Gregory Hines Biography Quotes 13 Report mistakes

Early Life and Family
Gregory Hines was born in New York City in 1946, and from early childhood he grew up inside the world of show business. His father, Maurice Hines Sr., was a drummer who provided steady rhythm both at home and onstage, and his older brother, Maurice Hines, became his first and most enduring creative partner. The brothers trained under master teacher Henry LeTang, who drilled them in clarity of sound, musicality, and the craft of performance. As children they performed as the Hines Kids, taking their precise, buoyant tap style to clubs and theaters across the city, including the Apollo. As they matured, the act became Hines, Hines and Dad, with their father on drums, a family unit that toured, recorded, and worked the tough and exacting circuits of nightclubs and variety television.

Beginnings in Performance
Those early years made Hines a professional long before adulthood. He learned to improvise, to listen as if he were another instrument in the band, and to craft a show that could win over any room. Exposure to jazz musicians sharpened his ear for polyrhythm and call-and-response; he could trade eights with drummers as fluidly as he could lock into a melody with a pianist. In the 1970s he stepped away from the family act to explore broader musical interests, moving to California and fronting a band called Severance. That period widened his range as a vocalist and bandleader, deepening the musical instincts that would later define his approach to tap.

Broadway and the Tap Revival
Hines returned to New York in the late 1970s and quickly became central to a tap renaissance on Broadway. He broke through in the revue Eubie!, which celebrated the music of Eubie Blake, and followed with Sophisticated Ladies, a Duke Ellington tribute. Working frequently with Henry LeTang, he showcased a grounded, conversational tap style that treated the floor as a drum and silence as part of the music. Hines championed the elder masters who had inspired him, bringing figures like Charles "Honi" Coles, Jimmy Slyde, and Howard "Sandman" Sims back to major stages and insisting they receive credit and visibility. His advocacy helped spur the creation of National Tap Dance Day in the United States in 1989, which formalized a celebration of the art he loved.

In 1992 he delivered a landmark performance in Jelly's Last Jam, directed by George C. Wolfe and built around the life and music associated with Jelly Roll Morton. The show, featuring collaborators such as Savion Glover, Tonya Pinkins, and Keith David, fused storytelling with propulsive rhythm. Hines won a Tony Award for his work, reaffirming his status as a leading actor-dancer who could carry a complex musical with charisma, dramatic weight, and unmistakable sound.

Film and Television
Hines expanded his influence through film, starting with roles that foregrounded his dancing and growing into parts that showcased his comedic timing and dramatic presence. In The Cotton Club (1984), directed by Francis Ford Coppola, he and his brother Maurice played a tap duo whose elegance contrasted with the film's underworld grit. White Nights (1985), directed by Taylor Hackford, paired him with Mikhail Baryshnikov in a story that joined ballet and tap, classical and jazz, East and West. Running Scared (1986) teamed him with Billy Crystal in an offbeat buddy-cop movie that revealed Hines's deft comic instincts. Tap (1989) became a valentine to the form, putting him alongside Sammy Davis Jr., Harold Nicholas, Jimmy Slyde, and other luminaries, and capturing their artistry on screen.

His television work was equally varied. He headlined The Gregory Hines Show in the late 1990s, bringing warmth and ease to a network sitcom. He recurred on Will & Grace as Ben Doucette, a wry foil with sleek authority, and he reached new audiences as a voice actor on the animated series Little Bill. Earlier, he had fronted the PBS special Gregory Hines' Tap Dance in America, a widely praised program that both documented and energized the tap community and earned awards recognition.

Artistic Style and Mentorship
Hines developed a personal style often described as hoofing: earthy, elastic, and conversational. He valued improvisation, sculpting phrases in real time and bending time the way a jazz soloist does. He could float across the bar line or lock into a backbeat, shaping rhythm so that even the air around his steps felt syncopated. That musical approach shaped how he taught and mentored. He encouraged younger artists to think like drummers and horn players, to listen harder than they spoke. Savion Glover, who came to prominence as a teenager and later remade the form in his own image, counted Hines as a crucial mentor. Hines also cultivated intergenerational bridges, often sharing billings with elders and arranging platforms where the lineage of the form could be seen and heard in one place.

Collaboration and Community
Collaboration was the core of Hines's career. He leaned on Henry LeTang for precision and phrasing; he sparred rhythmically with jazz musicians in clubs; he tested dramatic ideas with directors like George C. Wolfe and Francis Ford Coppola; he bantered on-screen with Billy Crystal; and he traded steps and stories with Sammy Davis Jr., whose presence in Tap felt like one generation blessing the next. His bond with his brother Maurice Hines, begun in childhood, remained a through-line. They sometimes took different paths and tones, but their reunions carried the charge of shared history. Hines maintained a generous presence within the tap community, showing up at festivals, master classes, and tributes, and he used his visibility to argue that tap was both heritage and living music.

Personal Life and Character
Offstage, Hines carried the same easy rhythm that defined his dancing. He moved between music, theater, film, and television with curiosity rather than restlessness, pursuing projects that let him refine timing and tone. Colleagues often described his rehearsal rooms as places of trust, where jokes and hard work coexisted and where the drummer, pianist, and dancers were equals. He was a devoted son and brother, and he took pride in being a father, anchoring his professional ambition with a sense of responsibility to family and to the elders whose shoulders he stood on. His public appearances as an advocate underscored that responsibility; he wanted institutions to remember names like Honi Coles and Jimmy Slyde as readily as they remembered star choreographers and directors.

Final Years and Legacy
In his final years, Hines continued to move smoothly between mediums. He earned acclaim for portraying Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in a television film, paying homage to a pioneering figure whose shadow stretched across the century of American dance. He recorded and toured, took on guest roles that broadened his comic and dramatic reach, and kept tap visible on mainstream stages. He died in 2003 at the age of 57, and the outpouring of tributes from friends, collaborators, and students testified to his singular status. Maurice Hines spoke of a lifetime spent in rhythmic conversation with his brother; Savion Glover credited Hines with opening doors and ears; and veterans like Jimmy Slyde emphasized how Hines had lifted the whole community.

Gregory Hines left a model of artistic citizenship: a performer who could hold a spotlight yet point it toward others, who treated tap as both dance and music, and who pushed the form forward by honoring its past. National Tap Dance Day, the recordings and films that captured him at full flight, and the dancers he mentored all carry his time-keeping heartbeat forward. His career traced a continuous line from a family trio in nightclubs to Broadway triumphs and screen roles, and through it all he remained what he had been since childhood: a musician of the feet, a collaborator by instinct, and a builder of community through rhythm.

Our collection contains 13 quotes who is written by Gregory, under the main topics: Learning - Overcoming Obstacles - Art - Equality - Human Rights.

Other people realated to Gregory: Twyla Tharp (Dancer), Mikhail Baryshnikov (Dancer), Sammy Davis, Jr. (Entertainer), Helen Mirren (Actress), Luther Vandross (Musician), Whitley Strieber (Writer)