On Monday, sail around Manhattan and take in a tap jam on the Copasetic Boat Ride (Pier 83 at 6:30 p.m.).
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HOWEVER, I WILL POINT OUT THE BOND MARKET IS COPASETIC WITH THE IDEA OF THE FED RAISING RATES THREE TIMES THIS YEAR.
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On Monday, the Copasetic Boat Ride cruises along the Hudson River with tap jams on board, and on Wednesday, veteran hoofers and next-gen stars are honored at the TapCity Awards.
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It was also on the radio and in his recordings that Robinson introduced and popularized a word of his own invention, copasetic, which he had used for years in his vaudeville shows, and which was added to Webster's Dictionary in 1934.
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Kool Keith's rhymes are manic and expressed in a staccato pace. His lyrics on "Ego Trippin'" also criticize the musical aesthetic of old school hip hop artists at the time: "They use the simple back and forth, the same old rhythm / That a baby can pick up and join right with them / But their rhymes are pathetic, they think they copasetic / Using nursery terms, at least not poetic".
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LeRoy Myers (November 10, 1919 – April 26, 2004) was an African American tap dancer and manager of the Copasetics. He was born in North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and learned to tap dance on the street corners of Philadelphia. When Bill "Bojangles" Robinson died in 1949, LeRoy Myers and some close friends were inspired to form the Copasetics, named after Bill Robinsons' favorite expression, "Everything is Copasetic." The Copasetics was a fraternity of black entertainers that were influential in the revival of tap dancing in the late 1970s through the 1980s.
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Towards the end of that year, Mob boss Tony Accardo ordered Pat Manno, Romie Nappi and several other Outfit associates down to Dallas, Texas in order to make sure local sheriff Steve Gutherie was copasetic with the Outfit's expansion into Dallas. This meeting included the participation of the now infamous Jack Ruby, who had a great deal of connections to law enforcement in the State of Texas. This move ultimately met with failure. On December 18, 1946, the FBI reported that Romie Nappi was charged with attempted bribery of elected officials and held without bond.
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Spooncurve were formed in 1996 and released their first trip hop inspired work through Copasetic records, Quirky, Cantankerous and later Better, releasing mainly one off 12-inch singles with minor hits in the UK and French dance scenes, with radio broadcasts including the BBC, Choice and Kiss fm. Spooncurve recorded a mini album for Better in 1997. The act joined D.O.R in 2000, preferring the artistic freedom of the label and allowing time for the act to evolve. Spooncurve have released two full albums, "Are Friends Symmetric" in 2005 and "Clairsentience" in 2009, plus three singles with D.O.R. to date.
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The Original Copasetics were an ensemble of star tap dancers formed in 1949 on the death of Bill Bojangles Robinson that helped to revive the art of tap. The first group included composer/arranger Billy Strayhorn and the choreographer Cholly Atkins, as well as Honi Coles, Charles “Cookie” Cook and his dance partner Ernest “Brownie” Brown.NY Times obituary by Jennifer Dunning, August 25, 2009 Other dancers included Chuck Green, Jimmy Slyde and Howard “Sandman” Sims. The group took its name from Robinson’s familiar observation that “everything is copasetic” and was honored in the 1989 Broadway revue Black and Blue.
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Lyrically, the album is "burdened by a social conscience", bring a sombre irony to the album name. Heralding in the new direction, opening song "Reselecterization" features an instrumental flourish that is "explicitly derived" from hip hop music, but after that, the album "soon settles down into a ska groove that," according to Rick Anderson of AllMusic, "is far from the old school on its shiny surfaces but still deeply rooted in Jamaican verities." "California Screaming" is about, "among other things," the police assault of Rodney King, while "Copasetic", an anti-war song, and "Mother Knows Best", are said to veil their subjects in "obscure detail." The latter song features church bells, whistles and synthesised orchestral strings.
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The show received excellent reviews, including from The Times, which called it "a bravura one-woman display from the charismatic Camilla Beeput". Since 2018 Webb has, with saxophonist Tony Kofi, co-led a group celebrating the music of Cannonball Adderley and created a words-and-music project based on the music of Billie Holiday with vocalist David McAlmont. In November 2019 Webb released an album of original songs and unusual cover versions with McAlmont - 'The Last Bohemians' by McAlmont & Webb (Copasetic/Lateralize) - which received highly positive reviews and in March 2020 Webb was featured on Tony Kofi's LP release 'Another Kind of Soul' (Last Music Co), a live album documenting the band's Cannonball Adderley project.
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The Anthology of Rap, published by Yale University Press, makes note of such pseudoscientific terminology in Ced-Gee's lyricism on "Ego Trippin'", particularly the lines "Usin' frequencies and data, I am approximate / Leaving revolutions turning, emerging chemistry / With the precise implications, achieved adversively".The Anthology of Rap (2010), p. 497. Kool Keith's rhymes are manic and expressed in a staccato pace. His lyrics on "Ego Trippin'" also criticize the musical aesthetic of old school hip hop artists at the time: "They use the simple back and forth, the same old rhythm / That a baby can pick up and join right with them / But their rhymes are pathetic, they think they copasetic / Using nursery terms, at least not poetic".
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Black Radical took three years before he released his next single, "This Iz War" (Copasetic Records, 1993), which was a response to the Roland Adams murder. An album - Double Edged Sword: The Pre LP (Black Foundation, 1995) - followed, but whilst the artist's delivery and lyrics were still up to their old standard, the album failed to achieve the same success of his debut. The move to a small, independent record label and the widespread collapse of the British hip hop scene were partly to blame in keeping the record from its audience, although equally it has been suggested that the music and production missed the attention of the Mango producers. Again, Black Radical moved labels before releasing his final (to date) album, Khaos & Konfusion: The Spell of Leviathan (Blueprint Records, 1998).
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The primary labels of these releases were recording companies Sony, BMG, EMI, AVEX and independent labels D.O.R., Copasetic, Better, Reel 2 Reel, Law and Auder, Sub and Bleep, Slammin', Quirky, 3MV, Pro One, Squat, Keda and Offspring Records. Remixes have included work for Pigface, Genesis P-Orridge, Patricia Kass, Kuljit Bhamra MBE and a wide range of experimental acts in the electronica genre. His music has been included on films Winter of Love, Flash, A Quiet Desperation, Better Than Chocolate, SLC Punk,Moondogg SLC Punk TV shows in the UK, Germany, France and the US and avant-garde experimental films both of his own and other directors creations. With visuals, he tends to work with the retro super-8 genre, but has also been known to produce short digital films.
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Robinson is given credit for having popularized the word Copacetic and claimed to have invented it while still living in Richmond. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the origins of the word as unknown and documents the earliest written use of the word in 1919, by the newspaperman and author Irving Bacheller, in his serialized book, A Man for the Ages; this was followed by uses in 1926 by Carl Van Vechten in his novel Nigger Heaven, in 1934 in Webster's New International Dictionary, and by John O'Hara in his novel Appointment in Samarra. Haskins biography of Robinson includes, "Bill was shelling peas at the Jefferson Market, a New York Daily Mirror reporter asked him how he was, and the reply just popped into his head: 'I'm copasetic.'" The word was not popularized until Robinson used the term as an opening for his vaudeville and radio performances.
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