Leonard Reed

Leonard Reed (January 7, 1907 in Lightning Creek, Oklahoma – April 5, 2004 in West Covina, California) was an American tap dancer, co-creator with his partner, Willie Bryant, of the famous Shim Sham Shimmy (Goofus) tap dance routine.

Born in Lightning Creek, Oklahoma, Reed was a mix of black, white and Choctaw. His mother died of pneumonia when he was two, and he never knew his father. He was raised by his great-grandmother until he was 11, when he was placed in a foster home in Kansas City, Missouri.

He was soon running with the wrong crowd, and at the age of 13 was threatened with a four-year stretch in reform school for buying alcohol under-age. However, the headmaster of his high school, Hugh Oliver Cook, knew that Leonard was being habitually assaulted by the guardian of the foster home, and offered to adopt him if he were not jailed.

By aged 15, Leonard had a weekend job selling popcorn at a theater in Kansas City. The Charleston dance craze was sweeping the United States, and he learned how to dance it by copying the performers on stage. Soon Reed was good enough to win local Charleston contests and spent the summer of 1922 as the barker for a black "tent show", or traveling revue. He began to work for the likes of Travis Tucker in his holidays and then, at aged 18, while in New York visiting his prospective university, Cornell, entered and won a Charleston competition for whites. The victory proved to be his passport to the white theaters as well. He attended Cornell University, but after winning another Charleston contest on a bet, he left school to start his dancing career.

He began in entertainment as a specialist Charleston dancer, doing three-minute slots in the shows that toured the black theater circuits of the South and Mid-West. He learned to tap by watching other performers, and while appearing in a revue called "Hits and Bits" in 1922, he was forced to parade his new skills when its star, Travis Tucker, was found to be too drunk to appear. Reed was 15. Soon he was a regular visitor to the Hoofers Club, on 7th Avenue in Harlem, where dancers such as Bill Robinson traded steps and styles with all- comers. Reed started working for the Whitman Sisters, who were acknowledged to have the best black revue, and formed a partnership with the similarly light-skinned Willie Bryant: "Reed & Bryant - Brains as well as Feet".

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