Jimmy Slyde, who has died aged 80, was a consummate master of the "sliding" interpretation of rhythm tap dancing. That he embarked on professional tap dancing shortly before a sharp decline in its popularity might seem to indicate a dubious sense of timing, but Slyde's exemplary commitment ensured he was around to catch the art form's revival.
Born James Godbolt in Atlanta, Georgia, he moved at the age of two with his family to Boston, Massachusetts. Although he enjoyed his mother's prescribed violin lessons at the New England conservatory, the draw of tap dancing at the Stanley Brown dance studio opposite proved stronger. It all came together there. He got to observe and know tap greats such as Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and John W Bubbles while they rehearsed and taught, and met his future dance partner, Jimmy "Sir Slyde" Mitchell. Having learned what became his characteristic "slide" technique from another teacher at the school, Slyde teamed up with Mitchell to form the Slyde Brothers. It was, confusingly, slightly later that he took the name Jimmy Slyde, but invariably insisted on being called just Slyde.
Devising an eight-minute tap act, the Slyde Brothers played the Boston area and then toured with the best of the remaining big bands, including Count Basie and Duke Ellington. Times were not easy in the 1950s, and they had to dance in all manner of places. "You have to have something to say to be in front of an audience," he once recalled. "I've played saloons, cabaret, and even burlesque theatres which by then were the closest thing to vaudeville where they'd shout, 'bring on the girls', while you're dancing. You have to have an answer, like making the sound of an approaching chorus line, and with high heels on!" As work grew scarce and the act dissolved, he even choreographed for the Crosby Brothers harmony group in the early 1960s.
In 1969 Slyde turned up shortly after Letitia Jay founded the Hoofers. Emulating Harlem's legendary Hoofers Club of the interwar years, it also featured some of its regulars. New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett dismissed Slyde in 1969 as having no individual style, but by 1979 Dance magazine was describing his addition of "elegance to his syncopation" as a contribution to the spectacular impact of the Original Hoofers at the Lincoln Center's 1,000 Years of Jazz. Tours of South America and Europe followed.
Dance historian Sally Sommer points to Slyde's lightning quickness, dexterity and the way that, creating sound patterns, he played "at the edge of balance". Having apparently almost fallen, he would flash an astonished look, and then a sly grin at his audience, having made his recovery.
Paris called in 1973. He visited at a time when his most notable pupil, Sarah Petronio, was developing a vibrant tap culture in the French capital that London could only envy. He returned to the city in 1985 for the original Black and Blue, which celebrated the interwar Parisian culture of dance and music. The veteran dancer Bunny Briggs recalled that Slyde's performance "made you reach down into your bag" - in other words, to dance better. Black and Blue hit Broadway in 1989, with Slyde receiving a Tony nomination, and in 1993 it became a Robert Altman-directed TV film.
Slyde made three movie appearances in the 1980s. He was Jimmy Slide in Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club (1984), and in 1986 he appeared in Bertrand Tavernier's Round Midnight. Three years later came Tap, which turned a new generation on to "laying down iron". Tap greats, led by Sammy Davis Jr, responded to a tap challenge from a troubled but promising newcomer played by Gregory Hines.
Slyde often worked for pianist Barry Harris's jazz gatherings. Nurturing newcomers meant everything to him, especially Dianne Walker, dance captain in Black and Blue and dancer in Tap. In the 1980s and 90s, working with Lon Chaney, he mentored the Wednesday tapjams at La Cave on Manhattan's lower east side. There, old and new dancers tapped in succession and were encouraged to perform. At an international tap day concert in New York in 1992, Slyde's duet with drummer Panama Francis sounded pre-planned, despite being improvised. He opened the 1996 Jacob's Pillow Festival, in Becket, Massachusetts, which had formerly shunned tap dancing, and danced at the White House for President Clinton in 1998.
In 1999 he was awarded a national heritage fellowship award, and three years later came a doctorate from Oklahoma City University, followed by a Guggenheim fellowship in 2003.
After Honi Coles' death in 1992, Slyde was pre-eminent in his field but insisted he had not invented tap, and neither had the people he had learned from, reeling off innumerable names of illustrious predecessors. That generosity of spirit will be a hard act to follow.
He is survived by his wife Donna and son Daryl.
· Jimmy Slyde (James Titus Godbolt), dancer, born October 27 1927; died May 16 2008