24 Facts About Howard Sims

Howard "Sandman" Sims was an African-American tap dancer who began his career in vaudeville.

Howard Sims was skilled in a style of dancing that he performed in a wooden sandbox of his own construction, and acquired his nickname from the sand he sprinkled to alter and amplify the sound of his dance steps.

Howard Sims was involved in New York City's Hoofers Club, a venue primarily for black tap dancers.

Howard Sims was featured in the 1989 dance film Tap, along with Sammy Davis Jr.

Howard Sims appeared in a 1990 episode of The Cosby Show as Rudy's tap dancing teacher, facing off against Cliff in a good-natured tap challenge.

Howard Sims was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas, on January 24,1917, one of 12 children.

Howard Sims attributed some of his early love for tap dancing in particular to his mother, exasperated that he kept wearing out the toes of his shoes, putting steel taps on the shoes.

At the age of 14, peeping in the windows of a dance school got Howard Sims arrested for loitering, but he was able to dance his way to freedom, convincing a judge that his reason for being on that street was legitimate.

Howard Sims had noticed that boxing audiences reacted positively to the way he would dance in the rosin box before getting into the ring, and especially to the distinctive sound his dancing made moving the rosin granules around the wooden box.

Howard Sims began to consider dancing as a career alternative.

Howard Sims experimented with several different methods of reproducing the rosin box effect, gluing sandpaper to either his shoes or his dancing mat, but the sandpaper created too much wear on the other surface.

Howard Sims eventually won the Amateur Night competition a record-breaking 25 times, after which a rule was instituted that performers could no longer compete once they had earned four first prizes.

Howard Sims later defined the main difference between tap and hoofing as being that tap focuses on the heel and toe whereas hoofers "use the whole foot".

In 1949, motivated by the death of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Howard Sims became a founding member of the Original Copasetics, another fellowship of tap dancers that became a source of mentor-student relationships and helped bring about the revival of tap in the 1970s and 1980s.

Howard Sims taught footwork to boxing greats Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali.

The late 1960s brought the beginning of a wave of nostalgia for tap, and Howard Sims found his dance skills in demand again.

The crescendo of interest in tap dancing continued, and in 1972, Howard Sims danced in the production Best of the Hoofers at the Orpheum Theatre.

In 1980, a far cry from the tiny venues he had been lucky to play just a few years earlier, Howard Sims performed before a crowd of 2,600 fans at the Lincoln Center during the Newport Jazz Festival.

Later that year, Howard Sims was one of the instructor-performers of the By Word of Foot "teach-in" series, spending a week demonstrating his hoofing techniques for a new generation of tap enthusiasts.

Howard Sims enjoyed that more than performing in front of an audience.

Meanwhile, Harlem's Apollo Theater, where Howard Sims had served for years as Amateur Night's "executioner", had been closed for most of a decade.

In 1986, Howard Sims starred in The Tap Tradition at Symphony Space New York, earning a rave review from The New York Times.

Sandman Howard Sims was the guest star of Late Night with David Letterman on May 14,1987.

Howard Sims was a featured performer at the third annual celebration of National Tap Dance Day on May 30,1993.