Bessie Dudley

When Duke Ellington was finally persuaded to sail the Atlantic in 1933, he stayed awake every night of the two-week trip. When Duke was young, he had read a book about the Titanic, and he was terrified that if he fell asleep, the Olympic might also go down. So he sought the company of a young dancer, Bessie Dudley. Each night they would play cards and talk until dawn, when his fear of icebergs in the night receded.

January 16, 1999, as the music world began its year-long celebration of Ellington's 100th birthday, Bessie Dudley died at her daughter's home in Georgia. She was 88, well loved in Harlem and well remembered from the golden age of musical troupes as the girl who stopped the show with her snake-hips routine. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Bessie ran away from home at 13 to join the traveling Chocolate Box Revue. But life on the road wasn't quite the glamour she envisioned, and at 15 she escaped again by marrying the son of famed vaudevillian, S.H. Dudley, who ran his own revue.

When she was 18, she was hired by choreographer Leonard Harper to dance at Connie's Inn, where the headliner was Tommy (Snake Hips) Tucker. Watching him do the hip shake, and the shimmy she learned his routine, and one night when he was late she did the dance for him. The crowd went wild, and so did Tucker. He had arrived in time to see her get what he considered his applause, and when she came backstage, she said, he gave her a black eye. Connie's Inn responded to that by teaming them up, and soon Dudley was playing the top circuit: Connie's, Smalls Paradise, Alhambra and the Cotton Club. When the legendary Clarence Robinson started producing shows at the newly opened Apollo Theater, he asked her to join his lavish productions. It's said that on Ellington's European trip, Bessie Dudley's dance is what finally broke down the British audiences who wanted only straight jazz with none of the dancing or theatrics.

After her career in entertainment ended she found a job working in a factor in Long Island, New York. She eventually married again and settled down, becoming an active and much respected member of the Harlem community. She also saw Ellington from time to time, and he always told her how much he appreciated her helping him get through that first trip to Europe.

Sources:Daily News (Jan 1999), article by David Hinckley: A Mover and Shaker: The Shimmy Made Bessie Dudley a Star