James Titus Godbolt, known professionally as Jimmy Slyde and also as the "King of Slides", was an American tap dancer, especially famous for his innovative tap style mixed with jazz. Slyde was a popular rhythm tap dancer in America in the mid-20th century, when he performed on the nightclub and burlesque circuits. He was also popular in Europe and lived in Paris for a brief period of his life. Slyde appeared in several musicals and shows in the 1980s, and he received numerous awards for his talent. He was known for his signature move, the slide.
Early life
Godbolt was born in Atlanta and moved to Boston at the age of three. As a child, his mother encouraged him to play the violin, and he enrolled at the Boston Conservatory of Music to advance as a violinist. However, the Conservatory was across the street from Stanley Brown's dance studio, which he would visit to watch great tap dancers such as Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, John W. Bubbles, Charles "Honi" Coles, and Derby Wilson. At the age of twelve, Godbolt quit violin lessons at the Conservatory and began tap lessons at Brown's studio with his mother's blessing. At the studio, he studied under Brown himself and a student teacher, Eddie "Schoolboy" Ford, who taught Godbolt the slide. Godbolt connected with another dancer known for slides, Jimmy "Sir Slyde" Mitchell, and they put together an act to take on the road.
Career
In the 1940s Mitchell and Godbolt started performing at local clubs and on the burlesque circuit calling themselves the Slyde Brothers. This in turn caused Godbolt to be renamed forevermore, Jimmy "Slyde". Their acts included action tricks similar to those the Nicholas Brothers performed; however, they used slides as their trademark move. One dance critic, Sally Sommer, explained his slides as such, "He's upstage left and sliding downstage right as fast and smooth as a skier, arms held out to the side, head tilted. He stops the cascade by banking backward, slips into a fast flurry of taps, working quick and low to the floor and ends the phrase by pulling up high and flashing off a triple turn." The act was such a hit, they received invitations to go on the road to perform with big band names of the time, including Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Barry Harris. Their tapping was part of the bands' songs where they would create the music for many measures and then the band would come back in, and they would trade offback and forth like that the entire act. Unfortunately, the time period in which Slyde's talent emerged was disagreeable, as he became popular in the 1950s when rock and roll was taking the stage and stealing American interest away from big band music with tap acts. He attempted to find work in other cities including San Francisco, Chicago, and Hollywood on the burlesque and nightclub circuits as well as in movies, but work had dried up in America. He found a temporary job working as a choreographer for the tap dancers the Crosby Brothers in the 1960s, but in 1966 Slyde was invited to perform at the Berlin Jazz Festival in Europe. He attended with Baby Laurence, James Buster Brown, and Chuck Green, and the crowd received them with excitement and positive praise including regarding them as "Harlem's All-Star Dancers". He moved to Paris in the 1970s, where he worked intensively with Sarah Petronio. Petronio nurtured the expatriated Slyde out from self-imposed retirement in France, back into a productive and creative fulfillment and became his dancing partner in Tap and Jazz concerts "It's About Time", accompanied by some of the Europe's finest jazz musicians. After living, teaching, and performing in Paris, he appeared in the production Black and Blue, which was later reset in New York on Broadway in 1989, in which he also performed. He was nominated for a Tony award for this performance and from then on he felt the tap revival, which led him to stay in the United States and thrive much like during his early career. Throughout his revival and the resurgence of tap in America, Slyde performed in The Cotton Club, Motown Returns to the Apollo, Round Midnight, and Tap, with Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis Jr., in 1989. In the 1990s, Slyde started holding jam sessions every week at a jazz nightclub in New York called La Cave. This became an education-based practice where up-and-coming tappers would come and improvise, while older and experienced tappers would mentor them. Among the mentored included dancers such as Savion Glover, Van Porter, Ira Bernstein, and Roxane Butterfly.
Slyde died on May 16, 2008, at the age of 80 in his home in Hanson, Massachusetts. He was known for being a great rhythm tapper who had impeccable musicality, perfect timing, and slides that made it appear is if he could glide across the floor effortlessly. His slides were essential to his musicality "The slides took on many parts of speech, from little connective scoots to long, stage-traversing slalom runs. Slides allowed him to tease the beat, delaying then catching up. They were silences, visually exciting rests, but they also functioned as long notes, as Slyde's physical dynamics, speeding and slowing, suggested crescendos and diminuendos." He was usually the last dancer to perform because he would top any dancer who rivaled him. However, Slyde was a humble man happy to be part of the tap community, who brought a sound-oriented emphasis to tap and called it "a translating thing". The younger generation gained knowledge from him and regarded him as one of the greats including Savion Glover who stated he was "the Godfather of tap" and "one of the true masters of the art form".
