“There’s always been an undercurrent of hypocrisy in Chicago, and the entertainment industry is just one facet of that hypocrisy,” says Julian Swain. The veteran hoofer and choreographer continues, “Chicago is a very ghettoized place, but blacks here are the only ethnic group that has been ghettoized against its wishes. The clubs here were not segregated by law, as they were in other parts of the country, but they were segregated by a sort of unspoken agreement.”
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Unlike the all-white-audience, all-black-entertainers joints of the period, the Club De Lisa wasn’t segregated. Not exactly. “Black people did go there,” Swain says. “And white people did too. But for some strange reason white people came more toward the beginning of the week, and on Friday and Saturday the crowd was pretty much all black. The segregation was by choice–the white clientele would choose to come when they knew there wouldn’t be many blacks there.”
While at the De Lisa, Swain and two other dancers formed a trio called the Beige Beaux, dancing to popular jazz tunes by the likes of Dizzy Gillespie. Duke Ellington spotted them performing at the Regal and signed them to appear in his touring show. (Later he even wrote a concerto especially for them, “Monologue, Duet, and Threesome.”)
Swain likens the touring he did to slavery. “I remember we did 19 shows in one day,” he says. “The atmosphere was very much one of slave labor, because people would be dancing until their feet had swelled up so big that they couldn’t get their feet into their shoes anymore. And it was such a very isolated situation, in that you were always traveling by train, truck, and plane from spring until Halloween. You’d lay in your berth and look at this whole line of train cars that wound through the mountains, and you wouldnt know what city you were in anymore.”
Swain will perform with Julian Swain and Friends on Tuesday, February 15, at 6 at the Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton. Admission is $15. On Saturday, February 19, at 11 AM Swain will be interviewed by critic Effie Mihopoulos, also at the Newberry. Free. Reservations for the performance can be made by calling 943-9090, ext. 310.
