Peg Leg Bates
| Peg Leg Bates | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Clayton Bates October 11, 1907 Fountain Inn, South Carolina |
| Died | December 8, 1998 (aged 91) Fountain Inn, South Carolina |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Tap dancer |
| Awards | Order of the Palmetto |
Clayton "Peg Leg" Bates (October 11, 1907 – December 8, 1998) was an African American entertainer from Fountain Inn, South Carolina, United States.
Peg Leg Bates was born Clayton Bates on October 10, 1907 in Fountain Inn, South Carolina. His mother was a sharecropper. By the age of 5, Bates was dancing on the streets of Fountain Inn for pennies and nickels; he lost a leg at the age of 12 in a cotton gin accident. His uncle, Wit, made his crude first "peg leg" after returning home from World War I and finding his nephew leg-less. Bates subsequently taught himself to tap dance with a wooden peg leg. By the time he was 15, Bates was again adept enough at dancing to enter amateur talent shows, working his way up to employment with a performers' circuit which supplied entertainers to African-American theaters in the US.
At 20, Bates was dancing on Broadway. In the early 1940s, at the Paradise Club in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Bates' "Jet Plane" finale, in which he leaped over the stage, landed on his wooden leg, and then executed a series of backward hops accompanied by trumpet blasts from the band, saw his leg puncture the wooden stage floor. It took half an hour to pull him out. After that, the stage floor was reinforced with metal sheeting. Bates performed on The Ed Sullivan Show 22 times, and had two command performances before the King & Queen of England in 1936 and then again in 1938. During a USO hospital tour, he partnered with vaudeville tap dancer Dixie Roberts, who said "he danced better with one leg than anyone else could with two." He was part of the first Louis Armstrong tour of Britain in the mid 1950s.
He owned and operated the Peg Leg Bates Country Club in Kerhonkson, New York, from 1951 to 1987, along with his wife Alice E. Bates. This made Bates the first black resort owner in Ulster County in the Catskill Mountains, the famous Borscht Belt of Jewish resorts, hotels, and bungalow colonies. Bates began with four rooms at his country club resort; by 1985, there were 110 units for guests. He leased the resort in 1989, due to the death of his wife in 1987.
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