Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Alice Apodaca “was a character and a ham,” said her daughter Barbara Robb of Centennial. Other relatives echoed the assessment of Apocada, who died June 26.

Dance historians who research such things credit American jazz singer and bandleader Cab Calloway for coining the term “jitterbug.” In 1934, he recorded a lively tune, “Jitter Bug,” that some credit ...

Jitterbug proper is a dance that was made famous by Cab Calloway (of "Minnie the Moocher" fame). But, as I always understood it, jitterbug is also a general term for any kind of swing dance. They say ...