Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - Leonard Harper

Leonard Harper and the Harperettes 

image source: http://blackamericaweb.com/2014/02/18/little-known-black-history-fact-leonard-harper-and-the-harperettes/

To continue the series on the Harlem Renaissance, today we will look at the producer Leonard Harper.

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From Wikipedia:

Leonard Harper was a producer/stager/choreographer in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s born on April 9, 1899 in Birmingham, Alabama

Leonard Harper's works spanned the worlds of Vaudeville, Cabaret, Burlesque and Broadway musical comedy. As a dancer, choreographer and studio owner, he coached many of the country’s leading performers, including Ruby Keller, Fred Astaire and Adele Astaire, and the Marx Brothers.

His father, William Harper, was a performer. Leonard Harper started dancing as a child to attract a crowd on a medicine show wagon, traveling with the show throughout the South. In 1915, Harper first came to New York City, but quickly moved to Chicago and began choreographing and performing dance acts with Osceola Blanks of the Blanks Sisters, whom he married in 1923.

Leonard Harper and Osceola Blanks performed in his first big revue, Plantation Days when it opening at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem in 1922-1923, and began producing floor shows in Harlem and New York thereafter.

In 1923-1924, Leonard offered the Duke Ellington orchestra the house band position at the speakeasies, Connie’s Inn in Harlem and the Kentucky Club in Times Square, where we has producing shows, and the Duke Ellington orchestra played as the house band at the Kentucky Club for the next for years.

By 1925, Leonard owned a Times Square dance studio where black dancers taught white performers black dances.

As a nightclub and Broadway producer, he counted Billie Holiday, Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Bill Robinson and Count Basie among his colleagues. He introduced Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway to New York show business, and worked with Mae West, Josephine Baker, Lena Horne, Fats Waller and Eubie Blake.

Leonard Harper was part of the transition team when the Deluxe Cabaret was turned into the Cotton Club, producing two of its first revues during its opening.

Leonard Harper’s biggest milestone on the Great White Way was his staging of the Broadway hit “Hot Chocolates”, which made the songs “Black and Blue” and “Ain’t Misbehavin” classic Broadway show tunes.

Mr. Harper was one of the leading figures who transformed Harlem into a cultural center during the 1920s. His nightclub productions took place at Connie’s Inn, the Lafayette Theatre (Harlem) at the opening of the new Apollo Theatre, and at other theaters in New York.

Leonard Harper died in Harlem, NY, on Thursday February 4th, 1943.