| interfered
with Joe’s staging or supervision of the contest.
The great success of the evening
was likely due in part to Joe’s charisma and
routines not unlike Ray Bolger’s limber, ‘rubber-legged’
style. The spontaneity of his vocal delivery sounding
like a prizefighter announcer while emceeing the
show made the show the overwhelming success it was
week after week.Both a loving father and husband,
Joe was a straight-laced guy and one of the nicest
people in the dance business.
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Always
dressed in the best of taste, here was a kind-hearted
man who could look you in the eye and would
lend you a dime if he thought that you needed
it. Joe was a member of New York’s Friars
Club where he often served as host, standing
alongside stars such as comedians Alan King
and Joey Bishop and journalist Walter Winchell,
who once referred to Joe as “the best
Lindy Hopper in America” in his syndicated
column.
While
never publicly accredited with its inception,
Joe
anticipated
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the
Salsa
by decades by changing the basic pattern of the
mambo step from two to one. Although this alteration
of rhythm, achieved by stepping forward on the downbeat
is common today, diehards of dancing “on two”
in Joe’s time frowned upon his innovation.
Joe taught the downbeat “on one” mainly
due to the fact that the mambo is one of the hardest
dances to teach correctly. Many dance teachers followed
his method of teaching the mambo since it was the
easiest way for pupils to learn the dance.
Despite not having received recognition as its creator,
Joe was arguably the forefather of the dance called
“salsa”.
Since Lindy Hoppers accent the downbeat on the first
count, it is not surprising that Joe found the count
of one appropriate for his way of doing the mambo.
Joe affirmed that it was the mambo done on a different
beat, not a different dance as thought as being
today.
Frank Manning, one the most famous of the Harlem
Lindy Hoppers and a fixture at the Savoy, said of
Joe: “for a white guy `he’s the top,
he’s the man’.”
Staid by comparison to the Savoy was the Roseland
Ballroom that held an annual multidivisional dance
contest and was where Joe Piro was crowned best
dancer of 1947 in both Lindy Hop and Peabody categories.
“Roseland” (as it was and is alternately
known) continues to stand today at 52nd Street west
of Broadway albeit not as a dance palace but mainly
a pop/rock concert hall.
Around the time of his victory at the Harvest Moon
Ball, Joe began earning recognition not only in
the New York metropolitan area but in the suburban
resort area of the Catskill Mountains. So impressed
with his abilities as a performer and instructor,
the Windsor Hotel in the horse-racing town of Monticello
built Joe a lavish dance studio for his holding
his rehearsals and teaching hotel guests.I think
much of Joe’s appeal had to do with the air
of sophistication he lent to everything he did.
His great natural elegance was as evident whether
getting down with the worldliness of mambo or exuberance
of the Lindy Hop and elegance of the Fox Trot, both
of which fit to the same music.
The professional dance exhibition that preceded
the Wednesday night mambo contest at the Palladium
was also staged once a week at the Windsor hotel
where it was called “Mambomania”.
Once a week, Joe exported the Palladium’s
arsenal of dancers to the Windsor’s showroom
where they played to a house packed to `Standing
Room Only’ capacity.
Many of those in regular evening attendance were
unescorted women. Nicknamed “Bungalow Bunnies”
for the local guest cottages they inhabited, these
were ladies typically left on their own when their
husbands returned to New York City to run their
respective businesses; those of us witness to the
fraternization between these gals and guys in stag
would smile and among ourselves invoke the old adage:
“while the cat’s away the mice tend
to play.”
Palladium regular Lenny Roberts managed Joe’s
studios in New York and at the Windsor Hotel where
he booked star caliber dance acts. One such duo
was the popular Jimmy and Gloria Vincent who went
on to open for headliners Johnny Mathis and Jackie
Mason.
Jimmy and Gloria’s specialty routine was a
distinctive, uninhibited mambo, highlighted with
lifts and tricks borrowed from the adagio.
In those early days, nightclubs and dancehalls never
used pre-recorded music as is often done now with
compact discs or reel-to-reel tape.
Bands that played from charted arrangements would
not allow it and besides, their unions always backed
them up.
By the early 1950’s, with the advent of TV
as a predominant force in American life, Joe found
a whole new enterprise. He made guest appearances
on The “Tonight Show” (with original
host Steve Allen), Arthur Murray’s Dance Party
and many others.
After the Palladium closed in 1966, we still met
socially or to have a drink. I occasionally went
to his studios or encountered him at New York’
“in” discotheques where he was hired
to demonstrate the Latest dance trends of the mid-60’s.
Killer Joe Piro died from kidney disease in 1989
at age 68.
Via, Joe - Michael.
© Michael
Terrace &
Peter Settimelli
Monday, 06-Sep-2010
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