In Popular Culture
- Fred Astaire paid tribute to Bill Robinson in the tap routine Bojangles of Harlem from the 1936 film Swing Time. In it, Astaire famously dances to three of his shadows.
- Duke Ellington composed "Bojangles (A Portrait of Bill Robinson)", a set of rhythmic variations as a salute to the great dancer.
- A biography of Bill Robinson by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (Morrow), was published in 1988.
- A made-for-television film entitled Bojangles was released in 2001. The film earned the NAACP Best actor Award for Gregory Hines' performance as Robinson.
- While Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" is often thought to be about Robinson, it was actually inspired by Walker's encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail.
- Arthur Duncan, an exceptional tap dancer in his own right, frequently paid homage to Bill Robinson with the stair routine on The Lawrence Welk Show.
- Is mentioned in the Larry Norman song "Nightmare" from the album So Long Ago the Garden.
- Bojangles is also the name of a franchise fried chicken restaurant chain in the southeastern U.S.
- In the All in the Family episode "Lionel Steps Out" Robinson's dancing with Shirley Temple were referenced.
Read more about this topic: Bill Robinson
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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