Pound for Pound by Herb Boyd

Author:Herb Boyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Sugar’s foray into the realm of tux and tap was a bit more tenuous, as was his financial security. “Sugar was plagued with business problems,” Edna Mae observed. “The superintendent of his buildings owned a dog that had bitten the man who was delivering the oil to us one day and the man sued Sugar. The dog had bitten him on Sugar’s property. The oil man got a hefty settlement. That hurt Sugar, but not as much as learning someone in his employ had assisted the plaintiff to help him win the case. I found that very difficult to believe, but so many things began to happen involving his employees against him that I could no longer cope with the frustration of why his trusted friends were forsaking him and I began to stay away from his businesses as often as I could.”

Edna Mae may have stepped back from the businesses, but she got more involved in helping her beleaguered husband with his theatrical pursuits. She volunteered to show Sugar a few fancy steps and how to strut and spin across the stage. Eventually she enlisted dancer Henry Le Tang as a tutor, and the instructor had Sugar doing simple rhythmic steps on his first visit to the studio. As Le Tang, whose instruction was sometimes augmented by Pete Nugent, put Sugar through the hoops, working on his movement and tempo, smoothing out the rough edges, Joe Glaser, his agent, was contacting clubs and talking to movers and shakers on the entertainment circuit.

“In the weeks before my debut…I trained harder than I ever had as a boxer,” Sugar recalled. Le Tang repeatedly reminded Sugar that his legs must be as strong as they were in the ring. “I had to do roadwork every morning, five miles a day. In the afternoon, I was dancing, five hours a day. I’d do my routines over and over. Whenever I made a mistake, the piano would stop and Henry would glare at me. ‘You must understand,’ he liked to say, ‘that you are telling a story with your feet.’” But it wasn’t only his feet that had to do the talking—Sugar had to provide patter, tell a few jokes, and generally be a kind of a song-and-dance man: “I kept telling myself that it wouldn’t be any different than the time I was a kid dancing for two dollars a night at the Alvin Theater.” Le Tang worked him as hard as his boxing trainers had; he wanted to be sure Sugar had sufficient stamina to dance through the night if necessary. Of course, Sugar couldn’t dedicate all his time to perfecting his routines; there were still businesses to run, as well as a wife and child with emotional needs.

“Our relationship had been lacking in the kind of close warm giving of ourselves, because of the demands of his new show business career,” Edna Mae mildly complained. “It was all I could do to satisfy his ardor. I often looked up into the

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