To-day I finished reading Frankie Manning’s autobiography, Frankie Manning: Ambassador of Lindy Hop. This was such a gripping book that I finished it in two nights—I borrowed it on a whim from the Wednesday Night Hop closet on Wednesday. Having not read a single book yet this year, I surprised myself with the alacrity with which I devoured this one. From his opening sentence (“Man!”), Frankie Manning’s storytelling voice was just that riveting.

He relayed his life story chronologically and episodically, in such an entertaining way that I imagined him sitting down with someone (Cynthia R. Millman, the other author credited?) who would just say, “Hey Frankie, tell me another story,” night after night, beers dotting the counter, and then transcribe his speech, word for word, and arrange it all into a book. And what a book, brimming with jive, bursting with raw dynamism. From early days as a youngin discovering dance from his mother (“You’re too stiff!”) to the first aerials at the Savoy, from a touring career with Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers to a stint in the Army, from settling down in the Post Office to being convinced to spearhead the Lindy hop revival in the 1980s, he’s always had the jive.

I guess one question that’s lingered unresolved over my head for a while is “What happened to Lindy hop before it came back?” My understanding was that it was born out of Harlem in the 1920s, took the country by storm in the 1930s and ’40s, and then kinda faded away. (And then Erin Stevens et al. found Al Minns in retirement in 1982 and said “Teach us the Lindy hop,” and Al Minns passed away a couple years later, but not before saying, “Here’s Frankie Manning’s address, go find him,” and then Frankie got a call, asking “Is this Frankie Manning the dancer?” and he said, “No, this is Frankie Manning the postal worker,” and Erin Stevens said, “But you were a dancer?” and Frankie was like, “You know what, sure,” and thus was born the swing resurgence of the 1980s and ’90s, which continues on to this day.) But what happened in the intervening years? What happened after the war? Was there much Lindy hop at all in, say, the 1960s and ’70s?

Frankie’s autobiography doesn’t give me a complete answer, mostly because Frankie himself was a postal worker during that fallow time. But as for what happened after the war, he did lead a small performance group, the Congaroos, with a few of his old Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers mates, until 1954. But times were changing, danceable pre-war swing had been supplanted by undanceable post-war bebop, and partner dancing was fading out in favour of a lot of new teenage dance crazes that didn’t involve touching anyone else—the Twist, the Watusi, the mashed potato, the Funky Chicken. Lindy hop and its sistren were passé, so two decades ago, virtually abandoned in media portrayal (at least among white people, I still don’t know if black people kept it up or moved on). Why did the resurgence come in the 1980s and not ten years earlier or later? I still don’t know, and Frankie’s not too concerned with the timing of that either. He doesn’t write history, he just makes it.

One postscript. February is traditionally Black History Month, that time of year where we look back and examine the rich cultural legacy of black people in America, set against the racial injustices they had to bear to get here. Frankie doesn’t shy away from relating the segregation and racism and prejudice that inevitably coloured his experiences growing up as a black dancer in the early twentieth century, but neither does he turn it into a soapbox or a cudgel of any sort—that’s just not his jive. There’s a lot of preachy and activist-y content going on out there, and that’s fine, but in all honesty Frankie Manning has done more for Black History Month in the playbook of my attention than all the preachers and activists ever did. Perhaps they would do well to take a leaf out of Frankie Manning’s book.