Lionel Hampton

Performance featuring the jazz vibraphonist and his orchestra, filmed for the Belgian television program, Lionel Hampton at the opera.

The golden age of tap dancing spanned the first half of the twentieth century, but by the 1950s, the form fell to the likes of rock 'n' roll and modern dance. In 1979, NO MAPS ON MY TAPS aired on television outlets across the world, inspiring a new generation of dancers to slip on their shoes and tap away. Featuring performances by Lionel Hampton, Bunny Briggs, Chuck Green, and Howard “Sandman” Sims, director Nierenberg’s love for the dancers...

In the mid 1930s, as the Great Depression refuses to lift, Benny Goodman finds himself hailed as the "King of Swing" and becomes the first white bandleader to hire black musicians. He has a host or rivals among them, Chick Webb, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmie Lunceford, Glen Miller and Artie Shaw. Louis Armstrong heads a big band of his own, while Duke Ellington continues his independent course, but great black artists still can't eat or sleep in many of the...