From: Erin Stevens, California
When Steven Mitchell and I were on our search for Frankie, I found his home number at the Pasadena Public Library, after seeing his name in an old Life Magazine. When he answered the phone I asked him, 'Are you Frankie Manning the swing dancer?'
He answered by saying, 'No, this is Frankie Manning the Postal Worker.'
'But, didn’t you used to swing dance?' I said.
So we kind of had a funny rapport at the beginning. Eventually, I asked him if he would teach us if we came to New York. He said he wouldn’t do any teaching, but he agreed to meet with us, and that was enough for Steven and I to fly over as fast as we could.
When we finally met he watched us dance, and eventually agreed to teach us. So Frankie came to pick us up in his car, and he drove us out to his apartment. When we got there he said “well, let’s see what you can do.”
Steven and I put in our cassette tape of Sing, Sing, Sing and proceeded to start swinging and doing our aerials on his living room carpet. He immediately popped out the tape and put in Count Basie’s Shiny Stockings and said 'what can you do to this?'
Steven and I didn’t know what to do, so we just said 'Huh?'
It was a whole new way to look at the dance. He didn’t really know how to give us the counts and the steps, but he could give us the feeling that he gave to the dance. That was enough to alter it forever to me. The way I looked at it, the way I danced it, and the way I taught it would be forever changed.
After standing in Frankie’s living room, looking at his photo albums, brochures, pictures on his wall and seeing all the things that he had accomplished, I knew that I was going to dedicate my life to spreading the word of the Lindy Hop. He changed my life that day.
People give us credit for rediscovering Frankie and bringing him out of retirement, but who would have thought that a couple of kids from Pasadena that went to New York in search of Frankie Manning would become what it is today.
He called me after he won his Tony Award to thank me, and that meant a whole lot to me. Sometimes when he and I are at Swing Camp Catalina, we look at each other standing over a sea of dancers moving across the dance floor and say, 'did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine that we would be standing here together looking at this kind of a crowd?' We would just shake our heads at each other and think that there was no way anyone could have ever foreseen that Frankie would be out there again, having this full second life touring, teaching, and performing the Lindy Hop.
It’s remarkable... It’s incredible... It’s wonderful...
It couldn’t have happened to a better person.
Jean Denney is a life long dancer who became serious about vintage swing dancing in 1997; and for twenty months studied with Charlie Wyler in Baltimore, MD. Jim Craniak, a Baltimore area dancer who studied swing dance with Dean Collins once commented that they (Jean & Charlie) "reminded [him] of the dancers from that [vintage swing] era and style." It was during this period that Jean adopted Dean Collin's and Jewel McGowan's Hollywood style of Lindy Hop and added her own unique signature.
As the Neo-Swing movement began to fade between 2000 and 2003, so did interest in Lindy Hop Swing. During this period Cat's Corner was a haven for the few dancers in Kansas City who identified with vintage Lindy Hop Swing and the music that inspired it. Cat's Corner was not a Neo-Swing club, a West or East Coast Swing Club, or a hybrid of all three; it was a bona fide vintage Lindy Hop Swing club hosted by one of the leading vintage Lindy Hop dance couples in the Kansas City region: Ed Schlittenhardt and Jenny Pool.
In the summer of 2003 Michael launched
That same summer in 2003, Michael and Angel started the monthly Kansas City Swing Jam lesson and dance. Originally held the first Friday of every month at Walter's Dance Studio, Swing Jam is now held the first Saturday of every month at the Kansas City Swing Dance Club. Attendance at this swing event ebbs and flows, but when the local lindy hoppers do turn out it makes for a great evening of swing music and dancing.
The first KCLX had a few mishaps. One example being a power failure downtown caused by a water main break. This required a last minute shift in dance locations that were difficult to communicate. But all in all, for a first time national event pulled off by a small independent group of dancers, it was regarded as a success that drew about 80 to 100 dancers from around the country.
Soon afterwards, it was recognized that the incorporated name KCLX, though a fitting title for a Lindy Hop event, was not entirely appropriate for a Lindy Hop organization. To remedy this issue, paperwork was filed and the organization that originally incorporated under the name KCLX became what we now know as the Kansas City Lindy Hop Society (KCLHS).
