PBA Galleries

[Sheet Music] Benny Goodman, Chick Webb and Edgar Sampson. Lyrics by Andy Razaf. Stompin’ At The Savoy / A Modern Piano Solo (Robbins Music Corp., NY, c. 1936) Probable First printing with Art Deco cover. 4pp.; and "Dance-Drunk Harlem", Pp. 26-31 in complete April 5, 1938 issue of "Pic" Magazine. With 21 striking photographs of Black (and some white) dancers doing incredible steps at the Ballroom, one of the most famous Jazz venues in Depression America.

The Savoy’s fame was owing in large part to the 1936 music, a Jazz classic, as it was largely ignored by the white media. Aside from a somewhat racist Life magazine article, the “Pic” piece was one of the very few photographic features about the Savoy published in the 1930s. Opened in Harlem during the Roaring Twenties by a Jewish owner and Black manager, the Savoy was one of the first racially-integrated night spots in the country, attracting nearly 700,000 visitors a year, hosting 250 name bands on two bandstands with continuous all-night live music  by such future stars as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, and launching a succession of pop culture dance fads from boogie-woogie and swing to the Lindy Hop, Jitterbug Hive, Shimmy and Mambo.