Tucker was the kind of eccentric performer known in the hard-boiled language of show business as a "freak dancer." He came into the New York Black musk world of Connies Inn and the Cotton Club by way of the Maryland tidewaters. "I think he came from one of those primitive lost colonies," Duke Ellington is reported to have said, "where they practiced pagan rituals and their dancing style evolved from religious seizures."
Tucker worked for a short time with Ellington. He wore a loose, white silk blouse with large, puffed sleeves, tight, black pants with bell bottoms, and a sequined girdle with a sparkling buckle in the center from which hung a large, glittery tassel. He had a very disengaged and menacing look, which gave his audience the feeling that he was a cobra and they were mice. He slithered on stage and the audience quieted down at once. Nobody dared to snicker at him no matter how nervous or embarrassed the audience might be. He came slipping and sliding forward with just a hint of hip movement. The step was known in Harlem