Owney "The Killer" Madden was a badass and not to be trifled with. In 1910 as an 18-year-old member of the Gopher (pronounced Goofer) gang in Hells Kitchen, he was making about $200 a day "selling" protection to store owners ($5,300+ in 2018 dollars). After serving 9 years of a 20-year sentence for murder (possibly his 5th killing), Madden was released from Sing Sing prison in 1923. He was 32-years-old, scarred by 11-bullet wounds, and penniless. Most of his original gang were either in prison, dead, or working as bootleggers. The most successful was Larry Fay who made his old friend his chief enforcer in a racket set up to gain control of the most profitable cab stands along Broadway. During this period, Madden hired an old friend from the hood to be his personal driver. His name, George Raft. Madden would later bankroll a Hollywood career for him (as he did with Mae West whom he also grew up with and later dated while backing her Broadway Sex show which she wrote and starred in until law enforcement shut it down). 

Madden quickly realized that lots of money could be made because of Prohibition and within months of his release from prison teamed up with gangland partners and began opening nightclubs and speakeasies that sold illegal hootch that he controlled. Harlem's Cotton Club became his most famous and lucrative operation. Originally known as Club Deluxe, it was owned by the first black World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Jack Johnson. Rumor has it that Madden and his boys made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

The Cotton Club soon became the spot for rich white folks (blacks weren't allowed except as performers) looking for excitement,  entertainment and, of course, access to booze. To keep them coming back, Madden made sure to hire the best talent-- especially up-and-comers who were, for the most part, unknown like Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Josephine Baker, and Lena Horne (16-years-old at the time) who would work as cheaply as they were willing to go.

That included the 20-something songwriting team of Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler. Despite coming off a hit record (Get Happy), they took on the job as songwriters for the Club's 1931 revue Rhyth-mania for $50 a week and all the food they could eat. Twenty-something Cab Calloway was chosen to replace Duke Ellington who had gone to Hollywood to make his first movie.

And this is where the Jitterbug! story begins as young black Americans Billy Rhythm and Tharbis Jefferson struggle against all odds in a Jim Crow world made all that more dangerous by working for the mob. They fall in love and through sheer perseverance and a little faith in God, overcome death threats and bloodshed by dancing unknowingly-- but triumphantly-- around the spinning center of the Jazz Universe, a black hole named Owney Madden. 

Here's the REAL Dr. Don Shirley in rare 2001 concert footage performing George Gershwin's The Man I Love. He's played by Mahershala Ali in the movie "Green Book" with Viggo Mortensen as his driver Tony Lip.  His choice of music reminds us of one of Jitterbug's themes: how the Depression and Prohibition threw people of all colors and faiths together to make musical magic and magical dance. In the dancical. two young Jewish songwriters, Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler, are writing hit songs for the mob-ran Cotton Club's new 1931 revue, Rhyth-mania. Cab Calloway and his Orchestra are performing them with black performers. We also use Gershwin's Liza, the go-to number used by Chick Webb to "cut" any band that had the temerity to challenge his Savoy Ballroom house band in a Battle of the Bands. Only in America. 

So, going by these stats compiled into this Infographic by Ken Davenport of The Producer's Perspective, Jitterbug! has the potential for greatness by sharing 7 of the following attributes of the 20 Top Broadway Musicals:

1. 40% have only one word as the title. Yes, Jitterbug! fits a marquee better than its original title: Once Upon A Time in Harlem. And that exclamation point can't hurt either.
2. 40% are American.
3. 35% are Period.
4. 8 are based on movies (Jitterbug! is based on a screenplay).
5. 4 have books attached (the Jitterbug! textbook comes with free Educator Manuals based on the National Core Arts Standards in Music (Composition and Ensemble strands), Dance, Theatre, Literature, and History/Social Studies) with sections on Empathy.  There is also a truncated Radio Version available (Once Upon A Time In Harlem). 
6. 3 are "Jukebox Musicals," ie, the music isn't original to the libretto but is harvested from hit songs assembled to tell the story. Jitterbug! uses 17 from The Great American Songbook, ranging from The Buck Dancer's Lament (1907) to Ornette Coleman's The Artist in America (1972) with all Performance Rights secured. That said, Jitterbug! differs from a jukebox musical in that it's a realistic drama first. None of the main characters break out into song but they are required to dance really, really good. Hence the term coined by Jazz Dorsey, Dramaturg and Founder of the African American Playwrights Exchange (AAPEX), to describe this drama with music and dance: Dancical.
7. Only 1 is original (unless Jitterbug! gets made into a movie first).

Getting Julie Taymor or any of those other directors might be a stretch but finding a tap dancing dog that can jitterbug too may be equally difficult. We'll see.

The Jitterbug, the Lindy, and the vernacular jazz dance steps that happen during the dances' break, are still alive, They're celebrated around the world with annual dance contests. There's even a swing dance camp in Herräng Sweden that's been around for 32-years and is booked solid for five weeks every summer. So, yes, Virginia, there is an audience for Jitterbug! and it's very big.

And wait till they get a load at that climatic Jitterbug! dance contest scene at the Savoy, little girl. They-- all audiences, even those who know little to nothing about the music and its dances-- will never be the same. 

*FB stats for this video.

Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. In his acceptance speech, he famously uses dance as a metaphor to describe our struggle as a species to find meaning in a harsh and unforgiving world.

“There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance…”

Many historians agree that the "enchanted place" he eludes to is the Savoy Ballroom where he not only became a legendary dancer as a young man but credits those years as some of the happiest in his life.

How he got there begins in Chile where he just couldn't dance despite his best efforts. Academic research attributes this to his profound shyness, now reexamined by some as "social anxiety disorder." Simply put, he was a lonely failure with women. Desperate, he traveled at considerable expense in 1931 to Harlem to learn how to dance at the most famous dance school in the world: the Savoy Ballroom (where the Jitterbug! climax takes place). At that time the Lindy Hop was all the rage. By the time he left Harlem a few years later, Neruda had mastered the Jitterbug and its air-steps, those jiu jitsu moves that were sending women into low earth orbit. He was so good it's reported Herbert White, founder of a slew of Lindy dance troupes-- the most famous being his eponymous Whitey's Lindy Hoppers which appeared in 1941's Hellzapoppin'-- wanted to add Neruda to one of them but the future Nobel Prize winner declined, citing his need to focus on his writing. When he accepted a Chilean diplomatic post in Barcelona a few years later, he brought the Lindy and the Jitterbug with him and is credited for establishing the first swing dance school in Spain at the height of the Spanish Civil War. Picasso and Hemingway were some of his first students.

In 1962 one of his poems was used by The Contours in their hit record, "Do You Love Me?"

Now you too can-- without any dance talent at all!-- dance like Marquese Scott! 

Marquese Scott is a poppin'-lockin' dancer of the highest order that inspires moves for the breakaway in Jitterbug!'s climatic dance contest at the Savoy Ballroom (we ask choreographers to reach into the future for dance steps to blow the minds of the jaded Savoy regulars to win the contest). We've posted about him earlier. Now UC Berkeley has developed software that can transfer videos of one person to another person in a second video. In the demonstration above, Scott is the "Source Subject."  But every dancer on video is up for grabs.

What does all of this mean? In a virtual world, everything is possible. At the touch of a button, you're a talented dancer, singer, or fighter. Muhammad Ali has nothing on you. Shed those pounds, break those records, no one has nothing on you. At least for that virtual magical moment where you can be anyone for as long as you want.