Hot Cripple #12/December 2015- Clayton "Peg Leg" Bates

This "Hot Cripple" Series is an experiment; an effort to bring attention to the fact that Disability isn't necessarily synonymous with Ugly- as in Ugly Laws, which proliferated this country for over a century.

This month we feature entertainer, Clayton "Peg Leg" Bates.

Clayton Bates (October 11, 1907 – December 8, 1998) lost a leg at the age of 12 in a cotton gin accident. He subsequently taught himself to tap dance with a wooden peg leg. His uncle, Wit, made his crude first prosthetic leg after returning home from World War I and finding his nephew disabled.

Bates was a well-known dancer in his day. He performed on The Ed Sullivan Show 22 times, and had two command performances before the King & Queen of England in 1936 and then again in 1938. He retired from the dancing business in 1996.

He owned and operated the Peg Leg Bates Country Club in Kerhonkson, New York, from 1951 to 1987, along with his wife Alice E. Bates. This made Bates the first black resort owner in Ulster County in the Catskill Mountains, the famous Borscht Belt of Jewish resorts, hotels, and bungalow colonies.

No mere novelty act, tap dancing is half dancing and half percussion, and Bates's wooden leg gave him a bass drum while everyone else was dancing around on two snares. This enabled him to completely reinvent the popular dances of his time. During a USO hospital tour, he partnered with vaudeville tap dancer Dixie Roberts, who said "he danced better with one leg than anyone else could with two." He loved to tell youngsters that they could do anything they wanted. He would say "look at me."

It's easy to see why- we can't take our eyes off of him...