to see Sandman Sims swing dancing to the Illinois Jacquet Big Band!

Later in life, I met the surviving Nicholas brother, Fayard, giving a talk at Santa Monica City College. And got a copy of "Stormy Weather" signed!


Fayard signing a dancer's shoe on the day

What really got the hair on my arms standing on end when I first saw the Nicholas Brothers doing in "Stormy Weather" was how intricately their tap beats become part of the jazz rhythm of that song. It's a rhythm that just can't be learned and it's sheer magic. As my friend Adrian Demain had to explain to me one day in Oceanside: "There's no way to write this kind of rhythm on a music score. The composer just writes "swing time". And you either have it or you don't!"

Said Fayard once about break dancing down the stairs in this sequence: "We never rehearsed it." Yet this clip should explain why I literally started to cry sitting in a dark theater in Santa Monica in 2002 watching the attempts at "dancing and singing" in the so-called musical "Chicago". All I could think at the time was "Well, that's it. It's officially over."

Hep hep! There will never be anything like them!