Sportin’ Life: John W. Bubbles, an American Classic
by Brian Harker. Oxford University Press, 314 pp., $34.95
In a scene from the otherwise unremarkable 1937 Warner Brothers musical Varsity Show, the star, Dick Powell, finds some fraternity boys shirking their studies by watching the school’s Black janitor dance in the boiler room. Powell shoos them off, then tells the janitor, whom he calls “Bubbles,” to show him “that step you were teaching the kids.” Bubbles obliges—not with one step, but a slew of them. His swiveling, crossing feet scrape coal dust on the floor with the rhythmic phrasing of a great jazz drummer playing brushes. Here, and in the minute of dance brilliance before Powell’s entrance, Bubbles’s taps have the sound of surprise—hesitating, then pouncing in dense, crunchy clusters—without losing…
