The Nicholas Brothers: Fayard and Harold Nicholas

The Nicholas Brothers: Fayard and Harold Nicholas

The Nicholas Brothers, Fayard and Harold Nicholas were a talented team of tap dancing brothers who are still now often said to have been the two greatest tap dancers to have ever lived. The oldest brother Fayard Antonio Nicholas was born October 20, 1914 in Mobile Alabama. Harold Lloyd Nicholas, the younger one, was born March 17, 1921 in Winston Salem North Carolina. However being born in the relatively south, the two brothers grew up in Philadelphia. They were the sons of musicians who played with their band at the old Standard Theater. Their mother played the piano and their father played the drums.

The two brothers had basically been born into show biz. At the age of three, Fayard was always seated in the front row while his parents worked, and by the time he was ten, he had grew up seeing most of the great black Vaudeville acts, mainly the dancers, including the talented, notable Bill Robinson. He was completely fascinated by them and imitated their acrobatics while Harold watched and imitated Fayard until he was able to dance too. Fayard and Harold had no formal dance training. Born into a show business family, the Nicholas Brothers had established their natural talents early on.  Their parents were musicians and led the orchestra at the Standard Theater in Philadelphia.  In 1932, the same year they made their first film, "Pie, Pie, Blackbird", with Eubie Blake, they opened at the Cotton Club, Harold was 11 and Fayard was 18 at the time. They were the only African American entertainers there allowed to mingle with white patrons.

They astonished their white audiences just as much as the residents of Harlem, slipping into their series of spins, twists, flips, and tap dancing to the jazz tempos of "Bugle Call Rag". It was as if Fayard and his still younger brother had gone dance-crazy and acrobatic. Their exhilarating hybrid of tap, ballet and acrobatic dancing, mostly called ‘flash dancing,’ meant no...